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06 Sep 2003
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Writing Effective Proposals

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Dear Friends,

Companies devote tremendous resources toward generating leads, then
fail to invest the time and effort required to close the "last
mile" between prospect and contract. Failure often results from an
inability to deliver an effective proposal.

That's a shame. Proposals can be your best branding and sales tool.
Companies make the same mistake in proposals that they make in
their branding campaigns. The issue is not about you and your
capabilities; it's about a solution for the prospect that reflects
an understanding of its business issues.

Just as important, it's the start of a relationship and its
ultimate success may well depend on what is said in the proposal.
The seeds of failure are often planted before the proposal is
generated. Many proposals are written with the attitude and
perspective of a cocky fourth-grader with his hand in the air
yelling, "Pick me! Pick me!"

The proposal focuses on all the glowing reasons why the firm should
be picked-but that's not what the prospect is looking for. When
prospects review a stack of proposals, all making indistinguishable
and unprovable claims about "quality," "commitment" and
"satisfaction," they first look for reasons to disqualify
proposals.

Didn't follow the RFP (request for proposal) guidelines? Trash. Too
long? Life's too short. Full of boilerplate? Next!

To avoid being sidelined, put yourself in the prospect's shoes as
soon as work starts on the proposal. Essentially, all successful
proposals fall into two camps. Either they create an opportunity or
they solve a problem more easily or cheaply than prospects could
themselves.

Spend as much time in research, planning and analysis as you do
writing the proposal. Be sure to include a go/no-go decision.
Generating a proposal can cost tens of thousands of dollars, and
sometimes the outcome or prospect is not worth the effort.

In the long run, success rates will increase significantly if there
is a process behind proposal generation. Although debate continues
about whether proposals should be generated inside or outside the
sales department, 60% of the responsibilities should center around
proposal development and submission, 20% to a proposal "library"
for research and generation, 10% to pipeline and proposal tracking,
and 10% to analysis, including post-mortems, win rates and proposal
development costs.

Cheers!!!

Maj (Dr.) Amit Chatterjee, SM
Strategist / Founder ~ mailto:amit@...
MT India ~ www.mtindia.org
"The Community of MT Professionals"

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NEWS AND VIEWS :
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1) India to Adopt Data Privacy Rules

Some CIOs worry whether a data protection law would have any teeth
in India's courts. But competition for offshore business should
keep the courts on the straight and narrow. "Nasscom and India
understand how vital a clear policy on data protection and privacy
are to the trust and confidence of foreign clients," says Bierce,
adding that the rules will most likely be enforced by a special
appellate court established under India's Information Technology
Act of 2000.

Nonetheless, CIOs must remain diligent about Indian vendors to
ensure the privacy and security needs of their companies. "India's
privacy legislation is positive, but much more important is for
CIOs to ensure that their outsourcing agreements contain detailed
and precise contractual specifications regarding data privacy and
protections," says Hank Zupnick, senior vice president and CIO of
GE Real Estate, who works with several Indian IT services
companies. Specific remedies for noncompliance should be spelled
out in the contract, adds Zupnick, and the contract should have
legal jurisdiction in the state or province where the CIO's company
is headquartered.

http://www.cio.com/archive/090103/tl_data.html

2) Arab countries need to tap trend of outsourcing services

There is no reason why such Arab countries like Jordan, Lebanon,
Egypt, Bahrain and UAE do not become as well important centres for
outsourcing business support services. Companies in India,
Philippines and elsewhere convert dictation by doctors in America
into written medical reports. The value of outsourcing of medical
transcription coming from the US is estimated to reach $4 billion
by 2005.

Only very few companies from the region have so far participated in
the second round of globalisation, even though several Arab
countries do meet the criteria to become centres for outsourcing of
businesses and IT related support services.

http://www.gulf-news.com/Articles/news.asp?ArticleID=96910

3) Who Says Govt Should Exit From Biz?

BPO industry experts have called for increased government sector
participation in order to create a skilled workforce for the BPO
sector. At the ITES summit 2003, organised by CNBC on Thursday,
speakers pointed out the need for increased government and private
sector partnership for the growth of this sector.

Karnataka IT secretary Vivek Kulkarni pointed out that the
difficult challenges in the ITES arena included creation of
worldclass infrastructure, regulatory clearances, people issues,
among others. He opined that most of these issues could be resolved
except for the people issue, that is creation of adequate skilled
workforce. He also called for creation of standards to benchmark
the services provided by BPOs. Nasscom president Kiran Karnik
called for a bigger role for government in creating a good english
speaking, skilled workforce.

http://www.nasscom.org/artdisplay.asp?Art_id=1903

4) $50bn IT exports target achievable: Nasscom chief

National Association of Software and Service Companies (Nasscom)
president Kiran Karnik on Saturday said the export projections of
$50 billion by the year 2008 was well achievable as last year the
exports were worth $10 billion.

Karnik noted that IT was one sector India had the winner and it
would be prudent to create and nurture the talent to meet the
requirements of the global industry.

He also said the proposed legislations against business process
outsourcing (BPO) by western countries would have nil effect on
India as it pertained only to state outsourcing. "Usually BPOs are
business models of companies and are handled by themselves.

"The legislation may not even come through and may have been
floated with an eye on the ensuing polls in the United States," he
added.

http://www.nasscom.org/artdisplay.asp?Art_id=2021

5) India moves up the outsourcing ladder - Major multinationals
move business processes

India's business process outsourcing (BPO) companies are looking at
the opportunity to get into new high-margin business, as major
multinationals are increasingly moving higher-end, analytic
business processes to the country.

The demand for staff with specializations is likely to push up
salaries and increase staff turnover in the Indian outsourcing
industry -- one which is already reeling under a high attrition
rate.

http://www.nasscom.org/artdisplay.asp?Art_id=2022
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