Raise your Win Rate by 20 Percent

All executives want to increase their win rate.

First, let me make sure everyone understands that we are talking about the investment you make to improve your company’s overall win rate. This is the average win rate on all proposals your company submits, not your win rate on a specific proposal.

7-Factor Model

To predict increases in overall company win rates, we use a 7-Factor Company Win Rate Model.

While the model predicts overall company win rates, more importantly, it also predicts how a company’s win rate is affected by changing investments in these 7 factors—and that’s what we’re after. If we can predict how the win rate is affected by changes in the 7-Factor score, then we can make investments with confidence, knowing that we can predict the resulting win-rate increase.

  

The 7-Factor score is based on:

■People: The skills and experience of the people involved in creating proposals.

■Business acquisition process: Business acquisition maturity covering the five stages of business acquisition lifecycle.

■Tools: Proposal infrastructure and personal and productivity tools.

■Management decision-making: Qualification and bid decisions.

■Solution competitiveness: Competitive solution with good features and customer benefits.

■Proposal quality: Quality proposals that are always compliant, responsive and compelling.

■Winning culture: Winning culture with good work/life balance.

We assess each of the seven factors using yes/no questions.

Here’s an example of how the assessment works. The first assessment factor is People. Skilled people write better proposals than those who are not so good at it. To assess the skill and experience of the people working capture and proposals, we ask four questions. The answers are based on the skill and experience of your internal staff as well as consultants you use.