Productivity Hack: How to Write Proposals Faster
One question that has come up several times in the past few weeks is “How do I write faster?” Especially when dealing with RFP deadlines, everyone wants to know how to make the process easier to hit more deadlines while still creating quality proposals.
I tend to be a quick writer naturally, and over time, I’ve developed a few additional strategies to help me write my first drafts even faster. If you’re watching the clock and wondering how to make your writing easier, try out some of the tactics below!
Develop Key Points and Theme First
Before I ever open up my official “draft” document, I first determine what exactly we need to say in the proposal. This often comes down to determining key win themes and supporting points that we want to really focus on throughout the document.
In general, I aim for 3-5 main win themes. These win themes may vary dramatically for each proposal or you might have a few that occur again and again.
Let’s look at an example. If you are the incumbent for a project or contract, that will most likely be one of your win themes. Before drafting any proposal content, I will take this win theme and identify a few bullet points related to this theme. For example, maybe the customer has a good relationship with their account manager, which we want to emphasize (meaning, I’ll write down the account manager’s name to mention throughout the proposal). Incumbent projects often have metrics we can use, such as an on-time delivery rate or any money saved as a result of the project. After the end of this exercise, I’ll typically have about 3-5 points for the win theme, and we follow the same approach for the others we want to highlight.
Use Existing Content as a Starting Point
After creating the win theme notes, I review the RFP requirements and start compiling everything related to the questions into a master notes document. In this document, I paste any boilerplate proposal content we may want to use as well as any other information that might be helpful. The most common places I search for information are on the company website, past proposals, sales pitches, internal documentation (i.e. customer support or team workflows), or specification sheets.
Anything at all related to our solution or this particular proposal goes into the master notes document. I do recommend organizing this document so it’s easy to find information in the future. For example, anything related to the company overview should be grouped together in the company overview section. If some content overlaps with multiple sections, I paste it in each section.
Create Outline Before Writing
With the win themes identified and basic content compiled, it’s time to start outlining content. If it’s an RFP response, I take all of the questions and requirements and place them into our outline. From there, I start pasting the points from the win themes and any existing content into the applicable sections. At this point, I’m not worried about the story or the narrative. The goal is to have enough content that I don’t start writing on a blank document. I will copy over entire paragraphs, but sometimes I also simply choose my favorite sentence from a paragraph. In other cases, I don’t like the existing language at all, so I rewrite the content as notes with the general idea that I want to convey.
Eliminate Distractions
Now that there is enough content to know what to say, it’s time to start writing! The hardest part of writing any content (proposal or otherwise) is actually forcing yourself to sit down and write. There is almost always something that seems easier and more enjoyable, and procrastination can easily lead to writer’s block.
To combat this, I focus on eliminating distractions and setting writing rules for myself. Below are my most common ones. Feel free to use them next time you write a proposal!
Keep phone out of sight and/or out of reach. It’s so easy to pick up your phone without thinking about it when procrastinating writing. If I have a certain timeframe designated for writing, I move my phone out of sight, often placing it on the other side of the room (or even in another room). This is sometimes the only way to allow me to focus long enough to get into the flow of writing.
Set minimum time writing limits. On really hard days when I just don’t want to write, I tell myself to just write for ten or fifteen minutes and then I can take a break. It normally takes a minute or two to get started, but most of the time I get into the flow of writing, and I’m able to keep working on it for an hour or so instead of stopping.
Maximize window. Another way to avoid distractions is to expand the document you’re writing in to fit the whole screen, making it difficult to navigate to another window. Also, if you tend to habitually check email, when you’re writing your proposal, exit out completely so you aren’t distracted every time something new hits your inbox.
Set daily goal. When working on a deadline, it’s important to know what you’re going to accomplish and when. If you save most of the writing to the last minute, it’s more likely that writer’s block will set in because you might start to feel paralyzed. I try to set daily writing goals to complete certain sections on specific days, which allows me to spread the writing over several days. If I have a good day, I might write extra, but if not, I hit the minimum amount I aim for to make sure we have time to revise.
Remember: It’s a Draft
Perhaps the most helpful writing tip I’ve ever received is to remember the first draft is just a draft – that means it’s probably going to be awful. Many writers use the first draft as an opportunity to pour out all of their horrible writing just to get the ideas in paper. One strategy is to challenge yourself to make it as awful as possible – then you’re at least writing and putting ideas to paper, which is really all you need to do at this point.
Then, once you have all of the content drafted, you can go back to revise, edit, and rewrite to make it more persuasive and customer-focused.
At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter how fast you write, as long as you create a proposal that speaks to the buyer by the deadline.
