Great article on CapturePlanning.com about using the quality of your writing as a discriminator in helping you win proposals.

I’ve long felt that most proposals are written in a style that’s at once stiff, boring, jargony, dense . . . nigh on unreadable. Every proposal seems to contain the worst of business writing distilled (or usually expanded) into one mind-numbing document.

This article suggests that proposal writers instead employ the best of business writing in their props — writing that is conversational, direct, and passionate. Writing that has personality, and that tells a story.

Here at Dragonfly, we edit literally hundreds of proposals every year. In 15 years, I’ve yet to see one written in such a style.

Now that would be a key discriminator.

[Note: For you non-proposal-heads out there, “key discriminator” is proposal jargon for the cool aspects of your company that set you apart from your competitors.]
This post was written by Samantha Enslen, and was originally published in 2010.