How to Create Great Proposal Themes (Part 2): Features and Benefits
By Chris Simmons, founder and principal member of Rainmakerz Consulting

In Part 1 of this series we explored the definition of a theme and the benefits of theme development in telling a compelling proposal story that scores well with evaluators. Part 2 takes a closer look at the two primary components of winning proposal themes: features and benefits.

The development of proposal features and benefits is a key part of solution development and the critical first step in developing proposal themes. Most proposal teams use established methods and templates including storyboards, module plans, work packages, or some other form of pre-draft deliverable to provide a process and structure for feature and benefit development.

However, despite providing proposal teams with what might appear to be clear feature and benefit definitions, directions, and examples, many writers and subject matter experts ignore them completely or simply don't understand what is required. At best, features are listed as benefits (and vice versa). Or worse, they are so vague and generalized that they fail to achieve the desired result – to provide evaluators with compelling reasons to select your company.

What happens next is predictable. Time pressures force the team to start writing before themes are sufficiently developed and the entire proposal process begins to unravel. Understanding proposal themes and the features and benefits that comprise them is a big step toward efficient and effective proposal development.

FEATURES highlight what's important to YOU
Features are easier for proposal teams to identify because they are all about their product or service. Proposals can go on and on about features with little or no knowledge of the customer. One of the most vivid everyday examples of a feature 'deliverable' is a simple sticker commonly displayed on the driver's side window of a new car. Window stickers highlight the most important characteristics of the vehicle such as: equipment (ABS brakes, air bags, traction control, OnStar); specifications (4 cylinders, 2 wheel drive); the EPA city/highway gas mileage; and the price.

This simple sticker saves consumers significant time and effort otherwise required to read the owners manual, or perform manual inspections/tests to determine how this car compares to other cars. Can you imagine having to drive the car on the highway and in the city making detailed notes and calculations in order to calculate gas mileage?

The features you develop for your proposal serve the same basic function as the window sticker. Proposal features describe the characteristics of your solution, e.g., type of technology/tools, methodologies, processes, performance levels, number of key personnel, and a host of other management, technical, past performance, and cost characteristics. Whereas features are all about what's important to you (window sticker), benefits are all about highlighting what's important to your customer.

BENEFITS highlight what's important to your CUSTOMER
Most proposal teams forget that although features are important, what customers really care about are benefits. Benefits are aspects or advantages of the feature that typically solve customer problems or address customer hot buttons. For most proposals this means increased efficiency, reduced cost, reduced risk, and higher performance levels or some variants of these.

The most effective benefit statements address both explicit (specific evaluation criteria) and implicit customer problems, issues, and concerns (hot buttons). A stereotypical example using the car analogy best illustrates this point.

Most car salesmen are generally good at sizing up their customers as soon as they walk in the door and know which car features align best with customers' benefits to make the sale. A single, well-dressed, high-income, male drives slowly up to the showroom in a bright yellow Corvette. The car salesman immediately ponders a short-list of likely customer benefits (power, speed, design/sex appeal). He starts linking features of the sports car he has on the lot (horsepower, 0-60 mph statistics, vibrant colors, and motor trend design awards). The customer has a woman on his arm that he is clearly trying to impress.

Sounds like a done deal, right? Now what if the salesperson knew the woman is a nurse the customer met in a head trauma unit after totaling his car, and that she has convinced him that safety is a high priority (benefit). You can almost picture the salesman's head begin to swirl as suddenly a new set of features (low roll over rates, driver steering control, airbags, and impact statistics) are required to address safety benefits that may be quite different from the 'need for speed'.

Themes link benefits with features to communicate solutions
Most of us aren't in the business of selling cars, but the underlying principals of features, benefits, and the relationship between these two is the same in our profession. The proposal theme provides the connection between what's important to a customer (benefit) and what's important to you (feature). The challenge of the proposal team is to devise an effective and efficient way to identify customer benefits (explicit and implicit) and link these benefits to quantifiable features to best communicate compliant and compelling solutions to customers.

Part 3 of this series describes how to enhance features and benefits to create more compelling proposal themes.

Chris Simmons is the founder and principal member of Rainmakerz Consulting—a business development solutions company specializing in proposal management, writing, and review.

Still confused or looking for more detailed suggestions? Take time now to send feedback, comments, or questions about this or other challenging proposal issues to Chris at chris@rainmakerz.biz or 202-255-2355. Visit www.rainmakerz.biz.

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If you don’t have your own FREE subscription to Bid-Winning Proposals, sign up now at http://www.24hrco.com/ezine.shtml. Join more than 1000 other proposal professionals who get answers to their most pressing issues and challenges from recognized industry experts—every other month. Plus you’ll have access to all back issues and our growing library of proposal resources.