How to Use GenAI to Move Proposals from Good to Great  

It’s accepted that generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) can help proposal teams write compliant, responsive content much faster than before. However, GenAI is a powerful yet underappreciated tool for helping proposal teams go from writing “good” to “great” proposals.

To understand the transformative potential of GenAI, consider what “good” and “great” look like in proposals. A good proposal is compliant—fully addresses the requirements; and responsive—provides the information requested in the solicitation. However, in a best-value competition, these characteristics are necessary but insufficient to win. A great proposal is compelling because it explains the unique value your company brings that other offerors can’t match, capturing evaluators’ attention to score strengths.

How to Use GenAI to Help You Write Winning Content

GenAI can help you produce proposals that evaluators will score highly, because you can prompt it to:

• Generate More Strengths Than Your Competitors: GenAI can help you focus on maximizing your proposal’s non-cost score. This means identifying features with clear benefits and proofs that evaluators will score as strengths, while minimizing weaknesses and risks. You can then set your pricing to reflect the expected score difference between you and your competitors, so when you win, you don’t leave money on the table.
• Operate with Cost-Effectiveness and Speed: Customers are aware that GenAI can dramatically speed up writing and review processes, so expect the next generation of solicitations to tighten writing timelines. At the same time, however, using GenAI to help write compelling content sets you apart from competitors who submit compliant but otherwise undistinguished proposals.
• Embed Your Best Practices: GenAI can help you write proposals that take advantage of your best practices and lessons learned from previous proposals. Proposal teams can use GenAI to create engaging proposals that incorporate an understanding of customer needs and culture.
• Continuously Improve Processes: Organizations can use tools like capability maturity models and immersion programs to identify areas where GenAI has the greatest impact. Encouraging innovation backed by data and a strengths-based approach empowers teams to create proposals that exceed expectations.

Improving Proposal Quality with GenAI and Lohfeld Quality Measures

Lohfeld Consulting has established a set of quality measures that we use to help our clients’ proposal teams focus on what’s important: generating content for maximum score. We teach how to use GenAI to facilitate quality and deliver higher scores and more wins. These quality measures are flexible enough to be adapted to current trends, like multi-phase evaluations and self-scoring proposals for Governmentwide Acquisition Contracts (GWACs). These GenAI-enabled quality measures are:

• Compliant in Structure: GenAI tools are less than ideal for tasks that require repetitive, systematic processing, like shredding an RFP—but you can use GenAI to review customer information and solicitation requirements and then pinpoint those requirements that are most critical to winning. This helps proposal managers identify gaps, allocate page count, and assign writers.
• Responsive in Content: Before the RFP is released, use GenAI to help your capture team forecast potential RFP requirements, evaluation criteria, and solution features that you can discuss with the customer. Customer feedback is a vital element in identifying features that, when accompanied by benefits and proof points in the proposal, have the potential to score strengths.
• Compelling (Strengths-driven): Use GenAI to apply proposal writing best practices, such as Lohfeld’s Strength-Based Winning®, that make it easy for proposal evaluators to recognize and score strengths in your proposal. GenAI helps writers reduce the time and cost of preparing content with consistent narrative structure, strength statements, appropriate customer language, risks/mitigations, innovations, and style/tone.
• Customer-focused: Have GenAI analyze the RFP and other customer intelligence to help writers draft content that resonates with the customer’s culture, language, and perspective.
• Easy to Evaluate: Have GenAI generate high-scoring content in a narrative structure, style, and tone using a best practice such as Lohfeld’s Strength-Understanding-Process-Summary (SUPS) technique.  GenAI can also provide recommendations for visual elements such as tables, graphics (with captions), and callout boxes.
• Well-written: Make GenAI a proposal reviewer to evaluate content for readability, customer language use, and other features of high-quality writing.

Conclusion

If your goal is to increase productivity AND win rate, then you need to learn to use GenAI to apply quality measures that help you write compliant, responsive, and compelling content. It’s easy to become complacent about the quality of proposal content when dazzled by GenAI’s writing prowess and speed. However, when used with proficiency and understanding, GenAI can also quickly generate high-quality, high-scoring content that allows teams to keep up with the evolving acquisition environment.

To realize improved win rates, organizations need to invest in workforce GenAI skills development, diagnostic tools such as maturity models, and the conversion of lessons learned into best practices. Organizations must also invest in an enterprise-shared understanding of their chosen GenAI platform(s) to encourage customization and specialization to match company practices and customer insights. By making these investments, organizations can improve their proposal processes, outperform competitors, and secure more government contracts. For more information about how to apply GenAI to your capture and proposal environment, contact us.

Relevant Information

• My favorite assistant is an AI Assistant

• 50 Use Cases for GenAI Implementation Victory Now

• Is AI Delivering on Its Potential for Proposals Now? Survey Says…

By Bruce Feldman, Vice President, Lohfeld Consulting Group

Lohfeld Consulting Group has proven results specializing in helping companies create winning captures and proposals. As the premier capture and proposal services consulting firm focused exclusively on government markets, we provide expert assistance to government contractors in Capture Planning and Strategy, Proposal Management and Writing, Capture and Proposal Process and Infrastructure, and Training. In the last 3 years, we’ve supported over 550 proposals winning more than $170B for our clients—including the Top 10 government contractors. Lohfeld Consulting Group is your “go-to” capture and proposal source! Start winning by contacting us at www.lohfeldconsulting.com and join us on LinkedIn, Facebook, and YouTube^(TM).