Blog · Pillar
Craft.
42 posts in this archive.
The win-theme retirement ceremony
A quarterly ritual: which win themes we stop using, and why. This quarter, three retired. One we kept against better judgment.
Section 2: the technical approach without jargon buildup
Why almost every technical approach section opens with the wrong sentence, what the right opening looks like, and a rewritten example from a real bid. The jargon buildup that kills evaluator attention in the first paragraph.
The compliance matrix revisited, one year in
What we wrote about compliance matrices in May 2025, what we've learned since, and the five corrections that change the recommendation. A one-year retrospective on a foundational RFP-mechanics piece.
The draft review heatmap: which sections attract edits
A year of reviewer edit data across hundreds of drafts. Which sections attract the most edits in pink, red, and gold review — and what that pattern tells us about where craft weaknesses cluster.
Executive summaries: the shortest high-leverage document in B2B sales
The canonical pillar on executive summaries. Why one page decides whether the proposal gets read, the five parts of a strong exec summary, two before-and-after rewrites, who signs off.
Three exec summaries I rewrote this week, part 12
A short Friday field note — three exec summaries rewritten this week. A commercial SaaS bid, a federal task-order response, and a managed-services renewal. The standalone installment before Monday's long-form pillar.
SME collaboration, the six-month update
Revisiting the September 2025 SME-collaboration series. Which patterns persisted in real teams, which ones had to be rewritten, and the one I was wrong about.
Mapping every response paragraph to the scoring rubric
The discipline that turns a 60-page response into an evaluator's checklist. Why every paragraph needs a rubric citation, and how to make the mapping visible without cluttering the document.
Three exec summaries I rewrote this week, part 11
Part 11 of the monthly series. Three real executive summaries, anonymized, rewritten. What was wrong in the original, what changed in the rewrite, and what each one taught about the shape of the RFP it responded to.
A grid for past-performance writeups
The table that turns 20 disorganized references into submit-ready past-performance prose. Four rows, six columns, and the discipline that makes every reference tell the same story from the buyer's angle.
Section 1: the executive summary nuances most teams miss
The executive summary is the section most teams write last, worst, and most generically. When you write it depends on the RFP's shape. Three shapes, three rules, and the nuances nobody tells you.
Win themes, one year after we published the field guide
The field guide held up on most counts and was wrong on two. What I'd rewrite today, what I wouldn't, and the one test that keeps earning its place.
Three exec summaries I rewrote this week, part 10
The monthly exec-summary teardown, continuing. Three real openings rewritten this week. What was wrong, what I changed, and the rule each rewrite reinforced.
Win-loss intelligence, Part 1 of 5: what to capture and when
The 18 fields we capture on every bid, why each one matters, and why most teams skip twelve of them. Part 1 of a five-part series on running win-loss as a habit, not a quarterly ritual.
Past-performance writing voice: past tense, specific, humble
Three real awarded past-performance narratives, anonymized. Why present-tense past performance reads like marketing, and why the humble voice wins more than the confident one.
Three exec summaries I rewrote this week, part 9
The January installment of the rewrite series. A public-sector services bid, a SaaS renewal proposal, and a financial-services DDQ opener. Three before-and-afters and what each rewrite was actually doing.
The end-of-year win-themes audit
Five prompts for retiring win themes that have lost discriminatory power, and promoting the ones that actually showed up in wins. A year-end ritual that takes an afternoon and pays out across the next twelve months of bids.
Three exec summaries I rewrote this week, part 8
The December installment of the rewrite series. A year-end DDQ-fronted RFP, a public-sector re-compete, and a managed-services renewal. Three rewrites and what each one was actually doing.
Discriminator vs. feature: which one moves the score
Two real RFP sections, same underlying win theme, different framings. Which framing evaluators picked, and the rule I extracted from comparing them.
Three exec summaries I rewrote this week, part 7
The November installment of the rewrite series. A defense bid, a commercial RFP, and a security-questionnaire cover letter. Three before-and-afters and what each rewrite was actually doing.
DDQ answer voice: why consistency beats polish
Buyers forgive plain writing. They do not forgive a questionnaire that reads like it was stitched from eight different people. How to keep 300 DDQ answers sounding like one voice.
The five compliance-matrix mistakes that lose bids
Real patterns from real debriefs. The matrix mistakes that surface as scoring penalties on the buyer side, and the discipline that prevents each one. Citations to VisibleThread on the most common cause.
Discriminator tests: three worked examples
The APMP discriminator test is simple to state and brutal to apply. Three real-shape proposal sections, run through the discriminator filter, with the rewrites that survive.
Three exec summaries I rewrote this week, part 6
The October installment of the rewrite series. A SaaS bid, a federal IT services bid, and a healthcare DDQ-fronted RFP. Three before-and-afters and what each rewrite was actually doing.
The RFP section priority matrix
Evaluator weight times effort hours equals where to spend the draft budget. A simple matrix that tells you which sections deserve gold-team review and which sections deserve a paragraph and a citation. With three worked examples.
The executive summary that fits on two pages, always
Length is a win-theme signal to evaluators. A two-page executive summary is a commitment; a six-page executive summary is a hedge. Six compression moves I run every time.
Three exec summaries I rewrote this week, part 5
Continuing the field-note series. Three before-and-after passages from real (anonymized) executive summaries, with the rewriting reasoning made explicit.
SME collaboration, Part 1 of 4: the async interview
Part 1 of 4 on SME collaboration. The async interview pattern: structured prompts, short turnarounds, an audit trail, and no scheduled meeting. Why it works when 'just ping them' doesn't.
A field guide to win themes that actually win
The canonical pillar on win themes. What they are, what they aren't, the swap-name test applied across six worked examples, and the discipline of constructing themes from capture and retiring themes that didn't earn their score bump.
Preview: the field guide to win themes that actually win
A teaser for tomorrow's win-themes pillar. Two worked examples — one theme that fails the swap-name test, one that survives it — and what the difference looks like in the response.
Section openings that earn the next paragraph
Six real section openings from winning proposals, annotated. What they did, why the evaluator kept reading, and how to write them yourself.
A past-performance story in three sentences
The compressed form that reads well, scores well, and survives the page-budget cut. One example, annotated.
Discriminators: the word your evaluator was trained on
APMP calls them discriminators. Most teams don't write them. Three real examples from awarded proposals — what they did, why they worked.
Three exec summaries I rewrote this week, part 4
Continuing the series. Three before/after exec-summary passages from this week's bids, including a tabled structure that scored well in a state-government pursuit.
Good win themes are verbs, not adjectives
Adjective win themes — robust, scalable, frictionless — fail the swap test. Verb win themes describe what changes for the buyer. Three before/after rewrites of real proposal language.
Past performance that actually maps to the scope
Selecting which prior contracts to cite is a craft skill, not a database query. Three worked examples of past-performance selection — what to cite, what to omit, why the relevance map matters more than the impressive number.
Three exec summaries I rewrote this week, part 3
Field notes from the editing desk. Three illustrative before-and-afters of executive summary openings I cut down this week, and the pattern each one is fighting.
Win themes when you're the incumbent defending a contract
Defending a contract is a different proposal than winning one. The win themes that worked four years ago will lose you the renewal. Here's what changes when you're already inside.
Three exec summaries I rewrote this week, part 2
Three illustrative before-and-after exec summary openings. The patterns that fail, the edits that work, and why the second sentence is where most exec summaries lose the reader.
Win themes and the swap-name test
If you can swap your company name with a competitor's and the win theme still makes sense, the win theme is fluff. Six examples of themes that fail the test, six that pass, and what evaluators actually score.
Three exec summaries I rewrote this week
Three before/after exec summary openings — illustrative, not customer-attributed. The pattern is the same: replace the abstract with the specific, replace the categorical with the buyer.
Win themes are not value props
Six win themes — four that fail the swap test, two that survive it. The difference is the difference between a theme an evaluator scores and one they skim past.
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