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 exec-summary rewrite series continues. Earlier installments: June, July batch, and the original three rewrites. This is the October set.
SaaS bid — strip the company-bio opener
The team opened with two paragraphs about their company history. Founded in 2014, headquartered in Boston, 600 employees, four office locations, three Inc. 5000 mentions.
Rewrite: cut both paragraphs. Open with the buyer’s named pain (the buyer’s RFP had spelled it out in the executive summary instructions) and a sentence about how the proposed approach addressed it. The company history moved to a “Company at a Glance” appendix where it belongs.
Why this was the rewrite: every evaluator I have ever talked to skips the company-bio opener. They are reading 5 to 12 of these in a week. They want to know whether you understood their problem. The company info matters when the evaluator is in the procurement office checking for due-diligence purposes. It does not matter at the start of the document.
Federal IT services bid — name the win theme
The exec summary had three paragraphs that each said roughly the same thing in different words: “we are experienced and reliable and provide quality service.” PropLibrary’s swap test would have failed all three — you could swap the company name for any competitor and the sentences would still parse.
Rewrite: pick one specific win theme that was actually true (their continuous delivery pipeline had measurably reduced incidents on a comparable contract last year) and make it the spine. First paragraph names the theme. Second paragraph cites the comparable contract and the metric. Third paragraph traces how the theme appears in the technical, management, and past-performance volumes.
The team’s instinct was that the metric was “too specific to lead with.” The opposite is true. A specific number is the only thing that survives evaluator skim.
Healthcare DDQ-fronted RFP — separate the compliance posture from the differentiator
This RFP had a 200-question DDQ embedded as Volume II and an evaluator panel that was 50% security and compliance staff. The team’s instinct was to make the exec summary heavily compliance-flavored: SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA, HITRUST, FedRAMP, all in the first three paragraphs.
Rewrite: the exec summary should not lead with compliance. The DDQ already proves compliance. The exec summary should differentiate. Compliance is the floor, not the ceiling. We rewrote it to lead with the operational differentiator (their 24/7 staffed SOC) and dropped a single sentence acknowledging the compliance posture: “compliance details — SOC 2 Type II, HITRUST, HIPAA — are documented in Volume II.” Done.
Why: a compliance-led exec summary tells the evaluator the team has nothing else to offer. Compliance is table stakes for a healthcare bid. The exec summary is for what makes you the right vendor among the compliant vendors.
What recurs
Every rewrite this week was about restraint. The drafters had access to more they wanted to say than the page allowed. The trap is putting all of it in the exec summary. The exec summary is one job: tell the evaluator why you, specifically, on this bid. Everything else has its own volume.
Next month’s installment will have at least one rewrite where the exec summary needed to be longer, not shorter. That is the harder pattern. I will save it for then.