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Executive Summary
Shipley Associates Proposal Guide
50 Copyright 2011 Shipley Associates. All Rights Reserved.
The draft executive summary should be
developed early during capture planning. The
capture manager should prepare the first draft
and present it at the Preliminary Bid Decision
Gate review to demonstrate understanding of
the customer’s hot button issues, vision, and the
seller’s baseline solution.
The initial draft is often only an outline with
place-holders for the seller’s solution. While the
capture manager maintains executive summary
ownership, the proposal manager often
transforms the outline, mockup, or first draft
into a draft acceptable for the proposal kickoff.
Readers of your executive summary must
clearly understand your solution and its unique
benefits and be able to justify recommending
your solution over competing solutions.
Effective executive summaries meet the
following criteria:
• Connect your solution to the customer’s
business vision
• Identify the customer’s needs and make
ownership of those needs explicit
Executive Summary
1. Always include an executive summary.
2. Maintain a customer focus throughout.
3. Build on your existing sales process and strategy.
4. Organize the content to be clear and persuasive.
5. Expand the Four-Box Template into a single- or multiple-page draft.
6. Develop your executive summary based on proven best-in-class practices.
7. Follow sound writing guidelines.
8. Follow a defined process when preparing on short notice.
Executive Summaries
are the most important pages in a proposal. They set the tone for individual
evaluators and are often the only pages read by the decision makers.
• Connect your solution directly to the
customer’s needs
• Offer clear proof of your claims
• Show how you offer greater value than
the competition
• Be brief but comprehensive by
eliminating confusing technical details
that are better explained in the body of
the proposal
• Indicate the next step, usually by
previewing how your proposal is
organized
Executive summaries are also powerful
internal tools:
• Help refine your bidding strategy
• Become a vehicle to gain senior
management endorsement
• Communicate your strategy in-house to
all contributors
• Drive proposal development
• Become a model for the complete
proposal
Three executive
summaries are
included in
model
documents
.
1
Always include an executive summary.
If the customer asks for an executive summary,
submit one. If not, do so anyway.
Call it whatever the customer calls it. Common
alternatives are management summary and
management overview.
Independent of what the customer calls it,
understand the difference between a summary
and an introduction. A summary summarizes
the essential content of your proposal. An
introduction indicates how your proposal
is organized. Other terms for introduction
are preview, road map, and informal table of
contents.
To include an executive summary when the
proposal outline is strictly defined in the bid
request, you have several compliant alternatives.
One is to include a separately bound executive
summary. Place a copy in every volume
submitted, either in a pocket in the front or in
the binder. Note that in page-limited proposals,
the executive summary is considered part of
your technical proposal.
An alternative is to make the executive
summary the first part of your volume summary
in each volume of the proposal.
Summarize at all levels: proposal, volume,
section, and question.
See
organization
.
Because the executive
summary is owned by
the capture manager
but often written by
the proposal manager,
this topic section is
also included in the
Capture Guide.
2011 PG 4Edition_1.indb 50 5/19/2011 8:59:28 AM