Proposal Management Best Practices, Part 7: Use Visuals To Tell Your Story

When it comes to proposal management, there are a lot of moving pieces to manage, and organization shouldn’t be the thing that keeps your proposal from winning the bid. 

Think about your audience. When customers are evaluating a proposal, they are spread thin. Even the most engaged reader’s mind will wander when they read pages and pages of text, no matter how compelling. They know what’s coming – long pages of text – and they're not excited. 

Done right – and when fully supported by the text – visuals used in proposals are 38% more likely to be remembered by reviewers. 

Images are important because they focus the reader on the core elements of your story. They don't just break up pages of text, they communicate the narrative and they do it as concisely as possible in a much more engaging manner than just text. 

Visuals can also make your proposal different and more memorable than your competition. For example, if your solution is innovative, then make everything about your proposal communicate innovation, including the visuals. 

Stake out the goals for your visuals. Everything in your proposal should aim to win you the bid – and that means it should convey both the information and the narrative of your solution and your brand. The same goes for your visuals. Use them to convey key or difficult concepts that are worth hammering home. Make sure they speak directly to the story arc of your proposal and relate to the surrounding text.

Your readers will appreciate the clarity and brevity that visuals add to the story. The likelihood is also that they will better understand your narrative as they continue to read, because people remember images better than text. 

Tip: Maximize the potential of your proposal visuals by making them part of each review cycle. Real-time collaboration will allow the team to review, comment, and come to consensus on graphics as well as documents. Having a content database will also help you leverage your visual investment. 

Next in our series on proposal management best practices: How to conduct well-defined review meetings to ensure efficient progress throughout the proposal process.