So What? Who Cares? (The importance of Flow & Traceability)

Since your proposal has a page limitation, consider every line as valuable real estate.  Don’t waste space (or time and effort) including statements that have no value to the Government’s evaluation.  

I advise writers to follow this simple test:  For every paragraph, ask, “So what?” and “Who cares?”   These are the very questions your Government evaluators will be asking if the relevance to their evaluation criteria is vague.  Be sure your content can pass the test of “Flow and Traceability.”

Remember that the Government team has already explained what they’re looking for:  it’s in the RFP.   There’s a Statement of Work and Section L (Proposal Instructions) and Section M (Evaluation Factors).   Hopefully we can trace everything in the proposal to a requirement in these sections of the RFP. 

Maybe there are things that we can’t specifically trace, but we want to include it.  In those cases we need to flow the statement to a benefit to the customer. 

Consider a statement like, “We have five regional offices in the state.”   Assuming this was not a requirement, then the reader is going to ask, “So what?” and “Who cares?”   You need to explain how that flows into a benefit.   Perhaps, by having five regional offices, that gives your company flexibility, short response times, greater depth, or some other advantage over your competition.   And that means a benefit to the Government.   Since you’re close to the action, what’s a clear benefit to you may not be so obvious to the reader.  Assume you need to lead them by the hand in explaining the relevance of the statements.    

If you can’t clearly show flow and traceability, you need to question whether the statement is adding anything to your proposal.