Boilerplate text: Just say no
Boilerplate text is crack. Get hooked on it and you'll never shake the habit even as it sucks the life out of your proposals.
In the proposal world, boilerplate is the term used for canned sections of copy used to fulfill standard RFP requirements or answer the same old questions. For example, a typical RFP question is "Provide a narrative of the firm's history." That seems like the perfect time to drop in some already-written paragraph, right? Why write it again when you can just paste in boilerplate and you're done?
It's easy to get hooked. Coming up with new copy is more trouble than "control-c, control-v." Writing is hard. So what's the harm in using something that's already written? After all, everyone's doing it? It looks like the easy path, but it's a dead end.
Death by boilerplate
Boilerplate seems harmless at first, but it will kill your proposal's chances of winning. You may think it sounds as good as the rest of the proposal—maybe better since it has stood the test of time. But here's what's wrong with it. Your audience can tell when they're reading boilerplate. It sounds stale. And they will subconsciously tune it out. You will disconnect from the reader the moment you begin using boilerplate.
Here's proof that boilerplate doesn't communicate. What writing is everywhere but read by no one? Disclaimers. Have you ever read the HIPAA forms they make you sign at the doctor's office? I didn't think so. Disclaimers are made up of boilerplate. Lawyers love boilerplate because it has been vetted by a committee of fellow lawyers and it's safe. In other words, it's dead. It can't hurt anyone. It only serves to protect someone someday in case something bad happens.
The opposite of that is writing without a safety net. Not relying on canned copy is risky. But it's also exciting. And the result is writing that pulsates and breathes. It takes action. And it persuades because it speaks directly to the need at hand.
Be brave
If you already have a library of boilerplate text for your proposals, what I'm about to suggest may cause you to go through withdrawals.
Stop cold turkey. On your next proposal, try writing it anew from start to finish. Seriously. Give it a try. Some surprising things will happen.
First, it won't take any longer. That might make you laugh, but don't all proposals take up exactly the amount of time you have left to do them? It might take longer to write the same amount of pages, but the goal is not the maximum number of pages you can produce; the goal is a persuasive document. Instead of spending 30 hours pulling together massive amounts of boilerplate, spend 30 hours writing.
Here's the brutal truth. An addict will often burn more time scrounging for some scrap of boilerplate than it would have taken to write something original.
Second, your proposals will win more often. When I've done proposals for clients who have never done a proposal before, and everything is written from scratch, the proposals have usually won. I think this is partly because proposals written this way sound so different from the boilerplate proposals everyone else submits. They stand out like an oasis in the desert.
And I also think it is because nothing goes in the proposal that isn't relevant to the project at hand, so every line hits home with the audience. As David Browder of David Browder Group LLC says, "Your proposal has to address this specific customer's hopes, fears, and biases....Don't reuse old proposal material. It was written in response to a different opportunity. Every customer is different."
The next time you find yourself reaching for that folder called Boilerplate, don't do it. Just say no. (And don't try it alone the first time. Give me a call and I can help).
