I've sat through enough proposal kickoffs to know how this usually goes: the proposal manager hands the subject matter experts a list of questions, asks for "input by Friday," and hopes for the best. Friday rolls around, drafts come in, and half of them read like a brochure. The other half technically answers the question, but in a way that no evaluator is going to give full credit for.

The good news: your SMEs aren't bad writers. They're untrained ones. Most have never been told what evaluators actually do with the document they're writing, much less what makes a winning response different from a competent one. That's a training problem, not a talent problem.

Below are the things I think every SME should be trained on before they touch a proposal response. It applies just as much to a 1,000-page government RFP as it does to a 20-page private-sector pitch.

1. How Evaluators Actually Read

Start here. If your SMEs don't understand the audience, nothing else lands.

Most evaluators are reading three to five proposals — each one a thousand pages or more — in the span of a week. They are not reading for enjoyment. They are not impressed by your jargon. They are skimming for subheadings, looking for the specific thing they were asked to score, and digging in only when something catches their eye or matches their expertise.

Two ideas worth driving home:

• Visuals increase retention by roughly 200%. Graphics, callouts, and font changes for the must-see points aren't decoration — they're how you survive the skim.
• Evaluators tend to be risk-averse. They pick the safest answer, not the flashiest one. "We have world-class capabilities" is flashy. "We delivered X result in Y timeframe with Z client" is safe. Safe wins.

Once an SME truly internalizes that the reader is exhausted, time-boxed, and looking for reasons to trust them, everything else in the training makes more sense.

2. The Feature-Benefit-Proof Framework

This is the single highest-leverage thing you can teach. Every meaningful response should have three pieces:

• Feature: What you do. (e.g., a monthly product release cadence.)
• Benefit: Why the client cares. (e.g., new capabilities arrive faster than competitors can match.)
• Proof: Evidence. (e.g., five on-schedule releases in 24 months, one of which drove a 22% lift in engagement.)

Weak: "We have strong capabilities in customer engagement and UX design."

Stronger: "Our platform drove a 22% increase in reactivated lapsed users in Q3 last year through targeted lifecycle campaigns."

The weak version is everywhere. SMEs default to it because it feels safe, and it requires no work. The stronger version requires someone to go pull the actual numbers, which is exactly why it wins. Build the muscle now.

3. The Three Levels of a Response

Once your SMEs understand feature-benefit-proof, give them the ladder:

• Level 1 — Compliance: Did you literally answer every part of what was asked?
• Level 2 — Responsiveness: Did you answer this specific client's question, not a generic version of it? Did you address the question behind the question?
• Level 3 — Strategic Value: Did you tie your answer to one of your win themes — the strategic story you want the client to walk away believing about you?

Most teams stop at Level 2 and feel pretty good about themselves. The teams that win are the ones that iterate to Level 3 — not on every response, but on the ones that matter most.

4. Specificity Is the Whole Game

If I could tattoo one rule on every SME's forearm, this would be it: quantify everything you can, and lead with proof points that are about the client in front of you.

Train your SMEs to:

• Pull actual numbers and dates, not vague claims.
• Use client-specific proof first, then fall back to other examples only when they have to.
• Provide context for metrics. "We hit 99.97% uptime" sounds good — but is it good? If the evaluator doesn't know the industry benchmark, tell them what the benchmark is.
• Flag data gaps within 48 hours. If a number doesn't exist, the team needs to know in time to either find it, build it, or strategize around it.

And the corresponding don't list:

• No brochure language. "World-class," "best-in-class," "industry-leading" — banish all of it unless you can immediately back it up with a number.
• No claims without proof.
• No naming competitors. Win by being better, not by punching down.
• No missing deadlines without escalating early. A late section creates a downstream bottleneck for the whole team.

5. How to Comment Without Starting a Civil War

This one is unglamorous, but it saves projects.

Most proposal teams collapse in the review phase, not the drafting phase, and it's almost always because of comments. Train reviewers — SMEs included — to leave the kind of comments that move work forward.

Good comments are specific. They say what's wrong, where it's wrong, and what should change. Things like:

• "Add a client-specific metric for retention here."
• "Win theme is missing — add one sentence linking to responsible growth."
• "Question asks about governance model, but you responded with staffing. Please rewrite."

Bad comments are vague or argumentative. "This section needs improvement," "Expand," "Rewrite," or "This doesn't sound like us" — those aren't comments, they're vibes. Banish them too.

And one hard rule: if your comment contradicts another reviewer's comment, pick up the phone. Do not argue in the margins. The document is not a forum.

6. Where AI Helps — and Where It Absolutely Doesn't

Your SMEs are going to use AI. Train them on what it's actually good for so they don't ask it to do the parts that only they can do.

AI is great at:

• Turning bullet notes into a structured first draft.
• Restructuring a paragraph into feature-benefit-proof.
• Rewriting generic language into something sharper.
• Compressing 400 words to 200.
• Building first-pass tables or comparison layouts.
• Acting as a critical reviewer that flags gaps without rewriting your draft for you.

AI cannot:

• Invent client-specific data, metrics, or proof points. (When it tries, you have a problem.)
• Read the evaluator's mind or understand the politics of a specific buyer.
• Catch the "question behind the question."
• Verify compliance against the actual requirements document.

Give your SMEs a simple prompt formula — role, requirement, evidence, structure, theme, tone — and they'll get usable drafts faster while they stop treating AI as either a magic wand or a threat.

7. The Pre-Submission Gut Check

Before any SME hands a response back to the writers, train them to ask five questions:

1. Did I answer the specific question that was asked?
2. Is there a quantifiable result or metric in here?
3. Is my first proof point about this client, not a generic one?
4. Does this reinforce at least one of our win themes?
5. If a senior decision-maker on the client side read this, would they feel confident?

If the answer to any of those is "no," the response goes back in the oven.

The Bottom Line

SMEs are usually your most knowledgeable and most overworked people. They don't need a four-hour lecture on proposal theory. They need a short, repeatable set of frameworks — how evaluators read, feature-benefit-proof, the three levels, specificity, comment hygiene, and where AI fits — and they need leaders who reinforce those frameworks every time they touch a draft.

Do that once, well, and you'll see the quality of your responses move noticeably in a single proposal cycle. Do it across cycles, and you'll build a writing culture that compounds, where every proposal is a little easier than the last because the proof points, the metrics, and the patterns are already in your team's bones.

If you're staring down a big proposal and thinking your SMEs could use a tune-up before the kickoff, let's grab a few minutes and talk about what's worked.