Three exec summaries I rewrote this week, part 8
The December installment of the rewrite series. A year-end DDQ-fronted RFP, a public-sector re-compete, and a managed-services renewal. Three rewrites and what each one was actually doing.
The exec-summary rewrite series continues through year-end. Prior installments: October, September, August, June, and the original batch. This is the December set.
DDQ-fronted enterprise RFP — say what the DDQ can’t
A 230-question security DDQ lived as Volume II. The team drafted an exec summary that read like a compliance brief: SOC 2, ISO 27001, HITRUST, encryption posture, incident response times. Five paragraphs, all defensive.
Rewrite: strip the compliance recap entirely. One sentence acknowledged the posture (“security posture details are documented in Volume II”) and the rest of the exec summary went to the operational differentiator — the fact that the team’s customer-onboarding engineer stays attached to the account through year two, not just through implementation.
Why: the evaluator reading Volume II is scoring compliance. The evaluator reading Volume I is scoring “why this vendor specifically.” When the exec summary duplicates the DDQ, the evaluator learns nothing that wasn’t in the DDQ. The exec summary is the differentiator volume. Compliance is the floor.
Public-sector re-compete — write to the incumbent’s weakness, not the RFP’s question
An agency re-compete where the incumbent was the team’s main competitor. The draft exec summary answered the RFP’s requirements directly, in the order the RFP listed them. Competent. Bland. The incumbent could have submitted the identical text.
Rewrite: reorganize the exec summary around the three known gaps in the incumbent’s current delivery — gaps the team learned from the capture conversations and, critically, from the agency’s own published performance reports. First paragraph named the delivery gap. Second paragraph named the specific operational change the team’s approach made. Third paragraph tied it to the agency’s named strategic initiative for the upcoming cycle.
The team’s instinct was “we can’t lead with the incumbent’s weakness; it looks negative.” The opposite read: the evaluator is asking “why switch.” An answer to that question is not negative. An answer that fails to address it is not competitive.
PropLibrary’s swap test would have flagged the original opener. Swap the team’s name with the incumbent’s and the opening still parses. That’s the tell.
Managed-services renewal — stop apologizing for the increase
A three-year renewal with a 9% price increase. The team’s draft exec summary spent two paragraphs explaining the increase before getting to the value proposition. The apology was literally the first thing the buyer read.
Rewrite: the exec summary led with the outcomes delivered during the prior three-year term — named metrics, named operational changes, named incidents avoided. The price-increase explanation moved to a single line in the cost volume where it belonged.
Why: leading with the apology primed the buyer to evaluate the price change first. The actual question for the renewal is “has this vendor earned the next three years.” A summary that demonstrates they have, concretely, makes the increase a secondary question instead of the primary one.
What recurs in December rewrites
All three drafts this week were symptoms of the same thing: defensive writing. The DDQ-fronted RFP over-explained compliance because the drafters were worried about the security reviewer. The re-compete ordered itself by the RFP because the drafters were worried about compliance-checking. The renewal apologized because the drafters were worried about the price.
The exec summary is not where you address your worries. The exec summary is where you name the reason the buyer should choose you. Every other volume is where the worries get addressed. Mix those two jobs up and the summary dilutes.
The January installment of this series will cover at least one rewrite of a cold-pursuit exec summary — a first-time bid to a buyer the team has never done business with. That rewrite has a different failure mode. I’ll save it for then.