Three exec summaries I rewrote this week, part 9
The January installment of the rewrite series. A public-sector services bid, a SaaS renewal proposal, and a financial-services DDQ opener. Three before-and-afters and what each rewrite was actually doing.
Part 9 of the monthly rewrite series. Three executive summaries I worked on in the first week of January, with the before-and-after and what the rewrite was doing. As always, the examples are paraphrased from real work — the specific client details and any identifying features are changed or generic.
One — public-sector services bid
Before. “We are pleased to submit our response to the State’s RFP for managed services. Our team has extensive experience delivering outcomes for government customers and we are excited to partner with the State to deliver transformational value.”
After. “We have run three multi-year managed-services contracts for state agencies in the last five years, all of which are still in service or extended past their original term. This proposal is the same operating model, scoped to the State’s current environment. The three sections below address the specific evaluation criteria on pages 14, 17, and 22 of the RFP. Our pricing is on page 41 of this response.”
The rewrite is doing one thing: replacing a sentence about how we feel with a sentence about what we have done. Evaluation committees do not read the executive summary for the vendor’s feelings. They read it to decide whether to read the rest.
Two — SaaS renewal proposal
Before. “Over the past three years, we have built a strong partnership with ClientCo, delivering industry-leading value across multiple business units. This renewal represents an opportunity to continue our transformative journey together.”
After. “Three years in, ClientCo’s usage has grown from 240 seats to 1,100, across Marketing, Sales, and Customer Success. The renewal proposal extends the current contract at the existing per-seat price, adds a committed-use discount for Customer Success (where growth is fastest), and keeps the same SLA. Three sections below address the questions the procurement team raised on the November QBR.”
Renewal exec summaries are a specific craft. The reader is already a customer. Selling to them the way you sold to them three years ago is insulting. The rewrite works backwards from the state of the relationship and addresses the specific procurement-side questions that triggered the formal RFP.
Three — financial-services DDQ opener
Before. “Thank you for the opportunity to respond to your Due Diligence Questionnaire. We take data protection and compliance seriously and are committed to meeting the highest industry standards across all aspects of our operations.”
After. “This response covers the 147 questions on your DDQ, organized by the eight control families in your questionnaire structure. The material changes since our 2025 DDQ are in sections 3 (data residency — we added EU and UK regions in Q2 2025), 5 (third-party dependencies — we removed two vendors and added one), and 7 (incident response — revised RTOs and runbook). An evidence packet is attached per section.”
DDQ openers do not need a thesis. They need a navigation surface. A DDQ reader — typically a vendor-risk analyst or a compliance ops person — wants to know how the document is organized and what has changed since the last time they read a DDQ from you. The rewrite gives them that in one paragraph.
Common pattern
All three rewrites are doing the same thing: replacing copy about the vendor’s posture with copy about the reader’s task. Writing to the task wins. Writing to your own feelings does not.
Part 10 lands in February.