My New Favorite Book: Secrets of the Selection Committee

I found this book totally by accident.

After recently publishing my own book, Proposal Best Practices, I was browsing a bookstore looking at all of the proposal books I could find and comparing them to mine. Then I happened upon this gem: Secrets of the Selection Committee: Create Proposals and Presentations that Win. It’s written by Gary Coover.

As the name suggests, Secrets of the Selection Committee is written by someone who has been on many selection committees. In other words, it’s not some pie-in-the-sky dissertation about how the process should work, it’s a real-life account that explains how it actually does work. He finishes up with his “42 secrets” that all sellers should know about selection committees. These secrets, alone, are worth the price of the book.

It’s an easy read and his subtle humor is entertaining. But if you sell to the SLED market (state and local governments and education), you’ll find it one of the more enlightening and helpful books you’ll ever read.