Lessons from the Field: What Winning in K-12 Actually Requires in RFPs and State Positioning
Some of the most useful conversations I have are with people solving adjacent problems. Lisa Nemargut works on state-level positioning strategy for edtech vendors, and when we sat down to talk through what actually moves the needle in K-12 RFP work, it became clear that we were looking at the same problem from different angles. Our conversation clarified three shifts: how to move from cosmetic to structural positioning, why category comes before features, and what it takes to build a reputation that wins over time.
Cosmetic vs. Structural Positioning
Lisa draws a sharp distinction between cosmetic positioning and structural positioning. Cosmetic positioning drops a state’s name into an existing proposal template and calls it done. Structural positioning starts with the state’s actual priority framework and builds the response around it.
A district reviewer will notice a cosmetically positioned proposal immediately. They receive stacks of responses and have a reliable sense of which vendors have done the homework. A proposal that leads with the district’s own language, their strategic plan language, and their board-approved priorities captures a reviewer’s attention and builds trust in a way a generic template cannot.
For proposal professionals, the win is built in the research phase, not the writing phase. Feature sections and executive summaries are only effective when they sit on top of a sharp understanding of what a specific state or district is actually trying to accomplish.
What Good Alignment Feels Like
Lisa has built a tool (lisanemargut.com/reports) that runs a vendor’s full positioning through a matching algorithm across all fifty states. The output might confirm a strong fit in a region they’ve been targeting, or it might reveal they’ve been chasing markets where they’re structurally unlikely to win. What doesn’t make sense, she says, is ignoring a poor fit and forcing alignment anyway.
When I asked Lisa what it looks like when a vendor gets state positioning right, she described it as a conversation that feels effortless. The sales motion transforms, with puzzle pieces falling into place instead of a case being made, and the district leader moves from feeling burdened by vetting to feeling they’ve found a vendor that deeply gets them. When alignment is missing, you can feel it in the room: objections escalate up the chain or someone behind the scenes says this doesn’t quite feel right (often over something as small as a vendor using a term that’s close but not quite how the district refers to it).
As the proposal professional, my contribution is keeping their strategic plan close at hand alongside notes from conversations with district leaders. The goal is to use their language back to them in a way that demonstrates you’ve absorbed their challenges and goals. When you can draw a clear line between what they’re trying to achieve and what the product delivers, the value of partnership becomes visible on the page.
Category Before Features
One of the more salient points Lisa made came out of a conversation she had with an assistive technology CEO. Lisa had referred to the company as edtech in passing, and the CEO pushed back firmly: they were an assistive technology company, not edtech. Assistive technology is a different category, with different funding buckets, decision-makers, and evidence requirements.
The lesson for proposal teams is sequencing. Category positioning establishes that a type of solution belongs in the conversation at all. Feature positioning then explains why this specific product is the right choice within that category. Open sections with the category to build the belief framework, then close with specific features and evidence that give evaluators confidence. By the time reviewers finish reading, they should know exactly what kind of solution they are looking at, and why it fits this particular lane.
Reputation and Post-Win Accountability
Lisa and I also discussed the reputational cost of careless submissions. AI tools have made it faster to generate proposals, but they have also made it easier to flood districts with low-quality ones. Districts can spot boilerplate, so a reputation built on generic submissions will follow a vendor across territories.
The other major reputational risk, one I flagged from my own experience, is promising capabilities that aren’t fully developed. If a product is not ready to deliver on what a response would commit to, wait for the next RFP. Revenue pressure is real, but recovering from a damaged district relationship takes longer.
On the post-win side, outcomes-based contracting is gaining traction across several states. The model works because it creates mutual accountability: districts pay for results, and vendors get the committed implementation support they need for the product to actually work. Strong post-win sections should name milestone meetings, measurable outcome commitments, and what the district is expected to bring to the table. Writing that accountability plan from the start signals that a vendor is thinking beyond the award to actual impact.
Taken together, Lisa’s state-level positioning work and my proposal practice point to the same conclusion: winning in K-12 is less about writing faster and more about aligning deeper. Structural positioning, clear category definition, and honest post-win accountability create the conditions for that alignment. The work that actually wins still starts with understanding what success looks like for students and building everything else around that.
