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Tips for Site Visits: Just remember that anything you say or do will be observed by your competitors. The site visit should be attended by as many people as are allowed by the customer. Get answers to as many of the Readiness Review questions as possible. The following checklist can help you get the most out of your site visits: Gather Intelligence About The Customer ❏   Learn things that they won’t put in writing in the RFP like what t

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Once a request for proposals (RFP) is out, it may be too late to bid win a competitive advantage. Getting ahead of the RFP does not have to be hard, but it does take effort in advance and relationship marketing. Those that put the time and effort into getting ahead of the RFP are able to achieve an information advantage as well as a competitive advantage. Recompetes. Targeting recompetes is the easiest way to get ahead of the RFP. But it can take years to pay off. The day a contract is i

When the customer issues a draft RFP, you will need to take action.  The Capture Manager should inform the Proposal Manager and together they should determine what action items are appropriate.  The following checklist can help you plan your response: ❏   Is a response required/allowed? ❏   When are comments due? ❏   What is the schedule for release of the final RFP? ❏   Does the release contain the full RFP? ❏   Does the RFP provide all of the information you need to bid? ❏   D

The MustWin Process defines specific goals to be achieved prior to RFP release, so that when the proposal starts you will already have a competitive advantage. The Business Development Manager prepares for the Readiness Reviews by collecting intelligence. The Executive Sponsor will be expected to review the intelligence collected and determine whether it is sufficient. You must have specific goals that you seek to accomplish before the RFP is released.  Othe

At any time prior to RFP release, a customer may or may not release an RFI. Customers request RFIs for different reasons and call them by different names. Knowing how to respond and what the impact is on the process depends on what the customer is trying to achieve by releasing the RFI. When the Government is considering a procurement, but is not sure about specifications, methodologies, or potential bidders, they may issue an RFI. An RFI may provide you wit

The MustWin Process is designed so that information flows from its sources into the proposal.  Along the way it gets assessed and converted into what it will take to win. That flow of information must not be broken if you want to win. Many post-RFP goals will be difficult or impossible to achieve if the Pre-RFP goals are not met first.  When we coach people through the process implementation, we often see people have an epiphany when they realize that if they hadn't skipped something or don

The MustWin Process defines specific goals to be achieved prior to RFP release, so that when the proposal starts you will already have a competitive advantage. You must have specific goals that you seek to accomplish before the RFP is released.  Otherwise, the time will likely be wasted.  Here is a list of pre RFP goals recommended by the MustWin Process: Collect intelligence about the customer, opportunity, and competition so that you will know what it will take to win Track

Anticipating key dates for this pursuit: The Business Development Manager should complete the table to provide a quick reference and facilitate planning for future events.    Event/Milestone Date/Time Site Visit/Bidders Conference:   Sources Sought Release:   Sources Sought Response Due:   Draft RFP Release:   Draft RFP Response Due:  

Description You don’t create a proposal function and implement a new process that impacts other departments in a single step. It’s better to start simple and increase the sophistication over time. But where do you start? What is the least amount of process you can get away with? To understand this, you have to change how you think about process. It’s not about steps. You don’t start with fewer steps and add more over time. Instead, it’s about starting out with the right goals and improv

Helping the customer understand how to get what they need: You’ll be a more effective guide if you understand the customer’s procurement process better than they do. If you don’t influence the RFP, someone else will. Influencing the RFP can be as simple as helping them get the technical requirements right. But why not help them go further and understand what is important in making their selection? If you cannot influence the RFP, it’s a sig

What you should propose is different from what you should write. You should avoid doing them both at the same time. Figuring out what to you should offer is something that you should do, and validate, before you start trying to describe it in writing.  You should be able to describe what you intend to offer regarding the following items before you start trying to figure out what to say about them. So how do you figure out what to offer before you start writing about it?  Here are some thi

Centralized Content Planning: If you have one person or a small group in charge of determining what everyone else should write, you have a centralized approach to planning.  When planning is centralized, one person creates the Content Plan.  This makes training easier, and makes it easier to use less experienced proposal contributors. But it also creates a bottleneck.  Writing can’t start until the Content Plan is completed and reviewed.  With a centralized approach, the Content Plan becom

Planning graphics: There is a difference between specifying a graphic and drawing it. You don’t have to be able to draw in order to identify and specify graphics. Graphics should be identified and specified as part of your Content Planning efforts. Graphics can be created from written instructions in a Content Plan, or can be created first and used to drive the instructions for what needs to be written. It is a best practice to use

Track the number of Content Planning items per page and you’ll have a quick way to gauge the amount of detail that went into the planning. Correlate it with your win rate to find out how much effort going into detail is worth. Count the number of Content Plan items that had to word around things that were unknown during proposal planning. You can even categorize the types of unknown (customer awareness, offering design, teaming, etc.). This will tell you whether your proposals are startin

Using boilerplate in a proposal Careful thought is required before assuming you can re-use existing proposal content or “boilerplate.” People are often tempted to recycle proposal content from past proposals or “boilerplate.” Unfortunately, this only works for certain proposals.  For others, it actually makes things take longer and reduces the effectiveness of the proposal. Boilerplate and re-use material can destroy your chances of creating a gr

Planning your solution and planning the content of your proposal are two very different things: Depending on the type of work and how the RFP defines the requirements, you may need to conceptualize your approach as well as your content. This is typically true of proposals to provide solutions or to perform research. If the RFP does not tell you what to propose or how to do the work, then you have to determine how you will achieve the goals in addition to what you will

Validating your Proposal Content Plan helps to ensure that your proposal writers: Aren't trying to hit a moving target. Are aware of everything they should be when they start writing. Know what their assignments are. Define proposal quality the same way the reviewers do. Does the Content Plan do the following? ❏   Do you have the right balance of placeholders and details to guide the writers while still responding quickly? ❏  

Proposal Content Plan Quality To do its job, a Proposal Content Plan must achieve certain objectives. It is not simply a summary of what you might write or a collection of placeholders. It should be far more than a simple annotated outline. For example, it should provide instructions for writers and quality criteria for reviewing the proposal. The following is intended to be used as a checklist both by the author of the Proposal Content Plan and by any subsequent reviewers

A Content Plan enables writing to become a process of elimination instead of an open-ended exercise. With the MustWin Process, authors don’t start with a blank page. Instead you start from a Content Plan that has already been validated to ensure that it includes all of the ingredients that should go into your section. All you have to do is follow the recipe. The Content Plan contains instructions for what to write.  Authors simply replace the