Articles

You can’t make a final Bid/No Bid decision before you see what is in the RFP. You can “no bid” with certainty at any time, but you can’t make a final decision in favor of bidding until you see what is in the RFP. The investment required to pursue will go way up once the proposal effort starts, so you should reexamine whether the pursuit is worth it. The clock is ticking…  the time spent deciding takes time away from preparing to win. After the

Hardly any RFPs are actually wired. Even if the customer has some bias, they can usually be stolen away if they get a better offer. Think about how you buy things. Most folks will give someone they’ve done business with for a long time the benefit of the doubt, but if someone has a better product or a significantly lower price, they sometimes make a switch. This is especially true if the relationship has gone stale. You may have no way of knowing without bidding. Use of the word “wired” mak

Never pursue a bid just because you can Every bid can’t be a “Must Win.” It’s really hard to break the habit of bidding everything you find. Here is an additional list of reasons to “No Bid” an opportunity: ❏   You find out about the opportunity when the RFP is released ❏   The customer has no budget or can’t afford what is required ❏   Your competition is cheaper or there are too many competitors ❏   You don’t know who the competition is ❏   You

It is important to assign staff to designated roles in order to define expectations. You may assign a person to more than one role. If you have been asked to perform a role, it is your job to object if you cannot fulfill all of the expectations.  Do not accept assignments lightly.   Record which people have been assigned which roles using the following table. Role Assignments Role Name(s) Contact Information

In a US Government RFP, the Statement of Work (SOW) for what the customer wants you to do or deliver will typically be in Section C.  If you do not have a Section C, you will need to look elsewhere to find what the customer wants you to propose doing or delivering.  Sometimes the customer will use different terminology, and instead of calling it the “Statement of Work,” may refer to their requirements as a “Performance Work Statement” or something else. The name is unimportant.  The third

In a US Government RFP, the evaluation criteria will typically be in Section M.  If you do not have a Section M, you will need to look elsewhere for the evaluation criteria that the customer will use in making a selection.  If the RFP does not have any evaluation criteria, you will need to look for language describing their preferences and approach to making a selection. The second step in building a compliance matrix is to incorporate the evaluation criteria.  Do this by taking the found

In a U.S. Government RFP, the instructions will typically be in Section L.  If you do not have a Section L, you will need to look elsewhere for the instructions.  If the RFP does not have a section providing instructions, you will need to look for language describing their expectations regarding the structure of the proposal. The first step in building a compliance matrix is to create the high level outline.  This should be based on the instructions in the RFP.  In the first column you shou

A few small things can make a big difference in the quality of proposal writing.  And you can insert instructions and reminders into the Content Plan to help achieve them. For example, you can insert instructions into the Content Plan to: Make sure that the section starts with a statement about what the customer will get or receive as a result of awarding the contract to you. Write from the customer’s perspective, with the emphasis on results.  Avoid describing yourself, an

Instructions for the eighth step: Identify any relevant re-use material. Review the Boilerplate/Re-Use Methodology.  Consider whether using the material you have will help lead to a winning proposal, or be more trouble than it’s worth. Apply the Boilerplate/Re-Use Checklist to any content you intend to re-use. Either correct the boilerplate or insert instructions for how to correct it. This is the final iteration. At its completion, the Content

Instructions for the seventh step: If in order to respond to an RFP you must make assumptions, establish limits, set boundaries, etc., then you want to capture that information.  Insert statements regarding the assumptions that have been made. If any issues (resolved or unresolved) come up that need to be understood or remembered, capture them by writing statements into the Content Plan. If you are preparing your proposal in a collaborative environment, you

Instructions for the sixth step: Insert placeholders for graphics. For each graphic that needs to be rendered, identify (in text): The primary objective of the graphic, or the conclusion you want the reader to reach. The audience for the graphic, including their needs/preferences. The questions that the graphic should answer. The subject matter being described. Finally, use the conclusion you want

Instructions for the fifth step: Think of this iteration as summarizing your offering. You can take different approaches, depending on how your company decides what it will propose. If a team will collaboratively decide what to propose they can use the Content Plan to document the framework of the offering prior to writing about it. If the Proposal Manager knows what will be proposed, then it can be put into the Content Plan and passed on to wr

Instructions for the fourth step: Add instructions that explain to the Proposal Writers how to incorporate the intelligence you have gathered and what you have learned about the customer, opportunity, and competitive environment. Add instructions to your Content Plan to put the instructions in context, explain things, add detail, provide examples, reflect customer preferences, and otherwise implement the intelligence you have collected regarding the customer and opportu

Instructions for the third step: If your proposal formatting template has placeholders for themes (for example, at the beginning of each major section), then you should replace them with the actual theme. If the Proposal Writer will be responsible for writing the theme statements, then insert an instruction as a placeholder to explain what they should write there. Also include instructions for how to substantiate, prove, or explain the theme statements.

Instructions for the second step Copy and paste the requirements from the RFP into the Content Plan under the appropriate headings. It is up to you whether to include the full text of the RFP or just a pointer to the specific RFP requirement (page, section, bullet, etc.).  You should make this determination based on how self-explanatory the RFP is. If the RFP requirements are not already worded as instructions to the Proposal Writers, then reword where nece

Instructions for the first step Create a new document and then put the headings from the outline into it. Format the headings the same way they will appear in the proposal, although at this stage they will have nothing under them. If you have allocated a certain number of pages to each heading in the outline, you can place the headings on the corresponding pages What you have at the end of this iteration is structure.  You have created a documen

Here are a few dozen quantifiable ways to assess whether your proposal management function is accomplishing what it should. Depending on your circumstances and goals, you might collect and review this data after every proposal. Or you might track it over time on multiple proposals to determine an appropriate baseline. If you were to implement all of these, you’d have a ton of data to track. The only way to realistically approach some of them is to use software to do the data tracking

Proposal management involves doing a lot of different things. But the things that it needs to accomplish is a much shorter list. It’s easy to get lost in all the things that need to be done and the tools and techniques for doing them. It’s so easy that some companies build their organization based on those things instead of what those things should accomplish. Instead of starting from people, process, and tools, here are 9 things that proposal management must accomplish to be successful:

Don't use it without making sure it's fully optimized to win: If you think checking all of these will be time-consuming, you are right.  Ask yourself which you can do without. This is why using boilerplate can take longer than writing what you need from scratch. When using boilerplate or re-using past documents, make sure that you: ❏   Update the customer, project, and other names ❏   Ensure that any dates or numbers mentioned are accurate ❏   Check

See a real proposal, and discover what we like about it and what is wrong with it. You get much more than just a sample. You'll get our extensive review comments to help you understand how to apply the lessons learned. We take the original proposal and give it a makeover. You get to see the original proposal as well as the new and greatly improved version that we created. The file is a .zip with 5 PDFs inside.