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Sometimes proposal writing is done by a specialist, and sometimes it's done by a subject matter expert. A Proposal Writer: Writes finished copy. Helps plan the contents of your sections before actually writing them. Incorporates detailed instructions into your writing. Delivers your sections by their deadlines. A Subject Matter Expert: Describes approaches and provide technical details. Delivers in

The Process Administrator provides support for the implementation of the proposal process. Maintains process records. Frees the Proposal Manager to focus on the message, assignment completion, and quality validation. For a large MustWin proposal, it’s a good idea to have a person dedicated to administering the process.  It facilitates the process if someone is available to help people complete forms and maintain process records.  With a Process Administrat

The Proposal Manager: Has the lead role for developing the proposal process, plans, schedule, and assignments. Gets involved shortly before the RFP is released to help ensure that intelligence gathered is staged for use in the proposal and that plans can be drafted. Should avoid putting pen to paper and personally creating the proposal.  Instead, the Proposal Manager should manage the process, staff, and other resources to develop the proposal.

Key responsibilites include: Capture Managers must not only sell to the customer, but also must sell internally to gain support and resources for the pursuit. A Capture Manager must know about the customer, the opportunity, the scope of work, project management, budgeting, pricing, contracting, proposal writing, and how to obtain, allocate, and steal resources within the company. Congratulations!  You have the most challenging job in winning new business.  It is also

Key responsibilities include: Pursuing as many new opportunities as possible. Developing customer relationships that facilitate discovering and researching new business opportunities. Becoming the expert on what the customer really wants. Helping to position the company to win. Gathering intelligence and making sure the proposal reflects it. The Business Development Manager is expected to gather intelligence about the c

Key responsibilities include: Opening the doors to resources Setting the tone Fighting indecision Providing oversight Approving the review plan The Executive Sponsor’s hands-on involvement with the proposal may be extensive or could be very little, depending on his or her interests and priorities.  If you are the Executive Sponsor for a proposal, even if you never touch the proposal itself, you can have a major impact o

Keep in mind: We define roles functionally. A person can play more than one role. Since the roles cover functional needs, they all must be covered. While this chart gives you a simple to understand goal for each role, it does not cover everything required from each role. A chart like this may be the start of expectation management, but it's far from the end. Expectation management is key.   Role Description Executive Sponsor

The MustWin Process ensures that everyone knows what is expected, based on what role they play in the pursuit Roles are defined functionally.  If a person performs more than one role, that person is responsible for all of the responsibilities of each role. Managing expectations is critical for people to work together to win a business opportunity. If the expectations need to change, it is your job to communicate that and stay in the discussion until everyon

The MustWin Process is an approach for capturing leads that require the submission of a proposal. It makes proposal development more efficient, sets expectations, enables progress and quality to be measured, and increases your chances of winning. It focuses on getting the right information and going through the steps to turn it into a winning proposal. The MustWin Process is for those who want to win and realize that a one-size-fits-all fill-in-the-blanks template is not the best way to go

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The number and names of the phases are not important.  What really matters is that each phase has defined activity, roles/responsibilities, and a means to track performance. Marketing.  Marketing is the combination of the things you do to make potential customers aware of you, and the things you do to discover and better understand your customers.  Marketing takes place before the CapturePlanning.com MustWin Process starts. Lead Identification.  Once marketing efforts result in a

Introduction to the MustWin Process The MustWin Process provides documentation for pursuing and capturing important business opportunities The MustWin Process was first published in 2007 as a workbook that enabled you to simply begin at page one and start completing the steps and activities.  As a “workbook,” it was intended to be used by those participating in the pursuit, and not just sit on a shelf.   Today, the MustWin Process is published online. It is still sim

This process was designed to support the pursuit of a business opportunity that requires the development of a large, complex, RFP-based proposal that will be produced by a team of people. Description  It also designed to meet the requirements of preparing government proposals. However, we avoid using government contracting jargon so that the process can be used by commercial firms or anyone with a non-government RFP.  It can even be used for proposals where there is no RFP if you suffic

The CapturePlanning.com MustWin Process is an opportunity pursuit process that starts as soon as a lead is identified so that the way intelligence is gathered supports the closing of the sale with the submission of a proposal.  Most “Must Wins” are already lost when the RFP comes out. Even companies who start early often find that time slips by and end up feeling unprepared when the RFP is released.  The CapturePlanning.com MustWin Process provides you with a way to track and measure progress so

The CapturePlanning.com MustWin Process provides: A means to get everyone on the same page. Written standards and processes to expedite the process. Clearly defined roles and responsibilities that make it easier to work together and set expectations. Planning tools to ensure that everyone has the information needed to execute their role. Tools to measure progress and provide constant feedback so that everyone knows where they s

There are so many directions I could take this. This is not a tutorial for being a consultant or being an employee. Or about whether you should hire proposal consultants or employees. This is about what it’s like to experience being an employee or consultant and work in proposals. None of what you see below are rules. There are no rules. There are just people trying to figure things out and this is just how it commonly goes. The proposal experience for an employee is to develop the routine

Take a step back from what you think you know about proposal management, if only for a minute. What you can learn from this grid is what information people need, and where to create information products that flow it to them. But studying it can also provide some other insights: Process, tools, and techniques combine and have a big impact on your ability to flow information and manage issues. It’s easy to fixate on a problem in the moment and think a tool can solve it. But your needs c

Writing a proposal requires transforming the information you have to enable the customer to make a decision in your favor. The larger and more complex the proposal, the more people that will be involved. Throw in a tight, unforgiving deadline and you’ve got a complicated undertaking that involves getting people to understand how the transformation will take place, being capable of making the transformation, doing it by the deadline, and doing it so well the outcome is successful. When herdi

Warning: proposal damage may occur Let’s start by addressing things you should avoid: Claims. Especially unsubstantiated claims. But claims in general. They rarely pass the “So what?” test. They rarely increase your evaluation score. Claims belong in advertisements. Proofs belong in proposals. Proposals get read differently than advertisements. Things that work in advertisements can backfire when used in proposals. Descriptions. Descriptions add very little value for the evaluat

Here is some guidance that can help you when you sit down to write the proposal. While we've broken it down so that someone could follow it sentence by sentence, the goal is really just to enable people to write better proposals by giving them something to check their paragraphs against. If you are stuck regarding how to approach proposal writing, this can help. A structured approach to writing introduction paragraphs When you sit down to write, before you start summarizing ask yourself