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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

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

Understanding what matters about proposal costs The first thing to understand is the economics of proposals. Usually, a small increase in win rate generates so much additional revenue that it is smarter to focus on proposal ROI than it is on proposal cost. Do the math. An increase from a 20% win rate to a 30% win rate returns (on average) 50% more revenue. For each single percentage increase in win rate that’s 5% more revenue. It’s worth investing in improving your win rate, and it can be fo

Everyone says they have a proposal process. But all of them have problems. In many ways, the proposal process is something that is in continual development. It’s not something you write down and are done with. But what should concern you is that most of the hundreds of proposal process implementations I have seen have critical flaws. I’m not talking about the mistakes you already know not to make in creating a proposal. I’m talking about mistakes in how you’ve constructed your proposal proc

Are you trying to win all of your future proposals, or just the one on your desk? Are you thinking short-term or long-term? Are you trying to do a proposal and get back to your other work, or are you trying to develop an organization? Some of the things that drive how many people are needed to win a proposal are fairly obvious: The amount that needs to be written The schedule The size of the production effort But some of them are less obvious, and these tend to be t

RFP compliance means demonstrating fulfilment of all the instructions and requirements contained in the RFP. RFP compliance is mandatory for some bids, such as Federal Government RFPs. The problem is that full RFP compliance often cannot be achieved. Proposal managers are taught from birth that: Proposals must be 100% compliant or they will lose and it will be your fault. Do not parrot the RFP. It even says so in the RFP. Do not merely state compliance. That is not c

Everything is a trade-off. You need to keep your overhead costs low, but you also need to win contracts in order to grow and increase the size of your overhead pool. A lot of companies make the mistake of treating the proposal function as an expense instead of an investment that can be approached mathematically.  The purpose of this article isn’t to teach you that math. But you should know that going from a 20% win rate to a 30% win rate will increase your revenue by 50% with the same numbe

In most companies, proposal development is the most immature part of the company. But they don’t realize it because they’ve bought into myths that enable them to think all that work they’ve put in amounts to more sophistication than it really does. Often what they do is different from what they say they do. Because of the myths that people have bought into, management practices that would not be tolerated in any other part of the company become expected as the norm in proposal management. T

Most people who want to win contracts realize they need a proposal management process. An unfortunate percentage think they have a proposal process when they really just have a way of doing things. But what really messes companies up is that they have the wrong goals for their proposal management process. Sometimes their process even works against what they should be trying to achieve. Here are 8 things that people often want from a proposal management process: Lowering costs and in

Maybe you’ve got a great proposal process. Maybe you don’t. But when you’re in the middle of one, you’re stuck. You can't go back in time and prepare better before you start. The resources you have may be all you're going to get. You may not be able to get answers to your questions. And yet, you must conquer. So how do you figure out what to do when? How do you herd the cats to work like a team? Where should you devote your attention? How do you make the most of your circumstances? Is there

Sometimes the customer recycles their RFPs. They use generic evaluation criteria. They hurt themselves when they do this, but they still do it. The advantage of using generic evaluation criteria to the customer is that they can interpret them any way they want. They can select the bidder they prefer and then justify it. It’s not supposed to work that way, but when you see generic evaluation criteria, you have to wonder…   The disadvantage to the customer is that generic evaluation crit

Instructions Answer the following questions to provide the context for writing the Management Plan after the RFP is released. Keep your answers short. The less narrative the better.  After the RFP is released, your responses here will enable the Proposal Content Plan to be prepared more quickly and to contain better instructions for the authors who will write the proposal narrative. Questions that drive your strategies Since this is intended for pre-RFP response, anticipating the

Instructions Answer the following questions to provide the context for writing the technical approach after the RFP is released. Keep your answers short. The less narrative the better.  After the RFP is released, your responses here will enable the Proposal Content Plan to be prepared more quickly and to contain better instructions for the authors who will write the proposal narrative. Questions that drive your strategies Since this is intended for pre-RFP response, anticipating t