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Just like a great chef can only do so much without great ingredients, great proposal writing requires great input. A great proposal writer can’t win it for you on their own. But you don’t need a mountain of raw input. Collecting customer documents and gathering whole conversations will not necessarily do the proposal any good. In between what you’ve gathered and the proposal, you need to do an assessment. You need to turn what you have into what you should do about it and what you should sa

Get some serious inspiration for proposal authors at all levels. It's perfect for figuring out what to write, and for making sure you answer all of your customer's questions. We provide the questions, you supply the answers. While it may not be as sexy as a template that writes the proposal for you, it's actually one of our most useful documents. Highly recommended.

When we created the MustWin Process, we showed you how to make the most of the time before RFP release and get into position to be ready to win. But what if you are starting at RFP release and "no bid" is not an option? We've recommended that you combine the pre-RFP questions, goals, and action items into a single list to quickly assess what you know and what you don't. Now we've done all that work for you by creating a master checklist of proposal startup information. And we've turned it int

Most proposal software fits one (and sometimes more) of these seven categories. Some are a better fit for winning proposals than others. Your needs depend partly on the nature of what you offer and partly on your corporate culture. It may very well be that what you need the most isn't proposal software at all... Automating proposal assembly. The only time you should automate the assembly of your proposals from reusable parts is when you sell a commodity, compete primarily on price, and

HAPD Week 2: Government RFP and Proposal Basics Overview of Week 2: This is a busy week! Monday, 1-April-2019 Module 2.1 introduces the world of federal acquisition and proposals. Emphasis will be on the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR), acquisition planning, requirements definition, the acquisition process, and risk. This module will be presented via web lecture and includes reading assignments with links to selected readings. This week’s quiz includes a lot of question

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Week 1: Welcome and the Basics Overview of Week 1: Monday, 25-March-2019 Module 1.1 introduces students to the Hinz Academy Proposal Developer Boot Camp course and our first assignment. Exercise 1.1 introduces students to the basics of proposal writing and live editing. Tuesday, 26-March-2019 through Thursday, 28-March-2019 Module 1.2 introduces students to content planning and live editing. Exercise 1.2 allows students to apply the content planning and l

Back in the day, the techniques below were what you had to work with. You had to be super gifted and super diligent to succeed at relationship marketing. Relationships took years to develop. If you didn’t have someone with the right skills and experience on the payroll, you relied on public announcements and databases for prospecting. It was easy to fall into low win probability habits like blind bidding. However, the old ways are no longer competitive. Relationship marketing can seem so di

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Week 1 Discussion For the Week 1 discussion, complete your initial post by Tuesday at 11:59 PM ET and respond to a minimum of two posts by Thursday at 11:59 PM ET. This week’s discussion: Introduce yourself and your interest in the proposal profession. Respond using an outline format that you create based upon these instructions. Include: 1.       Your name 2.       Where you grew up 3.       What was your favorite course in school and why? 4.       Do you enjoy wri

For the Week 1 discussion, complete your initial post by Tuesday at 11:59 PM ET and respond to a minimum of two posts by Thursday at 11:59 PM ET. This week’s discussion: Introduce yourself and your interest in the proposal profession. Respond using an outline format that you create based upon these instructions. Include: 1.       Your name 2.       Where you grew up 3.       What was your favorite course in school and why? 4.       Do you enjoy writing and project manage

You can build quality into every activity that’s part of producing a proposal. But you can’t do it with milestone based reviews. With Proposal Quality Validation the emphasis changes from when to review, to what you review.  You can apply quality validation to more than just the document. Try taking a deep look at the risks and issues you face in every activity related to producing the proposal. Don’t just think in terms of checklists. Think in terms of what needs to be done correctly to wi

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One of the things that I’ve learned by authoring the MustWin Process and having personally been involved with countless process implementations at companies reengineering their proposal processes is that context matters. Much of what goes into winning proposals occurs outside of the process.  Consider how decisions get made and what expectations people have outside of the proposal. How is the proposal impacted by the company’s strategic planning and positioning efforts? Who sets quality s

How do you know if your proposal is any good? How do you know if it reflects what it will take to win? Is it just a matter of opinion? Whose opinion? How you do break the cycle of inconsistent and ineffective reviews that do more harm than good? Why this goal is important The way most companies review their proposals is broken. Conducting a proposal review with little or no preparation beyond printing the proposal and a copy of the RFP can be worse than not doing any review at all. You sho

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Many proposal problems have more to do with the people involved than the document. Creating a document is easy. Creating a document against a deadline with a bunch of other people all with their own ideas about creating a document is hard. How do you get everyone to agree on: Who does what? What their expectations of each other are? What the goals are? How to maximize win probability and ROI? How to do things during proposal development? What to

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We've been at this since 2001 and have published over 867 articles and 532 proposal recipes. But the articles we wrote in 2018 include some of the most useful and insightful that we've ever published. That is, if you look past the titles. The titles don't do the practical value of the content the justice it deserves. That's something I'm going to have to work on in 2019.  In 2018, we had over 210,000 visitors. That's a lot of people interested in winning proposals. Thank you for all that at