Articles

How you get people in the habit of following a process depends on how you roll out or introduce the process to them. Most people like change to be incremental. Focusing on one problem at a time is easier to swallow then changing how you do everything from start to finish. Here are five ways that companies can begin implementing PropLIBRARY, based on where they see their biggest needs for improvement. You don't have to start at the beginning, you can start with any one of the following:

I had a discussion about an upcoming implementation of the MustWin Process at a large company that is one of our Corporate Members. The company has multiple divisions and well over 10,000 employees. It’s a non-trivial rollout. But we have their head of business development and head of proposals as sponsors. The biggest problem you face in a process rollout like this is user acceptance. It’s even worse when there are multiple divisions involved that over time have

Throwing out an existing process and starting over may be too traumatic for some people to contemplate. Because we designed the MustWin Process for customization, you can also selectively use certain parts. You can use it to cover a part of your process that either isn’t sufficiently documented or isn’t working as well as you’d like. Here are some of the ways this can work: Make sure your team is ready at RFP release. Most proposal processes start at RFP release.

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

The following scoring sheet summarizes the questions to be answered, action items to be accomplished, and goals to be achieved for this review. Each one should be assessed to determine if the pursuit is on track to be ready to win at RFP release.   Question, Action Item, or Goal Guidance Score Opportunity Intel Do you know the final

Description Strategic plans are vital. But they can’t be the kind of strategic plans that sit on a shelf. Instead, they should set your staff up with what they need to know to successfully identify leads, pursue them, and grow your business. Your strategic plan should be a tool that tells your staff: What kind of capabilities and offerings to develop Who their target customers are Where to target marketing and build rel

The following links provide references and additional information relevant to our white paper Radically Improving the Efficiency of Business Development. Products Mentioned Creating a bid strategy re-use library Should you purchase a database for business development? Winning By Asking The Right Questions, With 9 Sets of Examples How do you get the most out of inexperienced

One of our better ideas has been to replace recycling previous proposals with a win strategy library. A win strategy library can inspire people to prepare more strategic proposals and accelerate their efforts. Recycling previous proposals makes it easy to create proposals that are written for the wrong context. We got the idea when we experienced déjà vu helping a customer plan their proposal. We had done proposals for companies in similar circumstances and were s

Customers clearly think that price matters. They are also concerned about risk. If the price is too low, the risk goes up. What they want are the features, but what they need is compliance with the specifications and anything they are required to comply with. Your best clue as to which of these matter the most is the evaluation criteria in the RFP. Look at how they evaluate each item and how much weight they give it. Then make sure that your offering and the point

This is a sample of a Federal Market Essentials Report created by isiFederal. The Federal Marketing Essentials Report is a comprehensive analysis of the federal market as it applies to a company. It breaks down the Federal Government market and shows you how the Feds buy what you sell and who you need to talk to. It is for Government Contractors, either brand new or experienced, who are looking to expand the number of leads they are pursuing. You can request that isiFederal prepare a full

Here on the slides from the Pipeline Assessment webinar we hosted on Wednesday, April 15, 2015.

Copy of the presentation Carl Dickson of CapturePlanning.com gave at the American Express OPEN DC Summit for Success

Slides from the Understanding What It Takes to Win course

We hosted this webinar on Thursday, January 17th, 2013. Carl Dickson, founder of CapturePlanning.com and PropLIBRARY, share his tips, tricks, and traps for setting up proposal re-use repositories that he's picked up over the years.

Sight reading is something musicians do when they play a song they don't know and haven't practiced with music they've never before seen. It's extremely difficult. If you are asking your proposal reviewers to conduct site reading, your review process is probably flawed and you can't expect the best performance from your reviewers. Nonetheless the vast majority of proposal reviews are conducted this way. Being able to size up a proposal at a first glance is a useful skill to have. Here is

More goes into selecting someone for a proposal related position than most people realize. The normal titles, like proposal manager, bid manager, proposal writer, editor, or capture manager only tell part of the story. What can really impact your needs may never show on a position description. You need someone who is going to be compatible with the way your organization approaches its proposals, and someone whose personal approach is compatible with your needs. How do you find someone who

This is our 11 page white paper with 65 tips for successful teaming. We've covered the subject from the prime contractor's perspective and the sub contractor's perspective. We've even thrown in small vs. large business considerations. This is powerful stuff. We even had to put warning label on it.

This is a capability statement published by InTec LLC, a Service Disabled Veteran Owned Small Business (SDVOSB) providing enterprise systems engineering and integration solutions to the Federal Government.

This is a capability statement for Humanscale, a manufacturer of ergonomic products for the office environment.

This is a capability statement published by DDS Staffing Resources in 2010. From the document: DDS Staffing Resources, Inc. is a certified Woman-Owned business having a 25 year foundation in staffing dental and medical professionals for a multitude of commercial and government entities. DDS Staffing Resources began as a prime contractor in the commercial sector and has been carrying this expertise and success to the government sectors.