Carl Dickson

To build a compliance matrix, you need to copy and paste the RFP into MustWin Now. The many ways that customers format their RFPs are just too inconsistent to automagically import them. So we made it quick and easy to copy and paste them instead. In addition to this step by step description, you can view a video on how this works. Open the RFP and Compliance Matrix tool by clicking on the name in the tool banner or the icon on the right side. Click on “open current RFP” to get to work. The RFP Requirements column will start off blank until you copy and paste the RFP into MustWin Now. Click on the green Add New RFP Requirement button to get started. When the form pops up you will need to enter: The RFP Heading Number. You may have to figure this out based on how the customer formatted their RFP. The RFP Heading. You can copy and paste this from the RFP. Parent Requirement. This is used to identify the hierarchy of the headings. You can skip it for your first entry. But if you enter any subheadings, you’ll want to identify the parent. You can type in the name of an RFP Heading you’ve already entered and selecting the right one from the list that appears. You can also come back and add the parent later. Or add subheadings by clicking on the “+” symbol that appears when you hover the mouse of an RFP item you have already entered. Requirement type. We use this to categorize the type of RFP requirement (instruction, evaluation criteria, performance requirement, or other). This is useful when cross-referencing. RFP Text. Copy and paste the text of the RFP requirement. You can copy it formatted (necessary if there are tables) or not formatted. The formatting may not always properly translate, and you may have some clean up to do. Item Response. You can flag any RFP items that don’t require a written response. Note, problems, judgment calls, or other explanations/annotations. If you think about something important that impacts the proposal, you can capture it in a note now. Or if you are unsure about how to interpret or handle something in the RFP, you can capture your thoughts. After your first few RFP items, this will go quickly. It’s mostly heading number, heading text, and requirement text. Plus a couple of clicks and save. Note: Pay attention to the assignment, which identifies the parts of the RFP to focus on. For this course you do not have to copy and paste the entire RFP. You are welcome to do so for practice and to see how quickly it goes. But it is not required.

In addition to this step-by-step description, here is a video of how to add a pursuit to MustWin Now. When you first visit MustWin Now it will appear until you add your first pursuit. To add your first pursuit, go to your MustWin Now dashboard. At the top right, click on the green “Start a new pursuit” button. Then complete the form that pops up. Give your proposal a name. The name should be whatever people in your company will recognize. Most people use the name given by the customer in the RFP, sometimes with the customer’s name added. Since the RFP has been released, you should click on the switch so it turns green. You can ignore the RFP Release Version since that used when the customer issues an amendment that changes the RFP and we won’t be using that feature. If you have already downloaded the RFP from the training module, you can upload it to MustWin Now here. Or you can skip uploading the RFP and do it later. When you click save you should see your new pursuit on the dashboard like this:

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 say as a result of it. When the input gets to the proposal writers, it needs to explain how to position the things they’ll be writing about and how it should impact the decisions they will make about the writing. For proposal writers, it’s all about context. It’s not simply about describing your offering, your approaches, and fulfillment of RFP requirements. Great proposal writing requires making points that matter to the customer, while responding to the RFP. Great proposal writing requires showing that the points you’ve made add up to making you the best alternative for the customer. It’s about helping the customer make their decision and not simply describing your company and your offering. To write a great proposal, proposal writers need great input. So instead of random tidbits of intel that you happened to stumble over, here is how you should inform your proposal writers: For more information about creating great proposals: Great Proposals What it will take to win. You can’t build a proposal based on it if you don’t know. Proposal writers don't discover or make up what it will take to win. They start from someone else being able to articulate it. It’s the most important ingredient. If you think you know what it will take to win, but you haven’t talked to the customer, then you’re really just guessing. Then again, a good guess is better than nothing. Starting your proposal writers without any input other than the RFP is a recipe for a low win rate. What the customer will find compelling about what you are offering. If you figure out what to offer by talking to people in your own company, you’re really just guessing. To find out what the customer finds compelling, you have to talk to the customer about what matters. If you want to write a proposal that’s meaningful, then you have to know what matters to the customer about what they are procuring. If you don't know this, then all you can do is let the RFP be your guide and hope none of your competitors have better insight. Hope is not a strategy that leads to high win rates. The right features and the right benefits. Making up the features and benefits of your offering based on the RFP will not get you to a great proposal. You need the right features and the right benefits, based on the customer’s perspective. Most features can have multiple benefits: speed, quality, efficiency, effectiveness, etc. Which matters the most to this customer? Did the customer tell you or are you guessing? If you're going solely by the evaluation criteria in the RFP, then you can't write a great proposal. You can only write an ordinary proposal like everyone else who has the same RFP. You need differentiated features and benefits that the customer finds compelling in order to write a great proposal with a high win probability. How the customer makes decisions. Is the customer's decision-making process consensus driven or authoritarian? Who is involved? Is it formal or informal? Is it a rigid point scoring evaluation system with a lot of paperwork? Or is it personal? If you are going to write a document that influences the customer’s decisions, you need to know. Who is the customer? Is it the buyer, the users, the decision maker, or another stakeholder? Just how many stakeholders are there and how much influence do they have? Is the customer one person? Does the customer have a consensus or are there multiple agendas? Is any one department or group in control? Who should the proposal be talking to or about? Make sure you have the full perspective. If you are talking to the customer's programs, operations, or technical staff, do they have any influence over contract types, vehicles, or the evaluation process? Do they even know anything about how their organization handles the procurement process? If you are talking to a contracts specialist, do they know anything about the technical subject matter? Do either the programs staff or contracts staff know what their organization’s future plans and priorities are? Have you talked to an executive at a high enough level to know how this procurement fits into the bigger picture? If you’ve only talked to one person at the customer, the answer is “no.” If you want to maximize your win probability with a great proposal, you need to understand the procurement process, organizational trends and goals, and what the program staff need to fulfill their mission. Why should the customer select you? Start by considering what makes you different. What makes you better? Combine that with what the customer finds compelling. Then add in what you know about how they make decisions and what their proposal evaluation process is. Just remember: why the customer should select you shouldn't be based on what you think is great about you, it should be based on what the customer thinks would make a great provider and a great offering. How should you interpret what the customer said in the RFP? Can you interpret what is in the RFP the same way the customer interprets it? If the RFP is well written, then every competitor has it and knows what to write to be compliant. So what is your information advantage? If the RFP is broken, then every competitor has it and no one is sure about what to write. So what is your information advantage? What is the customer expecting to see in response to the RFP they wrote? Optimal positioning, how to differentiate what you are offering, customer insight, and competitive assessment are all things that your proposal writers can help you articulate, but they can't make them up on their own. Instead of the phrase software developers like to use "garbage in, garbage out," with proposal writing it is more like "nothing in, garbage out." If you don't know or don't tell them the things they need to know, your proposal writers will still try to sound compelling. They'll just be faking it and the customer won't be fooled. That's not a great strategy for being competitive. Guessing is not necessarily bad. If you haven’t talked to the customer, guess and guess well. Be aggressive and take risks. Because that is all you can do. But if you are guessing and someone else knows, you are at a competitive disadvantage. So don’t fool yourself into thinking you know something when you are really just guessing.

How do you go about influencing the customer’s RFP to give your company an advantage? When you start thinking about it and peeling back all the layers, it can seem quite complex. There's a lot to consider. And where should you start? Here is a simple formula that’s easy to memorize and can help you cover all the important aspects of the problem. See also: Influencing the RFP Who. Who is the customer? Who is the decision maker? Who needs help? Who can make changes to the RFP? Who is playing the contracts role? Who is in charge of the technical requirements? Who are the other stakeholders? Who has what concerns that can be addressed by inserting language into the RFP? Whose need is the reason behind the procurement? What. What would you like to see in the RFP? What would you like changed? What will give you an advantage? What will make things difficult for your competitors? Instead of trying to make responding to the RFP easier, consider how to make it incredibly difficult for everyone except your company. Is there a qualification or certification that you have that most or all of your competitors do not? Wouldn't it be nice if the customer made it a requirement? Where. Where in the RFP would you like to have some influence? There is more to think about than just the technical requirements. What about terms and conditions? Contract type? Pricing model? Instructions? Evaluation criteria? Go for all of the above. How. How do you identify and make contact with the right people? LinkedIn can be very helpful for this. Does the customer have a staff directory? How will you suggest the language you'd like to see in the RFP? Being the customer and writing an RFP that gets what you need is even harder than writing a proposal. You can’t write the RFP for the customer. But you can write a whitepaper using language that they can simply copy and paste, if they are so inclined. You can make recommendations for the customer to consider about any possible future RFP. Or even just what's important about things that the customer is interested in and how to select them. But what will motivate them? Do they need some help because they don’t know the subject matter? Or maybe they’re just not sure how to articulate their needs. If writing the RFP is a lot of work, maybe they could use some suggestions. If they are risk averse, they might be concerned and willing to listen to some advice. Maybe they just want to make sure that when the complicated procurement is complete, they actually get what they wanted at the beginning. When. When should you make your suggestions? When are their decision points, approvals, and other milestones? When should you make your suggestions to a contract specialist and when to a technical program specialist? Suggesting a contract vehicle after the acquisition strategy has been approved won’t do you any good. It’s easier to suggest language for the RFP before it has been written. It’s even easier before the decision has been made to issue an RFP. In order to be in synch with the customer's procurement process, you have to know it in detail. Timing matters. Getting there at the wrong time, when you can't have much influence, might even be a reason not to bid if someone else was there at the right time. Why. “Why” is by far the most important question. Why should the customer accept your suggestions? Why should the customer trust your suggestions? Why will they get better results if they do? If you leave out any of the “who, what, where, how, when, and why” topics, you will be far less effective at influencing the RFP. And while the model starts off as questions, you can turn it around and convert it into a pursuit plan. But instead of conducting a strategic influence campaign, you might be better off just helping the customer get what they need. Being seen as a helpful asset is usually a good position to be in. Trust matters.

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... See also: Proposal Software 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 don’t have sufficient profit margin to invest into increasing your win rate. For most companies, you will gain far more revenue by customizing your proposals to maximize your win rate, than you can possibly save from recycling narratives. Often the difference is two or three orders of magnitude. Since I rarely work with companies that sell low-margin commodities, I never use automated proposal assembly. I create custom proposals to maximize win probability and don’t create proposals the same way people create brochures. Your best alternative to automating proposal assembly is to streamline how you plan the content of your proposals. Inspiring proposal writers. By far, people spend more time thinking and talking about the proposal than they do writing it. The best way to make proposals more efficient is to decrease the amount of time people need to figure out what to offer and how to write a proposal that reflects what it will take to win. While recycling narratives does more harm than good for most people, what you can do is provide suggestions, topics, strategies, and more at the bullet level. We take all those ingredients and turn them into Proposal Recipes. When they are designed well, they will often inspire ideas that weren’t found in the Recipe Library. The goal is to get people thinking more quickly so that they can come up with the right answer for the particular bid they are working on, and not to feed them the same answer every time. Incidentally, you do not necessarily need special software to provide an inspiration library. Guiding proposal writers. The proposal process is not sequential. It is best to think of it in terms of goals instead of steps. But there are high level phases you can guide people through. And there are options you can help them consider. You can help them assess when they’ve done things correctly. A little bit of guidance at the moment of need can make a big difference. Other than creating the guidance itself, the trick to making it effective is to pay attention to the user interface. Wrap your tasks in what people need to know to guide them through it. It must not be out of sight, but it also must not get in the way. Collaboration. The more that you need to figure out what to offer and how to present it in the proposal, the more you will benefit from collaboration software. Collaboration software should help you think better and faster as a team. The real challenge, however, is making decisions. Software can get people talking, but you still need an organizational culture that’s decisive or it won’t amount to much and indecision will eat up valuable time instead of saving it. I’ve never settled on any particular software package for collaboration. It’s not the software that matters most to me, it’s how you use it, whether everyone has it, if it’s a pain to install, and whether you can turn discussion into action. Proposal planning. There is so little software available that’s effective for proposal planning, that I had to go and build my own. Planning the content of a proposal and integrating it with quality validation is not as simple as building an outline and grabbing document fragments from a library. At least not if winning matters. Planning the content of a winning proposal involves first identifying what it will take to win, planning that proposal, managing the creation of what is needed to achieve it, and validating that what got created fulfills what it will take to win. What I’ve found is that using software to help with the planning, validation, and guidance of staff has a much larger return on investment than software to manage or assemble the files you submit. In fact, if you took the tens of thousands of dollars you might spend on proposal software and put it into rolling out a manual process for planning the content of your proposals and validating the quality instead, you’ll probably be better off. Effectively planning to win pays for itself many times over because it increases your win rate. Software for proposal production has a questionable ROI. Reviewing proposals. Proposal quality validation can be greatly streamlined when performed online. Instead of reviews that require paper-based production and putting everything on hold while people read and comment, when the validation of proposal quality criteria is done online it becomes a checklist driven exercise that goes as quickly as you can click through the proposal. If you are stuck in the purgatory of ineffective traditional review approaches, you might be able to use a tool like PleaseReview to relieve some of the administrivia burden and make better sense of the comments. Search and retrieval. If you have libraries of files for research or reuse, you’ll need to be able to search them. The search tool hardly matters. How you organize and maintain the libraries matters a whole lot. The cost of the hours and hours you will put into organization and maintenance will likely not only exceed the cost of the search tool, it will likely exceed the value of what people find using the search tool. File library maintenance is so much easier when you quit trying to find and reuse narratives, and abstract them into Proposal Recipes. Is winning or cost reduction your highest priority? It’s good to make things easier, reduce effort, and ultimately reduce costs. But automating proposals without building them around what it will take to win will reduce your win rate more than you save. On the other hand, proposal software that guides your staff to plan and execute a proposal based on what it takes to win and does it better than they can do on their own manually, pays for itself many times over. The middle ground is software for collaboration and process. You can implement collaboration tools with little or no cost. You can improve your process for planning and executing by investing nothing more than your time. How do you decide what to do? Ask yourself what is holding back your win rate. I’m willing to bet that not getting the input you need to know what it will take to win and an ineffective review process that doesn’t provide actual quality validation have a bigger impact than being able to look up past proposals or reduce the time it takes to assemble proposal files. I’m willing to bet that flaws in your corporate decision making culture have a bigger impact than being limited to phones and email for collaboration. Sometimes people turn to software because they think there’s nothing they can do about the real problems. And they’re usually wrong about that. But then again, it may be easier to get the Powers That Be to write a check for tens of thousands of dollars than it is to get them to make quick and consistent decisions based on well-defined quality criteria.

Part of our plans for the massive upgrade to the MustWin Now platform that we’re preparing to roll out include: Working with two companies who are willing to commit to 120 hours of consulting support between now and September 1 Providing support for one or several proposals over that time, as well as extensive hand-holding and training Depending on your needs, Carl Dickson of CapturePlanning.com and PropLIBRARY will either lead your proposal effort, support it, or participate in reviews and provide quality assurance A free corporate subscription as well as a 30% discount on the hourly rate MustWin Now generated proposal input, compliance matrix, and content plan deliverables Online content planning and quality validation Online pre-proposal preparation and intelligence gathering This will provide you with: Expert support for your proposals to increase your probability of winning Ongoing use of MustWin Now and PropLIBRARY’s online training resources for the next year Expert advice for how to best integrate MustWin Now with your current environment Optimum positioning for the surge of RFPs typically released in September What about working with other consultants We do work with other consultants. We can supplement your services and support your clients with our online tools. We are always pleased to receive referrals. What we get out of this offer We’ll get more real-world experience using our own tool and valuable feedback before we release it. You’ll get our help winning your pursuits. Adding the pre-release use of MustWin Now only increases the value. By working closely with people who are using the MustWin Platform we expect to gain some great insights. And in return we’re offering the free Corporate Subscription and a discount on the rate. How to inquire about moving forward Click the green button below to contact us and we’ll discuss your needs, verify that we’re a match for each other, and work out an implementation plan. The consulting services will be based on your needs and current resources. So let’s talk about them.

The proposal process is not about efficient repetition. It is not even primarily about managing the steps that go into creating a proposal. The proposal process is about problem solving, starting with figuring out what will it take to win. It is about solving the problems that can reduce your chances of winning. Each time you execute the proposal process you will encounter new, unanticipated problems that mostly result from the customer asking for things in different ways. This is where you should focus. This is what you must obsess on and get good at. If you base your proposal process on rigid repeatable steps, it will break because customers and RFPs are wildly inconsistent. Even small differences will break most processes. Even though it is our nature to want to make proposals routine, they are not. Proposals are a series of problems within problems to be solved in a competitive environment. A certain amount of repeatability can help set expectations and keep everyone on the same page. However, achieving repeatability is not the path to maximizing your win rate. Solving the problems and variations better than your competitors is the key to maximizing your win rate. See also: Steps Your proposal process should be based on problem solving and not on task repetition. And problem solving means being flexible about how you fulfill your goals. A goal-driven proposal process is much better than a procedure-based proposal process for solving problems that can't be anticipated. To transform your process into one that achieves your goals and maximizes your win rate, instead of mechanical steps, try focusing on: Improving proposal contributor performance and proposal quality. Before reengineering your proposal review process, try simply supplementing it with questions for people to address during reviews. Questions can set the foundation you need to start moving reviews from subjective opinion-fests to quality criteria based validation. Proposal quality criteria are simply questions that assess whether quality standards have been met. When people are used to a question-driven process, then reengineering your process by changing the questions becomes a simple incremental step instead of a revolution. You can also synch the questions that both the proposal writers and the proposal reviewers use for guidance. This helps the writers to know what to write to pass the review and it helps the proposal validate whether what was supposed to be done by the proposal writers was actually accomplished. Gaining proposal process acceptance. A key part of gaining proposal process acceptance is to make it easier to follow the process than it is to make it up as people go along. Instead of creating questions that are a burden, create questions that deliver what people need to accomplish their goals and questions that enable them to think things through more quickly. When you do this well, people will naturally pick up the lists of questions, which you might encourage them to call "checklists" or "cheat sheets" because they make doing the proposal easy. People covet checklist driven proposals and always love a cheat sheet. Passing the proposal process minimization challenge. Encourage people to point out anything in the process that is unnecessary or that won't matter. You should challenge them to point out anything that can be dropped from the process without lowering your win rate. This will not only make the process more reliable, but it will also increase acceptance. Setting and accomplishing goals. Instead of mandating procedures, focus on what you need to accomplish. Then move on to "What do you need to make that happen?" and "How will people know if they've done what is needed?" With just these questions you can start to see how the combination of goals and the right questions shapes the process better than boxes on a flow chart. Questions can get people thinking about how to accomplish things and meet standards instead of going through the motions with steps. I’d much rather work on a proposal with people who are defining goals and thinking about the best way to accomplish them, than with people who are simply following and only doing what they are told. The right questions can inspire thinking. Sometimes I don’t even care what the answers are. I just care that they are well thought through and position us to win. Streamlining the flow of information. Answering questions carries information from one person to the next. Questions can transform information from one format to another. Questions can be used to assess, consider, and validate information. Questions can make sure that the next person has what they need to accomplish their goal, while simultaneously communicating what that goal is. When the information is uncertain and what to do with it depends on a lot of factors, like we typically encounter in preparing proposals, the flow of information is better managed through questions than procedures. Accumulate metrics you didn’t even know were possible. Did people skip questions? Which ones? Did they give any shallow non-answers? Over a series of proposals, what can you learn from the way people answered the questions? How do the answers correlate with your win rate? You can gain insights you otherwise would have missed that unlock win rate improvements that make it all worthwhile. Filling your gaps and addressing your weaknesses. If people answer all the questions but the proposal still runs into difficulties you can add questions that prevent the problems from recurring. You can write questions that force people to change procedures. Or even behaviors. You can write questions that change styles and approaches. You can write questions that change results. Lessons learned and continuous win rate improvement. You can implement a continuous win rate improvement program simply by improving the questions that define your process regularly and raise the bar every time. It helps when you encourage people to use the lists of questions as checklists. It makes it easy to check in with people after each proposal, get feedback (formal or informal), and tweak the questions for next time. Just don't let the lists grow too long or you'll start to see resistance. You can even have business line or customer specific sets of questions. Anticipating and solving problems. You can write questions that prompt people to be on the lookout for indicators of problems. You can write questions that simply prompt people to consider the risks. You can write questions that ask if people have taken mitigation actions. You can write questions that ask whether certain people have been notified about unpredictable problems. You can write questions that keep people informed, on the lookout, and guide them to the right response. Since proposals are about problem solving, you can use this to shape the entire development effort. Changing behaviors over time. The right question at the right time can set expectations, be a reminder, and prompt action. The right question at the right time forces a choice. Very few people will intentionally do things to harm a proposal, if they are aware and don’t have conflicting priorities. The right questions can address both of these. Building in expectation management and communication. Everything you do on a proposal comes with expectations that flow in every direction. Ignore them at your peril as they are the number one source of proposal friction. Instead build in clarity. Everything you do should come with communication before, during, and after. And every communication should clarify expectations. Instead of focusing on proposal reuse, try creating communication templates so that this becomes easy to do. Timing matters Ask the right question at the wrong time and it will have no impact. The right time to ask a question depends on what has been done, what comes next, what resources are available, and the person being asked. Focus less on dates and deadlines, and more on goals and dependencies. Also, since far more time is spent thinking and talking about a proposal than actually writing it, you can use questions to accelerate thinking and discussion. You can use questions to greatly reduce open-ended circular discussion and rumination that never ends. But you have to anticipate what and why people ruminate, so that your questions can eliminate the need before it occurs.

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You need to do this, you need to do that. Everyone already seems to know what they should be doing to increase their win rates. But they have many excuses reasons for why they are not. Those reasons usually boil down to other people not doing what they should. Improving your win rate requires changing other people’s behavior. Instead of creating a process based on steps and then using carrots and sticks to get other people to change, try building your process around asking questions. You can change people’s behavior simply through the questions you ask. Pre-RFP examples See also: Information advantage Instead of telling people to establish customer intimacy, try asking them, “What is your information advantage over your competitors?” If they don’t have customer intimacy, they’ll have difficulty answering. If they get caught unable to answer, they’ll have some incentive to gain customer intimacy on the next bid. Instead of telling people to describe your win strategies or prepare some (usually watered down) themes, ask them, “What differentiates our offer?” If they are struggling to identify your differentiators, they’ll start strategizing how to position your company on the next bid to have some real differentiators. If people aren’t discovering pursuits early enough ask them, “What have you done to influence the RFP?” If they are finding pursuits by looking for RFP releases, they will not have done anything to influence the RFP. If people are chasing any pursuit they find ask them, “How does the pursuit relate to the company’s strategic plans?” This is a double whammy. First, the company has to do some actual strategic planning. Then the folks chasing bids have to actually pay attention to it. Proposal examples Instead of telling people to plan their proposal, try asking them, “Has your Proposal Content Plan been reviewed?” It’s kind of hard to review something that doesn’t exist. Instead of telling people to create an RFP compliant outline ask them, “Will your outline meet the customer’s expectations?” This subtly forces people to make their own opinion secondary to what they think the customer wants, such as what they itemized in the RFP instructions. It also can force the use of a compliance matrix. This is also a great example of how you can use questions to not only get people to do things, but to change their behavior. Instead of telling people to follow the style guide that they usually ignore, try asking something like, “Is the proposal written from the customer’s perspective?” To answer this, they have to know what “writing from the customer’s perspective” means. You can do this with any writing style or preference that you feel strongly about. Getting people to change their writing style can be challenging. Telling them to do it has a low probability of success. But asking them a question that forces them to assess what they’ve done may just work. Instead of talking about an opportunity at the kickoff meeting, try working through a script of questions. Anticipate what your proposal writers will need to know and turn it into a proposal input form. Then see what those pursuing the lead can answer. Correlate their answers with your win rate and you’ll be able to quantify the importance of starting proposals with an information advantage. By using the same script every time, you can train the business development function regarding what information you need to write a winning proposal. See if you can get them to give out a copy of your script at the beginning, when they decide to pursue a lead. If nothing else, this approach will dramatically improve your company’s ability to weasel word around questions it can’t answer. If you win rate is really low, this alone might improve it! Seriously folks, I’ve seen how lots of companies weasel word things, and the quality of the weasel wording could be greatly improved. Of course, it might be easier just to find answers to the questions.

This form above is what you use to enter or edit an RFP requirement in MustWin Now. The key is how simple it is. Just enter the RFP section number and text. The parent requirement is for indentation level, which you may not have to enter at all since when you click the "+" symbol in the column with the RFP requirements, MustWin Now knows who the parent is. Then pick whether it's an instruction, evaluation criteria, performance/delivery requirement, or other requirement from a list. This will help categorize the RFP items for cross-referencing. And if you see an RFP item that's really just providing information and doesn't require a written response, you can flag it so the writers will know. For more info, see also: MustWin Now: Everything you need to know Copying and pasting the RFP into MustWin Now. This goes very quickly. The hardest part is understanding the customer's often inconsistent RFP heading numbers. There is no way around this. Software can't automagically figure out what people have inconsistently entered or when they've broken their own numbering convention. You're going to have to figure out what the customer intended with or without software. All you have to do is type it into a web form instead of Excel. Once you've copied and pasted the RFP, you can look up RFP references with simple clicks. This is not only true during cross-referencing, but it remains true throughout Proposal Content Planning and the rest of the process. The full-text of the RFP is always just one click away. You also have to enter your proposal outline. We also kept this extremely simple. If you need a new heading, just number and name it. For you touch typists, you can cross-reference your outline and the RFP straight from the forms by typing in the first few letters of an RFP heading in the link field. I tend to go back and forth depending on which feels more convenient in that moment. Our goal is to make data entry quicker than you can think through understanding the RFP. And then to help speed up being able to figure it all out with one-click look-ups and drag and drop linking. Since you can't help but think of things that impact the writing, there's also a place in both RFP entry and proposal outline entry where you can enter notes that will flow forward to your Proposal Content Plan. You can also use the notes to explain your judgment calls when the RFP is not clear and you have to choose what to do about it. When you combine this with the other screenshots we've released so far, you can see the screens for: Building the compliance matrix by cross-referencing RFP requirements and building your proposal outline A traditional compliance matrix that can be displayed on screen or downloaded Linking the RFP to your Proposal Content Plan and building your compliance matrix Some helpful tools you can use to help make sure your compliance matrix is correct And to help you get up to speed on it, we're going to start a free 12-week training program for early adopters. Act now... To give us a big incentive to keep this production beast on schedule, we're lowering our prices until the end of April or until we start the training. $100 off for single user subscriptions $500 off for small group subscriptions $1000 off for corporate subscriptions If you already have a single user subscription, you can add 4 friends for $1000. We almost never run promotions. The word promotion hasn't even appeared in our newsletter since 2014. If you've been thinking of subscribing, you should take advantage of this one... Click here for more information on subscribing to PropLIBRARY

What you see in the image above is a section of the RFP linked to a proposal section. This is part of building an RFP compliance matrix. But what's special about it is that MustWin Now remembers all the linking and when you are in your Proposal Content Plan you can see the full text of the linked RFP items. For more info, see also: MustWin Now: Everything you need to know In the image above, the Executive Summary has been selected from the proposal outline. The linked RFP items (in this case there is only one) show up in the RFP requirements column in bold. And in the proposal section in the main column, you see a clickable banner containing the RFP requirement. Click it and the banner will expand like the example below. In this screenshot section 1.1 Understanding the SOW has been selected. It has two RFP links and the banners have been opened showing the full text. You can click around the proposal outline and see what requirements need to be addressed in every section. Oh, and if you see that another requirement should be linked to this proposal section, just grab it from the RFP column and drop it on the landing zone. It will become a new banner when you are looking in at that proposal section and will also be included in the cross-reference matrix. When you combine this with the other screenshots we've released so far, you can see the screens for: Building the compliance matrix by cross-referencing RFP requirements and building your proposal outline A traditional compliance matrix that can be displayed on screen or downloaded Some helpful tools you can use to help make sure your compliance matrix is correct I can wait to tease you show you some more next week... Act now... To give us a big incentive to keep this production beast on schedule, we're lowering our prices until the end of April or until we start the training. $100 off for single user subscriptions $500 off for small group subscriptions $1000 off for corporate subscriptions If you already have a single user subscription, you can add 4 friends for $1000. We almost never run promotions. The word promotion hasn't even appeared in our newsletter since 2014. If you've been thinking of subscribing, you should take advantage of this one... Click here for more information on subscribing to PropLIBRARY

We've already revealed a couple of screenshots and some description of the new RFP cross-referencing and compliance matrix building tool we've created that's almost ready for release. Now we're going to show you some useful features that were hidden from view in the previous screenshots. For more info, see also: MustWin Now: Everything you need to know Creating a compliance matrix requires you to look at things from both the perspective of the RFP and the perspective of the proposal outline. Is everything in the RFP linked to the right places in the proposal outline? Is the proposal outline complete, structurally sound, and optimal? So once you've made a pass through linking the RFP, we give you some handy tools. Do you want to look at the RFP in sequence, as it was published? Or do you want to reorganize the RFP into instructions, evaluation criteria, performance, and other requirements? Do you want to see just the RFP items you entered notes about? Or with comments that people are discussing? For making sure the compliance matrix is complete, we give you the ability to see which RFP requirements have not been linked to at least one section in your proposal outline. Sometimes RFP items do not require a written response. We let you flag those items so you can account for them. But if you want to double check that nothing in the RFP snuck past you, you can display everything not linked to the proposal outline and make sure. Another tool we've built in is the ability to flag RFP items you might want to ask questions about. Questions about the RFP requirements often come out during the careful process of reading, parsing, and linking the RFP requirements while creating a compliance matrix. So we let you enter those questions. And we let you see the list of RFP items that people have questions about. You'll still get to decide which questions you may or may not want to submit. But you'll do a better job of harvesting potential questions for consideration. And for discussing what to do about RFP issues with your team. But that's just the RFP perspective. We also let you look at things from the proposal perspective. You can look at the proposal outline like you normally would in sequence. Or you can just look at proposal sections with notes or comments. This way you can make sure all the notes get acted on and focus on the issues that people are having in their proposal sections. You can also see which proposal sections aren't linked to any RFP requirements. RFPs often leave gaps, where there are things you want to talk about that aren't specific to any of the written requirements found in the RFP. Part of the challenge of getting your compliance matrix right is in filling these gaps, but doing it in a way that doesn't disrupt what the customer expects to see in your proposal and where they expect to find their requirements addressed. Having both RFP and proposal perspectives is important, because you need to ensure RFP compliance, while also trying to go beyond compliance and need a place to say things you think are important for helping the customer perform their evaluation, but which may not have an RFP reference. Sometimes the customer doesn't think of everything. But you don't want to go against their expectations or how they plan to perform their evaluation. So you need to carefully look at your outline and compliance matrix from both the RFP perspective and the proposal perspective to get it right. Act now... To give us a big incentive to keep this production beast on schedule, we're lowering our prices until the end of April or until we start the training. $100 off for single user subscriptions $500 off for small group subscriptions $1000 off for corporate subscriptions If you already have a single user subscription, you can add 4 friends for $1000. We almost never run promotions. The word promotion hasn't even appeared in our newsletter since 2014. If you've been thinking of subscribing, you should take advantage of this one... Click here for more information on subscribing to PropLIBRARY

We’re giving away free training to people who help us test our new MustWin Now proposal software. We're going to focus on how to actually achieve the goal of planning before you write. Students will gain functional skills enhancement, while also testing MustWin Now and learning how to use it. We’ve completed technical testing for MustWin Now and we want to use it some more in the real world before general release. The training is not really about the cool new tech, it's about achieving your proposal goals in a way that just happens to be using the tech. You'll be getting a deep dive into MustWin Now and how to implement a goal-driven proposal process... Just in time for the surge of RFPs coming in September. Pre-requisites See also: MustWin Now: Everything you need to know Articles related to Proposal Content Planning Goal: Prepare a proposal content plan for achieving what it will take to win (Subscriber only) Related online courses for PropLIBRARY Subscribers: How to create a compliance matrix Creating a Proposal Outline Introduction to Proposal Content Planning Creating a Content Plan for a proposal Managing Proposal Content Planning implementation Understanding Proposal Quality You must be a PropLIBRARY Subscriber to take this course. MustWin Now will be free to PropLIBRARY Subscribers, so this is a great way to learn how to get the most out of it when it's released. These are skills enhancement, and not introductory course modules. Students should already know how to create a compliance matrix. Course summary: Learn how to accomplish three goals: Create an outline based on the customer’s expectations by using a compliance matrix. This is actually the first step in Proposal Content Planning. How to accelerate your Proposal Content Planning. How to build an information advantage and start with the information you need to write a winning proposal. We've set things up so you can flexibly manage your time: For each goal, we’ll release several new videos each Monday showing you how to use MustWin Now features to complete an exercise. By the end students will have completed pursuit capture forms, a compliance matrix, a proposal outline, and a proposal content plan. On Thursdays at 11am (EST) we’ll have online “office hours” where we’ll use screen sharing to demonstrate, answer questions about completing the exercise, and discuss various considerations that might impact achieving the goal. The Thursday sessions will also be recorded. They will be scheduled for 1.5 hours, but the sessions won’t end until all the questions have been answered (whether that takes more or less time than scheduled). Act now... To give us a big incentive to keep this production beast on schedule, we're lowering our prices until the end of April or until we start the training. $100 off for single user subscriptions. $500 off for small group subscriptions. $1000 off for corporate subscriptions. If you already have a single user subscription, you can add 4 friends for $1000. We almost never run promotions. The word promotion hasn't even appeared in our newsletter since 2014. If you've been thinking of subscribing, you should take advantage of this one... Click here for more information on subscribing to PropLIBRARY Questions and Registration

Accelerating the proposal process by making it real-time and interactive Companies are using MustWin Now to drive strategy into their proposals before they even get written. If your RFPs: Have instructions, evaluation criteria, and a statement of work Require a compliance matrix to figure out which RFP requirements should be addressed in which proposal sections Require mapping your win strategies to the document in order to get the highest score Click here to find out how MustWin Now will help you create a proposal based on what it will take to win. MustWin Now solves problems and increases your probability of winning See also: About MustWin Now If your primary concern is proposal assembly or automation, you should probably read this first, since losing proposals faster is not a good idea. By far, people spend more time thinking and talking about proposals than writing them. MustWin Now helps you think it through faster, while also streamlining how to go from ideas to words on paper. If you are struggling to get the information you need to write a winning proposal, MustWin Now provides forms that you can use to collect the input you need. You can use MustWin Now to introduce structure to the pre-RFP phase and guide people to gather what you need to start the proposal with an information advantage. If you have to figure out what to say and where to say it in your proposals before you can start writing, MustWin Now will help you put everything in your proposal where the customer expects to find it. If you are struggling with guiding your writers or getting stuck in re-write after re-write, MustWin Now will help you get things right on the very first draft so you can improve it instead of re-writing until you run out of time. I’ve worked in proposals for over 30 years. During that entire time people have repeated the mantra “plan before you write and write to the plan” without actually being able to do it. When people use MustWin Now they plan before they write without even realizing it. It helps you figure out what should go in your proposal and how you should present it. For users, the process disappears as they just do what needs to be done using the tool. Fear of the blank page goes away as the writers get the guidance they need to not only know what to write, but how to present it. MustWin Now makes it so much easier for your subject matter experts to transfer their knowledge and collaborate with the people who are doing the actual writing. Everyone with ideas about the proposal or something to contribute can easily do it. You can get your strategic vision on paper. For a change. No more talking in circles around the proposal without the good stuff getting on paper. We use it in our consulting engagements to help companies maximize their evaluation scores by combining the customer awareness and subject matter expertise with our ability to interpret the evaluation criteria and guide the proposal writers to put everything in the right context to win. Key MustWin Now features Provides online RFP compliance matrix building and proposal outline generation with drag and drop features. Provides the only web-based compliance matrix builder in existence. Puts a fully-developed and quality validated content plan in front of your proposal writers and reviewers. Reduces the effort it takes to prepare a content plan for your proposal. Generates the content plan shell right from the proposal outline and enables you to add instructions with simple clicks. Enables quality criteria to be easily added to your content plan so that in addition to what to write, your proposal writers will know how they need to write it to pass their reviews. Enables customer, opportunity, and competitive intelligence to be linked to the proposal outline to ensure the proposal fully reflects the information advantage you’ve developed. Provides support for pre-RFP intelligence gathering and capture plan creation by completing simple Q&A forms. Enables you to build readiness reviews into the pre-RFP phase of the pursuit. Puts RFP and the intelligence you’ve gathered into proposal sections along with the instructions for proposal writers. Makes validation of your proposal input, compliance matrix, and content plan against written quality criteria checkbox quick. Guides staff to convert what they know into instructions for putting it on paper and then validates that the instructions get followed in the draft proposal. Enables you to easily control who has access to each tool. Enables you to decide which tools you wish to use and turn off those you don’t. If you just want to use the pursuit capture forms, the compliance matrix builder, or the content planning tool you can turn the other tools off so your users don’t get confused about what they should be working on. What MustWin Now is not: Software you run on your laptop. MustWin Now is a cloud-based subscription service. See the technical details section for other options. Automated proposal assembly. MustWin Now is not about building a proposal from interchangeable parts. That’s a great way to ensure your proposal is not optimized to win. Document formatting, assembly, or creation. That takes place in Word just like it does now. Only you’ll have a ton of helpful features in your browser instead of the information you need hiding from you. A tool for building new proposals from the text of past proposals. While there are tools that make this possible, we have better tools to ensure new proposals are fully customized based on what it will take to win this pursuit. Technical details that matter for some: MustWin Now is provided as Software as a Service (SaaS), also known as a cloud solution. It’s free to PropLIBRARY Subscribers. Access is through your web browser. Normally, plans are created and used online, with writing taking place in Word. While your content plan is online, your proposal files remain on your own network, protected by your own security. In addition, each MustWin Now tool can export to Excel. So it can be used to create a plan that is taken offline for use. If you really want it, we can deploy a MustWin Now server inside your firewall. It’s more expensive than a simple subscription but if you need the server on your premises, you can have it. You'll have to contact us for a custom quote if you want this. Purchase Options Access to MustWin Now comes with a subscription to PropLIBRARY at no extra charge. Click here and scroll down for a handy calculator to use to get an instant quote.

This week's teaser shows an RFP compliance matrix created using MustWin Now. This is really just an in-between step. The next step turns it into a content plan. That's really where things get fun. For more info, see also: MustWin Now: Everything you need to know Those who have experienced the pain of manually creating a compliance matrix will appreciate seeing this image. Once you've linked your RFP requirements to your proposal outline, which incidentally can be done using drag and drop, the system has everything it needs to know to build the matrix. But there's something cooler than clicking a button and seeing the matrix. It's even more cool to click a button that creates your proposal content plan shell, and then seeing that you can click on the embedded RFP references and drill down to the full RFP text. Right there in your content plan. Proposal writers won't have to flip RFP pages to check compliance. It's right in front of them as they work. Oh, and ditto for your reviewers. Act now... To give us a big incentive to keep this production beast on schedule, we're lowering our prices until the end of April or until we start the training. $100 off for single user subscriptions $500 off for small group subscriptions $1000 off for corporate subscriptions If you already have a single user subscription, you can add 4 friends for $1000. We almost never run promotions. The word promotion hasn't even appeared in our newsletter since 2014. If you've been thinking of subscribing, you should take advantage of this one... Click here for more information on subscribing to PropLIBRARY

This week's teaser is a key screen in the process for building a compliance matrix. The gray column on the left is the RFP. The gray column on the right is the proposal outline, as you build it. The main column is the text of the selected RFP requirement. The proposal outline starts empty. As you read and interpret the RFP instructions, you add proposal headings. And as you add a new proposal heading, you can link all of the relevant RFP requirements to it. You can even drag and drop an RFP requirement onto a relevant proposal section to instantly make the link. For more info, see also: MustWin Now: Everything you need to know When you are done, every proposal section is linked to every relevant RFP requirement. And you can click a button and produce your compliance matrix. Click another button and it turns what you've done into an online document shell for content planning, keeping all the RFP links so that the RFP text is always just a click away when you're looking at your Proposal Content Plan. You can also download the compliance matrix into Excel and if you choose you can work offline from that point. Act now... To give us a big incentive to keep this production beast on schedule, we're lowering our prices until the end of April or until we start the training. $100 off for single user subscriptions $500 off for small group subscriptions $1000 off for corporate subscriptions If you already have a single user subscription, you can add 4 friends for $1000. We almost never run promotions. The word promotion hasn't even appeared in our newsletter since 2014. If you've been thinking of subscribing, you should take advantage of this one... Click here for more information on subscribing to PropLIBRARY

Within the MustWin Process Architecture we divide the performance layer into the following areas: proposal management, proposal writing, and quality validation. The performance layer is where the proposal document gets created. It is what is traditionally thought of as the proposal process, only it is organized architecturally instead of sequentially. This is because we are addressing functionality and not sequence, and functionally proposal development consists of the actual writing and production of the proposal, managed according to the proposal process, with completion validated by quality assurance. Proposal Management: Implementation of the proposal process How do these impact the process and stakeholders? Does any existing process account for them? See also: Successful process implementation Preparations and input processing. What do you need to do to get ready for proposal development? How will you collect the required inputs? How will you assess them for use in the document? Assignments and progress tracking. What resources will you require? How will they be assigned? Once assigned, how will you track progress toward assignment completion? Process implementation. How will you implement your proposal process? Do you have a process to implement? Will this pursuit require exceptions or changes to your process? Issue management. What issues can you anticipate and prevent or mitigate? What responses should you have for contingencies? Tools/resource development. What tools should you have or build? These can range from simple checklists to major systems. What needs do contributors have that might be addressed by having a tool? Training and performance support. What skill or capability gaps do you anticipate that might be filled with training? What can you do to improve the performance of contributors during proposal efforts? Proposal Writing: Creation of the document How do these impact the process and stakeholders? Does any existing process account for them? Assignment completion and goal accomplishment. How will assignments be issued? How will you track progress towards completion? How will you validate the quality of completion? Will assignment completion fulfill the process goals? Expectation management. What do proposal contributors expect? What should you do to address those expectations? Are you communicating your expectations? Are everyone’s expectations being agreed to? Execution. Are things getting done as they need to? Pricing. Is pricing being completed on schedule according to RFP specifications? Is pricing competitive? Is pricing being done in isolation? Is pricing part of offering design or completed after the proposal is complete? Produce deliverables. Are required proposal deliverables (such as the proposal, forms, pricing, certifications and representations, etc.) being produced on time without defects? How is the quality of proposal deliverables being validated? Quality Validation: How do you know if you are doing a good job? How do these impact the process and stakeholders? Does any existing process account for them? Definition of proposal quality. Is proposal quality defined? How should it be defined? If it is defined, how is it impacting performance during proposal development? Development of quality criteria. Do you have quality criteria that can be used to measure how well you are fulfilling your definition of proposal quality? Are you experiencing issues that could be resolved or mitigated by changing your quality criteria? Self-assessment. How are people checking their work? Are your proposal quality criteria being used for self-assessment as people complete their proposal assignments? Implementation of quality validation. What is your review process? Does it fulfill your definition of proposal quality and your quality criteria? Is it consistently effective?

Within the MustWin Process Architecture we divide the input layer into the following areas: information, strategy, and offering design. In many companies, the scope of the proposal process begins with RFP release. However, proposals require input, and that input often must be gathered before the RFP is released. Regardless of how you define the scope of the proposal process, you should define the inputs a proposal requires to maximize your win rate. See also: Successful process implementation The input layer defines those input requirements so that they can guide pre-RFP efforts. When pre-RFP efforts are either not possible or out-of-scope, the input layer is still necessary to facilitate a rapid start to the proposal. The probability of winning a proposal depends on the delivery of information, regardless of when you start collecting that information. The input layer informs proposal writers with not only what to write about, but what points to make. Without the necessary inputs proposals tend to end up being self-descriptive, watered down, and literally pointless. Information: What will it take to win and what matters to the customer? What information do you need in this area, where will you get it, what will you do with it, and how does that impact the process and stakeholders? Does any existing process account for them? What it will take to win. You can’t write a proposal based on it, if you can’t articulate it. Is this awareness delivered to the proposal, or discovered during the proposal? Is it discovered before writing starts or by writing and rewriting? Are the information requirements for articulating what it will take to win itemized? Does it anticipate and answer the questions that proposal writers have? Does it enable proposal writers to substantiate the points you need to make in order to win? Customer insight. What matters to the customer? What are their preferences? How do they make decisions? How does their procurement process work? What do they want? What do they need? Do you have an information advantage? Can you write a proposal that shows insight? Can you write a proposal from the customer’s perspective? Or will you be limited to describing yourself? Strategy: What are your proposal win strategies? What information do you need in this area, where will you get it, what will you do with it, and how does that impact the process and stakeholders? Does any existing process account for them? Differentiation. You can’t be superior to your competitors without being different from your competitors. What makes you and your offering the customer’s best alternative? You can’t prove this with your proposal writing if you don’t know what it is before you start writing. Competitive advantage. If you can’t be different from your competitors, and some RFPs make this difficult, you can still be better. What gives you an advantage? How should that impact the proposal? Positioning. How will you position against the competition, customer, and opportunity? Will you do this strategically or will you make this up during proposal writing? Evaluation optimization. What will it take to win the proposal evaluation? What do you need to do to get the winning score? Risk mitigation. How will you mitigate and balance the risks related to bidding, winning, and performing? Do you know what those risks are? What matters to the customer about risk? Price to win. What price reflects the winning cost/value trade-off? Can you deliver at that price? Offering Design: What will the winning offer be? What information do you need in this area, where will you get it, what will you do with it, and how does that impact the process and stakeholders? Does any existing process account for them? What information do you need to design the winning offering? You can’t write a proposal about the winning offering until it’s been designed. You can’t design the winning offering without knowing the scope, requirements, and desired outcomes. Do you even know what information you need? Approaches. What technical and management approaches will you propose? Will you propose any other approaches (staffing, risk mitigation, quality, etc.)? What differentiates your approaches and makes them the customer’s best alternative? Can you describe the key features and benefits of your approaches so they can be validated ahead of writing about them in detail? Cost/value trade-offs. What are the cost/value trade-offs to be made? How do you propose making them? Will they enable you to hit the price to win? Why did you make the trade-offs that you made? What advantages or benefits are there for the customer? Requirements fulfillment. Will your offering fulfill all of the customer's wants, needs, and requirements? Have you itemized them? RFP compliance. Will your offering be fully compliant with the RFP? Basis of estimate. What will the basis of your estimates be? How will your estimates be calculated? Bill of materials. What materials will you need to obtain and price in order to deliver your offering? How will you source them? What are the advantages and customer benefits of your materials? Work breakdown structure. How will you break down the services you will provide?

Within the MustWin Process Architecture we divide the organizational layer into the following areas: Executive, Approaches, and Resources. The organizational layer forms a context that impacts your ability to win bids. But it can’t necessarily be accounted for as inputs to the process. It’s not part of the process flow, but it impacts every step of the process flow. It is roughly analogous to style in writing, only it’s the management style of the environment your process operates in. See also: The MustWin Process Architecture: How does it all fit together? Assessing the impact of the organizational layer on your process Assessing the impact of the input layer on your process Assessing the impact of the performance layer on your process Your win rate depends on adapting your process to this environment. Instead of steps and procedures, this will often take the form of communication and guidance to help stakeholders address these considerations. A simple checklist or table may be all it takes. However, failing to anticipate these considerations will likely mean win rate reducing delays, ad hoc decisions, and unnecessary conflict made against your proposal deadline. Executive: Decisions, oversight, and authority How do these impact the process and stakeholders? Does any existing process account for them? Decisions and approvals. Where are decisions required in the process? Who may make which decisions? Who participates? Under what circumstances? Are there any circumstances in which decision making is not communicating, managing, and monitoring expectations? Expectations exist in all directions. What should people expect from their stakeholders? What do the stakeholders expect? How are expectations communicated and managed? What happens when expectations aren’t met? Every step in every process should address expectation management. Strategic planning, positioning, and messaging. How are the organization's strategies articulated and how does this impact the pursuit and proposal processes? Defining quality standards. Is proposal quality defined? What is sufficient regarding quality? How is quality validated? How to assess the quality of completion should be built into every goal and every step of the process. Priority setting. What priorities impact processes and stakeholders? How should competing priorities be resolved? Conflict resolution. Can conflicts in resources, approach, policy, goals, or procedures be anticipated? Culture. What values, both declared and undeclared, impact the process and stakeholders? Is the organization risk averse or risk tolerant? Is quality really the priority people think it is? Is the organization mission focused? How will the organization’s culture impact the process and stakeholders, and how can the process impact the organization’s culture? Approaches: Processes and procedures that cross boundaries, set organizational standards, or are strategic in nature How do these impact the process and stakeholders? Does any existing process account for them? Bid/no bid decisions. Which pursuits will be bid, which will be canceled, and why? Insource vs outsource. Does the organization have a preference? How does that impact staffing the pursuit? Centralization vs decentralization. Where are decisions made? Where are resources located? Consistent and planned vs reactive and ad hoc. Does the organization do things carefully, predictably, or chaotically? Are processes defined or made up as people go along? Authoritarian vs collaborative. Are things done by individual assignment, decision, and approval, or are they done by groups and consensus? Structure, hierarchy, escalation, delegation. How the organization is structured is different from how it makes decisions. However, escalations and delegations are ways of mapping decision making to the organizational structure. They define an approach to decision making that is often absent but is incredibly helpful for resolving issues against a deadline. Remote vs collocation. Does the organization have preferences regarding how or when work is performed remotely vs being performed with staff collocated? Resources: Ensuring that the organization has the people, facilities, and equipment needed to function How do these impact the process and stakeholders? Does any existing process account for them? Oversight of logistics. Think of the resources requirements for winning the pursuit as a supply chain. How will the organization identify and supply the resources required? What stakeholders will be involved and what will they be required to do? What will happen as resource requirements change during the pursuit? Sourcing and strategic relationships. Once you know what resources you need, where will you find them? How will you source them? This often depends on strategic relationships, both inside and outside an organization. Budgets and finance. All resources have costs, although they may be accounted for in different ways. Within your organization, how are resource budgets defined and managed? This will impact the procedures you need to follow, not only to launch a pursuit, but also to make changes during a pursuit. Procedures for allocating resources. Once resources are identified and accounted for, they have to be assigned. But nearly all pursuits require support outside of the organization that controls the pursuit. The procedures required to allocate the resources that have been authorized impact your ability to staff and manage the pursuit.

Some companies are built on formal hierarchies, with decisions made by someone in charge. Other companies are consensus driven and work through collaboration. Neither approach is right or wrong. Depending on the circumstances, one can be a better fit. However, picking an approach that does not match the culture of the company is doomed to failure. Rather than deliberate over how to determine which approach will work in a given environment, there is a much simpler approach. If you have to ask, then you don’t have the authority. If you don’t have the authority, you have to manage by other means. If you can’t use the stick, then get good at using carrots. See also: Successful process implementation To the people you have to work with, fighting for control that you don’t have is both uncooperative and unsupportive. Not only does it not add value, but when it distracts you from adding enough value to make your approach easier than the alternative of ignoring it, control dramas can actually make your efforts a net negative. They add to the friction of doing proposals. I have never seen fighting for control work. Ever. Even in authoritative companies. If you win a battle today, you have to start over tomorrow. It creates a constant struggle. Either a person is recognized as the authority or they are not. And you do not become the authority by gaining a title or even simply by the blessing of The Powers That Be. If you are in a culture that is driven by authority, who has what authority will be clear. Or there will be constant struggles. Trying to be the authority when you are not is just annoying. And a little sad. If you can’t force people to do what you think they should, you should try getting them to want to do what you need. How do you do that when nobody wants to work on a proposal? Start by thinking about what they do want. Here are 5 things that proposal contributors often desire: To complete their assignments quickly. Focus on providing inspiration and guidance for how to complete their proposal assignments. Avoid orphaned work (anything that does not go into the delivered proposal). Make file management clear and easy. Focus on goals instead of procedures. Make your process an easier way to achieve their goals than figuring it all out on their own. To not get stuck in a situation where they don’t know what to do. People feel fear when they get assignments they don't know how to fulfill. Make your process self-explanatory. Help them understand what the RFP means. Help them figure out what to offer. Help them figure out what to write. Prevent them from ever getting stuck. To not waste their time and effort. Proposal contributors do not want to reinvent the wheel. This is what they think they are doing when they are asked to start writing from scratch on a topic they think has been addressed in previous proposals. But don’t recycle proposal text. Instead, convert past proposal copy into recipes that will enable writers to go from inventing what to write to applying what has been previously written to what it will take to win this proposal. Proposal contributors also hate to be told to start over. You should provide expectation management and guidance to prevent this. Providing writers with the same quality criteria that reviewers will use is a good way to achieve this. Proposal contributors also hate bidding a loser. They’ll go the extra mile for something they feel they can win. But they’ll burn out quickly on something they think shouldn’t be bid. Either make the bid rationale clear, or take it as input that your bid/no bid process filter needs to be changed. To have control over their own destiny. Get everyone to agree on the goals before moving forward. How those goals are achieved is secondary, so you can afford to be flexible about that. People want to be able to choose the approach they’ll take and juggle their priorities so long as they achieve the goal. Managing priorities becomes an issue when people know what they need to do but they can’t manage their time. Transparency, coordination, and helpful alternatives work better than pressure. Things slip when people haven't bought into the goal and are just paying it lip service because it's easier than complaining. To create a better future. A proposal creates opportunities for future work. The approaches proposed impact that future work environment. Writing the proposal is writing the future. Also, seeing a continuously improving proposal environment helps people accept today’s challenges if they can trust that tomorrow will be better. Guide them to a better future in order to give them a reason to care. Every instance I can remember of people being resistant to working on a proposal involved one or more of these items. If you feel like people need to be forced it’s probably because your process isn’t meeting their needs. So flip that around. How can you change your process to better address these five things? What if you threw your process out and started over making these five things your top priority? What would that process look like? This is what we did when we wrote the MustWin Process. It’s goal driven. It provides options. It anticipates things that lead to wasted effort and seeks to resolve them early. It prevents users from getting stuck by ensuring that the information required to complete each task is delivered to the person performing that task. It manages expectations so people know what they are getting into. It provides new ways to monitor progress. But most importantly of all, it adapts so you can get just the right balance between authority and collaboration for your environment.

In a past life I helped a company create a new proposal department. The company was part of a billion dollar government contractor. They had a history of business units not accepting process guidance from the proposal group. It’s not an uncommon problem. Does it sound familiar? When people choose to opt in, you start the proposal with half of the battle for process acceptance already won. The old proposal group kept saying things like, “If they’d only submit their drafts on time” or “if they’d only listen to us.” What they meant was “If they’d only do what they’re told.” They thought the solution was for someone to force contributors to meet the deadlines they set. They didn’t realize that they were just creating a control drama that they were always going to lose. Their response was to try to fight harder for control. It didn’t work. And while it took years, they ended up losing their jobs over it because they came to be seen as uncooperative instead of being value-added. I was asked to create a replacement for the old, uncooperative proposal group. There was so much negative history that people had lost perspective. I looked at it as an expectation management problem. The business units had the wrong expectations for what it takes to win a proposal, and the proposal group had the wrong expectations for their role as a value-added support function. The first thing I addressed was what the business units could expect from the proposal group. This is different from what the proposal group expects from the business units. As I made notes, the list grew beyond what I could fit on a sheet of paper. It was important to me to keep it to one page since I knew it would be difficult to get their attention. So I turned it into a poster. I could present it during meetings and I posted it in the proposal department. One day we were discussing an important proposal that was coming up and how we should approach it. I decided to give the executive sponsor a choice: We can work together in collaboration, with everybody giving their best efforts and treat the process as a set of recommendations. Or: We can ensure that you know what to expect at every step. You will know what each person is expected to do, including when and how, and who will make every decision. If you select this option you will be committing, both personally and for your staff, to following the process. And we will be committing to meeting the expectations it defines. We will do things by the book. Please examine it before you decide whether to commit to it. Whichever way you decide, we’ll work just as hard to win the proposal. What I learned from studying people's reactions to this approach is that executives desperately want to know what to expect. They’re used to being let down and constantly having to fight fires. When you communicate clear choices like “If you want this, here is how to get it” and then don’t try to force them, they no longer react as if in a confrontation or a power struggle. Taking this approach requires that you organize and document your process differently from the way most people have theirs. Instead of a flow chart of activity or a data flow diagram, the process needs to show expectations and fulfillment. You can’t get away with merely having a way of doing things. You not only must create the book in order to do things by the book, but you must be able to follow your own book. And they must be able to follow it as well. When you commit to fulfilling expectations, you want them documented and you really don’t want to have to walk back your commitment. To better understand process acceptance, see also: How the MustWin process can enable you to achieve process acceptance Introduction to the MustWin Process If you think you need more authority to force people to follow your proposal process, you’re doing something wrong The one-step proposal process? When does too much proposal process hurt your proposals? This experience was very helpful when I wrote the CapturePlanning.com MustWin Process. Every activity that it defines addresses who has the lead responsibility, who plays supporting roles, and what needs to be accomplished. It is goal driven and goal fulfillment can be validated. When you look at it as a whole, it becomes easy to say “If we do it this way, you know what you are going to get.” It is designed so the process itself can start with review and acceptance by the Executive Sponsor of the pursuit. By giving people a chance to opt out you really don’t stand to lose much. If they opt out, it just means doing things the same way you are doing now. Only you have explicitly told them that all they can count on is your best efforts. But when they opt in, then they have committed to following the process formally and you start the proposal with half of the battle for process acceptance already won. And while that doesn’t guarantee they won’t change their minds, it’s the fighting chance you need to be successful. Just make sure that they have a positive experience following your process, so they choose it again the next time. Be careful what you wish for, you might just get it…

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What makes a great proposal process isn’t the steps. It’s not even the functionality. It’s the ability to anticipate problems and maximize the effectiveness of contributors. The questions below won’t tell you what steps you should have. They won’t even tell you what to do. But they will point out when you need to change because you have problems that aren’t being addressed by your process. See also: Steps If a particular individual is required to execute the process, you do not have a process. You have a personalized way of doing things. Do people show up prepared? Do you agree on who is responsible for winning and who is responsible for producing? Do all stakeholders agree on what it will take to win? Are all stakeholders aware of the bid decision rationale? Is everyone on the same page regarding how proposal quality is defined? Do all participants and stakeholders articulate the same priorities? Are bid strategies and the design of your offering completed and validated separately from writing? Do you discover whether what you intend to offer is affordable and competitive before you start writing? Do you ever have to go back and change the writing because of what you discovered when putting together the final pricing? Can you articulate what it will take to win before you start writing? Are people spending more time talking or writing? Why? Do writers know what they need to do to pass the draft review? Do bid strategies change after writing starts? Does what you are offering change after writing starts? Do teaming partners complete assignments on time and with sufficient quality? Do people get stuck? Are review comments based on written quality criteria? Do reviews typically discover the same problems? Do you routinely ignore review comments? Do you have the right balance between authoritarian and collaborative management for this environment? Do all contributors have the information they need? Do all contributors have the skills they need? Are risks identified and mitigated, or ignored? Do problems linger? Is it clear who should make which decisions? When a problem occurs, do you have to figure out who can make any decisions needed? Are behaviors negatively impacted by budgets and accounting? Do you manage your proposals like an investment? Are assignments self-explanatory? Are you filling gaps? Why are there any gaps? Are things snowballing towards the back end? Do you focus on goals or procedures? Can contributors articulate the goal of every step? Is it clear what contributions need to be made and by whom? Do people know how to make their contributions? Is it easy for people to make their contributions? Do your staff resources cover your functional requirements with sufficient depth? Has the amount of change been minimized? Has the amount of effort required to achieve the goals been minimized? Are proposal staff resisting change more than your stakeholders? Are you providing the right options to match the circumstances you face? Are you looking for tools to get people to buy in instead of adapting to achieve buy-in? Are you sacrificing win rate to lower costs or effort? Are you introducing more risk than you are mitigating, especially at the back end? Do you have a planned mechanism for incorporating debrief feedback and lessons learned? How do you know when the proposal is complete? Are you making decisions based on the impact to your win rate? Now, take this list and add any recurring problems that you should look out for and solve. Just be careful. The solution to “people won’t meet their deadlines” might be “do a better job of content planning” or “design the offering before you start writing.” Similarly, problems during draft reviews might be a result of not validating your bid strategies prior to writing. If people won’t participate in planning before writing, you might be making planning too difficult. What’s the least you need in your plan, and can you script it or turn it into a checklist? The MustWin Process Architecture can also help give you a 360-degree view of how everything from culture to resources to management fits together. The model helps you to make sure that you are addressing everything that will contribute to your success and maximize your win rate. It may also help to focus on rolling out small bite-sized changes. Instead of reengineering your entire process at once, try solving specific problems by delivering the information needed to achieve your process goals and helping stakeholders to maximize their effectiveness. The steps will work themselves out. We help companies make process improvements that pay for themselves by increasing your win rate. Get our insights, make sure you haven't overlooked anything, solve problems you thought you had to live with, and win more of what you bid. Sometimes we just provide an outside opinion on what you have, sometimes we help you plan the changes with you doing all the work, and sometimes we play an active role. It all depends on your needs. Click here to get on our calendar so we can discuss your needs.

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Weekly Modules: Weekly module links are live when they are red and bold. You cannot access a module until the link to it is live. Week 1: Click here to access the Week 1 module Week 2: Click here to access the Week 2 module Week 3: Click here to access the Week 3 module Week 4: Click here to access the Week 4 module Week 5: Click here to access the Week 5 module Week 6: Click here to access the Week 6 module Week 7: Click here to access the Week 7 module Week 8: Click here to access the Week 8 module Week 9: Click here to access the Week 9 module Week 10: Click here to access the Week 10 module Week 11: Click here to access the Week 11 module Week 12: Click here to access the Week 12 module Hinz Academy Portal: Click here to access the 2019 Academy 1 Portal Hinz Academy Quiz/Exam Portal: Click here to access the Quiz/Exam Portal Your user id is your Hinz/21-rw email address and your initial password is Welcome1 Please change your password after you enter the Quiz/Exam portal the first time - to change your password, click on your name in the upper right-hand corner and select "change password" General Questions Post your general questions here. Helpful tips are posted here. Billion Dollar Graphics Click here to access the "Billion Dollar Graphics cheat sheet" Proposal Templates Folder on Hinz Academy SharePoint: Click here to access proposal templates like the measles chart template and the past performance template.