Carl Dickson

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 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? 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. 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. 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 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. 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.

Process implementation is only one part of one component of everything that goes into enabling an organization to maximize its win rate. The chart above provides an architecture that can help you put the proposal process into context. This architecture matches the environment proposals operate in better then by grouping things by organizational boundaries like business development, capture, and proposal management. The issues shown in the chart have as much impact on your success as how you conduct business development, capture, and proposal management. This architecture looks at things functionally instead of sequentially or politically. Instead of helping you define departments, it helps you develop an integrated approach to addressing the issues, regardless of how your company structures its org chart or labels its staff. Context matters. Proposals are created in a complex environment. Proposals need management. Proposals need input that comes from outside the proposal function. Proposals need an entire organization as a foundation. But where do you start? How does it all fit together? We group these things into three layers: The organizational layer. This layer has an executive component, an approach component, and a resources component. They define the environment you must operate in to manage your proposals. The input layer. The components of this layer include information, strategy, and offering design to categorize the things you need to know before you can start writing your proposal. The performance layer. The components of this layer include proposal management, proposal writing, and quality validation. This is where the proposal is developed. These layers put the issues that impact your win rate into context. They require an organizational response. Many of them simply can’t be resolved by someone operating in the proposal management box. But if you are in the proposal management box, this chart can point you to where you need to interface, and what you need other people to address, so that the proposals that come out of the performance layer have a much better chance of winning.

One of the things that I’ve learned by authoring the MustWin Process and having personally been involved with countless process implementations at companies reengineering their proposal processes is that context matters. Much of what goes into winning proposals occurs outside of the process. Consider how decisions get made and what expectations people have outside of the proposal. How is the proposal impacted by the company’s strategic planning and positioning efforts? Who sets quality standards? Who manages priorities? Is the company centralized or decentralized? Authoritarian or collaborative? How is authority delegated to proposal stakeholders? How much work is performed remotely vs. colocation? How much effort is internal vs. outsourced? What roles do teaming partners play? What should we bid and what should we not bid? The myth that there is only one proposal process or that we all follow the same one is simply not true. Issues like these not only impact how your process gets implemented, they also impact your win rate. If you focus on your proposal process without also focusing on organizational issues like these, you not only can’t maximize your chances of a successful implementation, you can’t maximize your win rate. And if your company depends on its proposals for its growth, your win rate is one of the most important measures in the entire company. In addition to the organizational issues, a successful proposal effort requires input. Quite a lot of it. What will it take to win? What insight do we have about the customer? What should we offer? What cost/value trade-offs will we strike? What differentiates our offering? How should we position against the competitive environment? What risks do we face and how will we mitigate them? People working on the proposal need these answers before they can start writing. These questions need to be asked and answered before the proposal process starts, not after. You can't build a proposal around the answers if you don't have them, and you can't do it by pasting in answers after it's written. Then there’s the proposal performance layer. Process is only one component. What about your management model? Preparations before you start? Assignments and progress tracking? Expectation management? Issue management? Tools, libraries, and resources? Training? Self-assessment tools? Quality validation? Proposal management requires an organization and not just one person with a title. If the organizational layer and information input layer are as important as the performance layer, and if process is only one component of the performance layer, then could you be putting too much emphasis on process? This is a strange thing for a process geek like me to say. However, I’m not advocating ignoring process. I’m advocating giving attention to the organizational and input layers as well so that the proposal process has what it needs to be successful. It’s easy for proposal specialists to retreat into an area they have some control over. But proposal success depends on getting outside the proposal and making sure the organization can deliver the information needed for proposal efforts to succeed. It’s all about win rate. Who at the CxO level is primarily responsible for your company’s win rate? If it’s not at the top of the priority stack for someone at that level, then it’s not a priority for your company. Pawning it off to the VP of Business Development makes it a sales issue and not an organizational priority. If all of your revenue comes from proposals, then win rate is an organizational issue. If you are a lowly proposal specialist with no voice at the CxO level, you may focus on production instead of winning and end up being a low-value asset to the company. Or you can delve into the mathematics of win rate analysis and begin educating The Powers That Be on how their success depends on those numbers and tie your value to the company's revenue and success. If all you do is evangelize process, you won’t get very far. Evangelizing about process is basically telling other people what to do. However, educating people about win rate analysis and how their growth potential depends on winning enables you to have a far more profound impact on the entire company. After that, everything else falls into place. This is so important that I’m building a performance improvement model for integrating the organizational, input, and performance layers. Take all those considerations above. Now draw a picture showing how they are related. That’s what your company needs in order to make sense of it all and maximize your probability of winning. It’s what your company needs to have an integrated approach to the proposal process. And it’s being added to the MustWin Process documentation that PropLIBRARY Subscribers have access to.

You can build quality into every activity that’s part of producing a proposal. But you can’t do it with milestone based reviews. With Proposal Quality Validation the emphasis changes from when to review, to what you review. You can apply quality validation to more than just the document. Try taking a deep look at the risks and issues you face in every activity related to producing the proposal. Don’t just think in terms of checklists. Think in terms of what needs to be done correctly to win. Then think about how to validate every action and outcome to increase your probability of winning. Creating quality criteria to validate these activities formalizes your approach to proposal management. Instead of relying on people to just know what to do and to remember all the details, by creating quality criteria for activities and outcomes, you gain several benefits: Reliability Lower risk Higher probability of winning Lower costs In the same way that giving your proposal quality criteria to your writers helps them achieve success with the first draft, having quality criteria for your pursuit activities and outcomes helps the people engaged in the pursuit be successful. This is much better than finding out later that things weren’t done well and trying to recover before you lose. Start by dividing your activities into activities that produce an outcome or a deliverable. Then consider what must happen for each to be successful. Activity before the RFP is released Think about the issues you face pursuing a lead before the RFP is released. What needs to happen to be ready to win at RFP release? Can you validate that your preparations are putting you in position to win the proposal? Here are some questions that can drive your pre-RFP quality criteria: Do you know what information you need to write the winning proposal? Do you know what constitutes a qualified lead? Under what circumstances should you cancel a pursuit? Are you making sufficient progress to be ready to win at RFP release? Do you have the right pursuit strategies? Do you know what it will take to win the pursuit? What should you offer? What issues could reduce your probability of winning? Are the risks mitigated? You can use criteria like these to validate whether you will be prepared to win at RFP release. Activity during proposal startup Proposal startup is mostly about quickly implementing plans. But doing it quickly does no good if the plans are not valid. Validation during proposal startup is how you make sure you’re not going down the wrong path. Is everything that will be needed to start the proposal ready? Have all issues that arose during the pre-RFP phase been resolved? Do you know what it will take to win? Do you have the plans you need? Do your plans address everything they should? Do your resources match your requirements? Do the plans strike the right balance between thoroughness and speed? What issues could reduce your probability of winning? Are the risks mitigated? Does the intended approach to managing the proposal meet the needs of all stakeholders? You need criteria like these to ensure your plans are validated before you implement them. Otherwise you are following invalid plans and your win rate will suffer. Activity during Proposal Content Planning Creating a Proposal Content Plan is necessary if you want to make creating a proposal based on what it will take to win an intentional act instead of guesswork. Think about what is necessary to achieve what it will take to win in writing: Will the outline meet the customer’s expectations? Does the content plan make it clear where all of the customer’s requirements should be addressed? Does the content plan sufficiently address what it will take to win? If followed, will the content plan produce the desired proposal? Will the content plan meet the needs of both writers and reviewers? Are the quality criteria for the proposal sufficient? Has the time for planning been properly balanced against the time to write the proposal? What issues during proposal writing could impact your probability of winning? Do the instructions in the Proposal Content Plan mitigate those risks? You need quality criteria like these to validate that you have the right Proposal Content Plan. Activity during proposal writing During proposal writing, quality validation can be applied both to tracking progress and to assessing whether the goal of writing a proposal that reflects what it will take to win has been accomplished. This phase is where your plans get executed. Making sure that you follow through on great planning with great execution requires oversight. And oversight can be validated. When you go from planning to writing, think about what you can do to make sure that writing is successful. Is the writing making sufficient progress to meet the deadline? Which Proposal Content Plan instructions have been completed and which remain? Have the writers self-assessed their sections against the proposal quality criteria? Were the instructions in the Proposal Content Plan followed? Does what was written fulfill the proposal quality criteria? You need quality criteria like these to prevent writing from being a big unknown until you see the draft. Activity during final production and submission The big challenge during final proposal production is to complete the proposal by the deadline without introducing any mistakes. A high level of quality surveillance is needed to ensure that no mistakes are introduced. How do you know if you have enough quality surveillance to mitigate your risks during final production? Here are some quality criteria that can be used to assess your efforts: What is required for the proposal to be ready to submit? Have all issues from prior phases been resolved? Is the plan for finalizing the proposal sufficient? How will the proposal be completed without introducing errors? What risks can be anticipated during final production and submission? How will they be mitigated? Quality criteria like these help you assess whether your quality surveillance methods are sufficient. The draft proposal is not the only thing that needs quality validation Quality criteria help you determine whether the draft proposal reflects what it will take to win and get everyone on the same page regarding what a quality proposal is. But what about your plans for how you are going to prepare the proposal? Quality criteria can also be applied to those plans and provide a way for stakeholders to validate that the approaches that will be used to manage the proposal are the right approaches. This is how you avoid getting into the middle of a proposal and finding out that the management methods are not a match for your organization or this pursuit. And avoiding that is well worth the effort. Think of applying Proposal Quality Validation to your proposal management model as an insurance policy. Having insurance that you have the right management model can really pay off for both the company and the people involved in the proposal.

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About this file This file is free. As in beer. It contains a wealth of lessons learned the hard way. It contains things I wish I'd understood about proposal quality at the start of my career. It contains the key insights you need to reengineer how you review your proposals. It will enable you to take a step back from how things are usually done and discover what proposal quality really is, so you can change how you do things to properly achieve it. I'm passing it on to you in the hope that we can finally shift the way people do proposals out of the Stone Age. Take what's here, put it to work, and let me know how it improves your win rate. And if you add to it, enhance it, or find better ways, please share those as well. This page is for downloading the PDF file. It's a large file, at 7.7Mb. You can see the file without downloading it here. From the introduction Since 2001, I have published over a thousand articles on business and proposal development. This document is not like any of them. If you want process, methodology, structure and training, you should visit PropLIBRARY and read those articles. If you want deep insight to ponder that?s a little too honest and bordering on insubordinate, keep reading. I?m going to share what I?ve learned about what matters the most from doing all that writing. And it?s not the procedures we follow. Key excerpts from the license page You are free to give this file to as many people as you'd like. Share it with your whole company. Or other companies. Use part or all of it in your training materials. ? Current version of this file: 1.0

You can't follow the steps to create a great proposal, because the steps are different every time. They aren't even steps. At best we talk about phases. But even those change, overlap, or get redefined every time. That's why most companies really just have a way of doing their proposals that isn't legitimately a process. If a process requires a certain person to run it, it's not really a process. Writing a winning proposal is really based on a flow of information, from lead to submission. Unfortunately, the information required for a proposal does not arrive in sequence. And you can never get all the information you’d like to have, or know when you'll find out something new that changes what you need to do. Consider: Your proposal strategies are often built as much on what you don’t know as on what you do know. Because the customer rules all, you do a lot of reacting to their whims. They have more control over the flow of information needed to prepare the proposal than you do. Your primary management tool is expectation management so you can attempt to keep everyone on the same page, even though they all have different priorities. You spend most of your time solving problems, which occur unpredictably. You try to compensate with planning, but that's really just figuring out what needs to be done about all the things that are different on this proposal. Proposal writing usually involves different people, writing about different things, with different strategies, on a different schedule, under different circumstances, often for a different customer with different needs, preferences, and approaches to decision making. You hold reviews for quality assurance, where you seek quality with a moving target and mostly subjective quality criteria that you learn about after writing instead of before it. You go into formatting and production where the input you need is always late and everything breaks in ways that are different from last time. Meanwhile, you're competing where being number two is just being the first loser and winning is a higher priority than following the same procedures you did last time. Just because there is a pattern to how your proposals go, does not mean that it can be reduced to repeatable procedures. You can't impose order on something that is inherently not sequential. Steps get repeated an uncertain number of times. Routine steps might not be applicable on a given day. New steps frequently have to be invented. The proposal process is not really about the steps, and if your process is based on sequential steps it is likely to fail and even more likely to be ignored. This is a major reason why companies don’t follow their own process. If your proposal process is based on steps, you should think about reengineering it into something that guides people to winning a proposal instead of something they are expected to follow like an assembly line. Goals are better than steps What you need is a process based on goals instead of steps. Your needs and what you have to work with change from proposal to proposal. But what you are trying to accomplish doesn’t change. This means you can build your process around your goals for what you are trying to accomplish. Accomplishing the things you need to do to win is far more important than having repeatable steps. You can arrange your goals so that achieving the first goal sets up what you need to begin work on the logical follow-on goal. You can do things in whatever sequence makes sense in order to achieve the ultimate goal of submitting a winning proposal. For example, you don’t need a cross-reference matrix to win a proposal. Sometimes you need a cross-reference matrix. It depends on how well the RFP is written and whether the various sections are in synch. And yet many processes mandate a cross-reference matrix be created just after RFP release. What you really need is a proposal outline that reflects the customer’s expectations and that addresses RFP requirements where the customer expects to find them addressed. The very specific and labor-intensive way you create a proposal cross-reference matrix may get left behind when you have an RFP that has an unusual structure that breaks your cross-reference template. Nonetheless, the goal of having "an outline that reflects the customer's expectations and that addresses RFP requirements where the customer expects to find them" remains the same. Achieving the goal is what matters and not whether or not, or what format you use, or how you might or might not prepare a cross-reference matrix. A cross-reference matrix might remain the preferred way to accomplish the goal, but there is room for deviation or improvement so long as the goal is met. Having the right goal helps you decide what you should do when the steps written into the process do not apply. It’s how you know when your steps are applicable and when you need to be innovative. How do you know when you have the right goals? You should add to or change the way you’ve articulated your goals if: You find yourself in a circumstance that none of your goals addresses A problem disrupts your ability to achieve a goal A previous goal was followed, but didn’t deliver what is needed for the current goal Participants couldn’t figure out how to achieve the goal A goal is telling people how to do things instead of what to accomplish Careful wording of your goals can imply what needs to be done and even imply how to know when you’ve done something correctly. A good way to test your proposal process goals is to ask if you can delete or combine any of them, without reducing the quality of the proposal. You want your list of goals to be as short as possible. Likewise, you want to minimize the number of goals that have sub-goals. Achieving the right goals keeps you heading on the right path. Being goal-driven is more important than being process-driven. Having a goal-driven process gives you the best of both worlds.

Proposals really aren’t about management. Managers operate defined processes with resources and tools to achieve a defined outcome. Proposals are about adapting against a deadline and figuring things out. Proposals require leaders. If you hand me a document and ask me to format it according the RFP specifications and give me sufficient resources and time, I can manage that. But if you hand me an RFP with structural and interpretation problems and tell me to figure out how to create something that will beat all competitors using resources that are not trained and only partially available with no customer insight, no one can manage that. It requires leadership. It requires reinventing how you do things in order to fill the gaps and solve the problems you face. One big reason why companies don’t usually have a documented proposal process that they follow, is that no one in the company has figured out how to document a process that survives the real world. You probably don’t actually follow most of what you’ve been taught about proposal management for the same reason. As much as they may try, proposal managers do not usually start from having set procedures and overseeing their implementation. They start by looking for gaps, asking questions, and assessing risks so they figure out what procedures are applicable: Can you figure out how to interpret the RFP's instructions? You can’t create the outline the customer expects if you can’t figure out how to cross-reference the things they’ve said in the RFP. Most RFPs make this somewhere between difficult and impossible. Can you figure out the customer’s approach to making a selection? You can’t help them see why your proposal is their best alternative if you don’t understand how they’ll make that assessment. Can you figure out the customer’s preferences? You need this to interpret the RFP. You need this to know what to offer. You need this to know how to present what you are offering. You can’t write from the customer’s perspective if you don’t know what that is. What kind of proposal manager do you need to be? Collaborative or authoritarian? Process driven or adaptive? Administrative or innovative? Manager or leader? Teacher or overseer? Producer or strategic visionary? Producer or winner? Different companies need different things from their proposal managers. Where are your resource gaps? You never have enough resources or the right kinds. But which problems are solvable? What should you do about those gaps? This applies to staffing, facilities, equipment, budget, and other resources. What are your stakeholders' expectations? Are there any disconnects between what you think needs to be done and what your stakeholders expect? Do you want to implement a collaborative review process? Or written quality criteria? Plan before you write? Will your stakeholders go along with that? Do they have needs that you need to incorporate in your plans? How do decisions get made? There are hundreds of decisions and trade-offs made on a typical proposal. Who will be involved in those decisions and how do you get them made quickly? How will deadlines be enforced? This is a simple question to ask. But the answers are so very complicated. Can you replace underperforming staff working on the proposal? Can you balance competing priorities for them? How are you going to track, mitigate, monitor, and respond to risks during the proposal? Will you do it formally? Informally? Make it up as you go along? Are you going to get involved in the writing? This corresponds with whether you will have or take responsibility for winning. Are you pushing paper or setting the standards for quality? Can you manage the proposal and take a writing assignment? Sometimes the proposal function is organized so that there is someone, typically a capture manager, focused on winning. And a review process that determines quality. And sometimes a company just says “we need you to manage the proposal for us.” Being a proposal manager is not a role until it’s defined. It’s probably several roles. But they can vary. It’s one more thing to figure out. Now. Add those up and create an outline, schedule, and list of assignments that survives for more than a few days. You might have 24 hours to figure this all out. Then people will start changing their minds. Or the customer will change the RFP. Or you’ll learn something new that changes strategies or approaches. Or people will underperform. Can you anticipate these things? Or do you just have to react when they occur? When we think of improving our win rates, we usually think in terms of improving our procedures, information, and techniques. Another thing you can do to improve your win rate is to make sure that problems are solvable. Huge amounts of time and money are wasted on proposals by not addressing problems quickly or effectively. Sooner or later your proposal manager is going to hit a brick wall and not have permission, resources, or the knowledge to solve a problem. Those tend to be the problems that are the most important to solve.

Many proposal problems have more to do with the people involved than the document. Creating a document is easy. Creating a document against a deadline with a bunch of other people all with their own ideas about creating a document is hard. How do you get everyone to agree on: Who does what? What their expectations of each other are? What the goals are? How to maximize win probability and ROI? How to do things during proposal development? What to do about the risks and trade-offs? How decisions should be made? How to tell if things are done well? What if you applied Proposal Quality Validation to answering these questions? In quality criteria. What criteria define quality for an approach to working through other people on a proposal? Instead of forming opinions and debating them ad nauseam, ask yourself what criteria can be used to assess whether a process is effective and appropriate. Discuss, argue, come together, and agree on the criteria before you move on to the techniques you think will fulfill those criteria. Otherwise your review is nothing but a subjective opinion-fest, including your own opinions, and the proposal process is based on organizational influence and power instead of reason. When you determine the quality criteria for what makes an effective proposal management process, people will understand not only what must be done, but why things must be done that way. Just remember, this is a review. That means that the reviewers determine what needs to be fixed or changed. One of the reasons this solves problems is that instead of asking for their buy-in, you get it without asking. You surface their concerns so you can resolve them. With their concerns resolved, the only thing left to do is create a great proposal, with everyone aware of how that will be accomplished.

Typically, the proposal process involves creating a plan for what to write, and then writing it. But what sits in between your Proposal Content Plan and the draft proposal? See also: The MustWin Process The MustWin Performance Support Tool Proposal Content Planning Proposal Quality Validation PropLIBRARY subscription information The term “proposal prototyping” was introduced to us by Carrie Ratcliff. After we showed her what the MustWin Performance Support Tool does and started discussing the things we’re adding to it, she said it was “proposal prototyping.” At the time it wasn’t our goal to create a “proposal prototyping” tool. We weren’t even sure there was a need for it. But Carrie turned out to be right, because proposal writing isn’t just one step. It makes sense because, in reality, you don’t just go from the plan to the finished draft any more than you go from specifications to software that’s ready to ship in one step. A prototype is what sits in between. Proposal prototyping enables you to pull together what you have, identify what you don’t, and describe what you are going to do about it so that stakeholders can envision the proposal before it’s created. For proposals this means going beyond adding instructions to your content plan. It means bringing in examples, reuse content, relevant data, and even links to information sources. It means creating something that is part document mock-up and part instructions for writers. The instructions tell you want to do with all the ingredients. But you can lay everything out and see how it’s connected. You can see what the proposal will be. This is what a prototype does for you. It lets you see the product you are trying to build, before you actually manufacture it. Proposal prototyping can lower your risks by enabling stakeholders to see what the proposal will be. Proposal prototypes can be built by moving forward from your Proposal Content Plan in a series of steps intended to test the waters. Doing this in an online tool like we are building makes it so much easier, because everything is linked together and referenceable. But you can implement the idea without special software. Proposal prototyping can also be a part of your Proposal Quality Validation plan. You can use the prototype to get an early validation of what you intend to do in the proposal. You can think of proposal prototyping as a way to experiment before committing to an approach on your proposal. You can test concepts, formats, positioning, strategies, wording, and more. You can use a proposal prototype to validate the approach you plan to take to creating the proposal before committing to the time and effort of completing a draft. Creating a proposal prototype is not required by the MustWin Process, but it is an option you can use to enhance your Proposal Content Plans and integrate with your Proposal Quality Validation plans. We’re building the capability into the MustWin Performance Support Tool and can’t wait to see how people put it to work. 

In certain service sectors, capabilities and corporate experience are talked about as if they are the same thing. While they are related, they are not the same. And they should not be written about in your proposals as if they are the same. A company can have experience in an area, but not have any capability in it. How’s that? Staffing. Resources. Infrastructure. A company may not have the other things necessary for experience to be a capability. Experience is evidence of a capability, but not the capability itself. And it may not be enough evidence. It’s easy to overlook this when some RFPs fixate on experience as the primary means to evaluate capability. But understanding the subtle distinctions enables you to write a more credible proposal. What makes your capabilities credible? In addition to experience, it might be also having: Available staff with the right expertise The resources required to perform The infrastructure, equipment, or locations needed Established and specialized policies, processes, methodologies, quality approaches, risk identification and mitigation techniques, escalation procedures, training, etc. Likewise, you may have all these things, but if you don’t have experience, do you have a credible capability? It is possible to establish a capability with no experience. It is possible to establish a capability with nothing more than experience. Sometimes you don’t need much more to establish a capability than a mere claim to it. But credibility is another thing. And credibility depends on the customer. What does the customer think a credible capability requires? Does it say in the RFP? If it doesn’t, then what do you want to claim and how do you position that claim against your competitors? If the RFP doesn’t define what a credible capability is, you have an opportunity to teach the customer and ghost your competitors. But first ask yourself if capabilities matter at all to the customer. In indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity (ID/IQ) bids, the customer may be interested in capabilities to meet undetermined future needs. But in other bids, it’s not your capabilities that matter, it’s your ability to credibly deliver the specifications provided in the RFP. Only. Companies like to brag about their capabilities, even when the customer didn’t ask for them and even when a formal evaluation might not consider them at all. So let the RFP be your guide. What does the customer want you to talk about, what can you add to make that credible, and how do you position your response against other potential competitors? After all, this isn’t a brochure, it’s a proposal.