Carl Dickson

Ingredients What steps will you take to get ready to start the project? Will you take steps to prepare before the contract is even awarded? What is the schedule for implementing the plan and its duration? What hardware, software, equipment, purchases, procedures, and staffing that you will put into place during the Transition Period? What staff that you will use to implement the Transition Plan? What will you require from the outgoing contractor (if any) or from the client? What transition risks do you anticipate? What certifications, sign-offs, or acknowledgements will be required to recognize when the transition period is over and performance at full specifications begins? Approaches An important goal for most Transition Plans is to minimize the disruption for the customer. Another important goal is to minimize the length of the Transition Period. The customer, after all, wants the proposed offering, and typically wants it right away. When you are taking over from another contractor, you may need to make assumptions regarding the transition of documents, equipment, etc. It can be difficult to account for knowledge transfer and getting up to speed, especially if you are counting on an outgoing contractor. Nonetheless, this is what you have to do if you want to beat the current contractor. If your project involves a large number of staff, you may need time to recruit and hire them. If there is an outgoing contractor, you may be able to hire some or all of their project staff. Sometimes the customer will want to retain the existing staff and sometimes they won’t. You should work closely with your customer to determine which staff you will try to retain and which you will replace. You may or may not be able to achieve the outgoing contractor’s cooperation when hiring project staff. Strategies The best way to minimize disruption and the length of the transition period is to do as much of it as possible before the office contract start. Some of the things you may be able to do before the contract start: Speak with the customer regarding transfer of documents and other information. Create draft written procedures. Identify all staff by name. Hire staff (at risk) or at least execute contingency hire letters or letters of understanding with prospective employees. Purchase equipment (at risk) or at least source equipment providers. If you really want to win, it is a good idea to do as many of these things as possible before the proposal is even submitted. This way your proposal shows that you are ready to start with little or no disruption. If you are the incumbent contractor, then you should point out that you will not need a Transition Period. If the RFP provides for one anyway, point out that you will be able to take advantage of it to make improvements, while ensuring no disruption or break in continuity of service.

Ingredients Describe your organization, staffing, tools, and resources for: Human Resources Accounting/Finance Payroll Contracts Legal Information Technology Call center Shipping/Receiving How will the customer benefit from the support each can provide to the project? Approaches Corporate infrastructures are assets that may be worth pointing out to your clients, especially when they differentiate your proposal from the competition. When a particular project will rely on your infrastructures, you can describe them to make the case that you have thought through the needs of the project and offer an integrated solution. If you are a large business, it may not be newsworthy that you have dedicated human resources staff. However, if you are a small business, it may reinforce the credibility of your claims regarding being able to staff a large project. When describing your infrastructures, it is important to do more than simply identify them. You should describe how the client will benefit from your having them in place. A Human Resources department may enable you to do a better job of recruiting and retaining staff. Your accounting system may enable you to ensure accurate invoicing. In-house legal counsel may enable you to streamline union negotiations. Infrastructures also lend themselves to illustration. You can use a simple organization chart, you can show a pyramid with the project supported by the infrastructures, or you can use a pie chart to show that the combination of infrastructures plus the project team are required to deliver a total solution.

Ingredients What resources and supplies you will need or provide? What is their manufacture, delivery, and/or storage method? What resources uniquely qualify you for this project? How will the customer benefit from your resources? Are any of your resources exclusive to you and not available from other bidders? What resources and supplies will the customer need to provide? How will resources and supplies be procured? How will resources be allocated across the project’s timeline and locations? What is the supply chain required for you to make deliveries? How you will manage the supply chain logistics? How will you manage the supply chain finances? What supplier supplier relationships are necessary? What will you keep in inventory and how you will stock it? How and where you will warehouse the inventory? What software, tools, or tracking systems you will use to manage the supply chain? Approaches The supply chain can be illustrated with a flow chart. A table can also be used to itemize the resources and show quantities, source, inventory, client benefits, etc. Strategies This section can be written to demonstrate a key theme that you think is important to the client, for example: Immediate availability Low cost Reliability Low risk Any illustrations, tables, or narrative should enhance the credibility of the theme. If you have capabilities and resources beyond those required, you may wish to point them out for added value.

Ingredients Where, when, and how will they need to participate in the project? What will be the customer’s role and responsibilities on the project? What decisions will the customer have to make? Will the customer be required to participate in any reviews? What resources or commitments will be required from the customer for the project? Will you need access to any customer information, systems, facilities, or people? How will you manage customer expectations? What you will do to encourage a sense of partnership with your customer? Approaches Customer involvement is usually not a separate section. You may choose to call it out under its own subheading if your approach is an advantage. Or you might simply address it within the narrative everywhere that it is relevant. Strategies Some customers want to be involved in every aspect of a project; some want no involvement. Some want to outsource an entire function, others want to outsource only certain activities. This makes addressing customer involvement tricky. You can maximize their involvement, or minimize it, but the only way to know the best approach is to know you customer. If you don’t, it may be best to take a flexible approach that balances the two.

Ingredients What tools/methodologies will you use for: development, design, workflow, configuration management, process automation/management, program management, collaboration, budgeting, record keeping, time keeping, tracking systems, customer relationship management, and document/knowledge management, etc. How does what you plan to use align with what the customer is already using? How the customer will benefit from the tools, methodologies, and techniques that you will use? Approaches Sometimes a methodology can be the focus of your approach. For example, a company might feature its ISO Quality Assurance program, its Capability Maturity Model recognition, or its use of a technique such as Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). Some methodologies also incorporate the use of software or tools. You can highlight your use of a methodology or tool in the section of your Technical Approach where it is relevant. You can also include a separate section on Methodologies, Tools, and Techniques in your Management Plan to reinforce your company’s adherence to standards. Strategies It is important to remember to describe the benefit to the client of any methodology or tool you feature. If the tool will enhance productivity or quality, then detail how that will happen. If the result is that you are lower in cost, more reliable, or better than your competition in some other way, you should explain how your customer will realize those benefits. If your methodology can be illustrated, be sure to include the graphic and organize your narrative around it. The narrative description should focus on the benefits that will result from the methodology and not on the details of implementing the methodology. Another way to use methodologies and techniques is to provide a list of standards that you comply with. This list can be provided as an exhibit and provides a place for terminology, sound bites, and the latest buzzwords. Caution: Unless you provide a statement to describing how it is used and how the customer will benefit, the list may have little real meaning. But it does provide a quick-and-easy approach to compliance and name-dropping.

Ingredients What performance metrics will you use? What is the baseline you’ll use to measure performance against? Will you use any industry benchmarks for comparison? What are your minimum performance standards? How will you collect and track metrics data? How will you record or document the collection of metrics data? How you will analyze metrics, report, and present any findings? How will the project benefit from your use of metrics? What level of effort will be required to collect, assess, and present the measures, and how can it be streamlined? How you will measure productivity, efficiency, and utility? How will you know if you’ve met your customer’s requirements? How do the performance metrics of what you are bidding compare to those of your competitors? Recommended Approaches Performance metrics are the units that you use to measure service delivery. They can require a lot of thought, because it can be difficult to measure outcomes that are not tangible. For example, consider: How do you measure the progress of software development? How do you measure the quality of software? Performance metrics can be used to measure productivity and quality. They can also be used to establish performance standards and enable you to measure success. Performance metrics are typically addressed in the quality plan. They can also be cited in the relevant sections of the proposal as the criteria you will use to measure output, outcomes, and ultimately success. Strategies Measuring progress, quality, and success can be a competitive advantage over those who don’t. But when everyone uses metrics, it’s no longer enough have have measurements, you need the best measurements. If the RFP specifies performance metrics and standards to be achieved, then meeting them makes you merely compliant and not exceptional. To be exceptional, you have to raise the bar. Look for metrics that either already meet or will be able to meet that exceed the requirement. Then raise the requirement and draw attention to it. If there are performance incentives and penalties, then raise the penalties on the ones you know you can meet. If there aren’t any, then add them. People have an instinctive reaction to avoid penalties. Embracing them (especially when you’re confident you won’t trigger them) can be a competitive advantage. Remember, the customer has to trust you to buy from you. Measurements, especially when backed by incentives and penalties, make your claims more tangible and believable.

Ingredients What is your approach to risk analysis? What risks do you anticipate? For example: human resources, legal, financial, economic, technological, facilities, safety, strategic, organizational, process, and completion risks. How do you identify, categorize, and prioritize sources of risk? How you will mitigate the risks? Do you have any relevant historical data regarding risks? Will any risks be shared between you and the customer? How you will monitor your risk management performance? What are your contingency plans for risk-related problems? Approaches Risk mitigation can be incorporated into every section, be a separate section, or be a combination of the two. When risk is addressed in each section of the proposal, the focus is on risks related to that particular topic. When risk is addressed in a separate section, the focus is more on the nature of risk itself, and how you approach risks in general. Within each proposal section, you can provide a table identifying potential risks. If risk mitigation is a separate section, you can provide a table that identifies the risks for the elements described in each section of the proposal or each phase of project activity. Every time you identify a risk, you should provide an approach to mitigate that risk. When describing your risk mitigation approach, you should describe how you will identify risks. While you may already know some of the risks, there may be others that you won’t know about until you start. If overall or unknown risks are a concern, then you should describe how you will identify these risks over the life of the project. Once risks are identified, then you can describe what you will do to mitigate them. Since risk mitigation often requires trade-offs, you should describe how you will balance the trade-offs and what your priorities will be in managing the risks. You may also wish to present a table showing response escalations based on various contingencies. You should pay particular attention to risks affecting the schedule, risks that can lead to cost escalation, and risks that might result in failing to meet the specifications or requirements. Sometimes the client can be a source of risk, such as if they fail to decide on requirements in time or change the specifications after development has started. In these cases, it may be appropriate to share risks with the client. Strategies Risk mitigation can be extremely important to clients. They know that things go wrong. They may even expect this, and be more concerned with your plans to address that, than they are with your ability to perform simply according to plan. Often the incumbent knows more about the risks on a project than other bidders. One strategy incumbents follow is to make sure the customer is aware of all the risks and imply that if their competitors don’t they may not be able to deliver on their promises.

Ingredients What is the schedule for the major milestones or events that will occur? What deadlines or other key dates are mentioned in the RFP? What activities do you need to schedule in order to meet those deadlines? How soon after award you will start and how long it will take to complete? What is the critical path for the project? Are there any schedule constraints or limits that need to be shown? What is the schedule for any meetings? What is the schedule for project deliverables? Are there any compliance issues that must be factored into the schedule? Are there any contingencies or scenarios that you anticipate might impact scheduling? Are you using any planning models or methodologies you should cite? How and when you will communicate with the customer and any third parties? What reports will be produced and will be their frequency? How is your schedule compatible with the customer’s? Approaches In the Technical Approach, you describe what you will do for the client. This may involve providing a schedule. In the Management Plan you describe how you will ensure that it gets done – on time, within budget, and according to the specifications required. This also may require a schedule. But each one emphasizes different things. Project schedules often include Gantt Charts to show the schedule, milestones, and allocation of resources. A narrative description of the Gantt Chart should address trade-offs and other issues. Some projects will have surge resource requirements, often at the front-end, back-end, and around key milestones. A Gantt Chart illustrates whether resources are consumed evenly or in peaks and valleys. The narrative should describe the implications for this project, demonstrate your understanding of the project environment and any problems or issues that the client is facing. For projects where the completion schedule is important, it can be a good idea to show that you understand the critical path and how to mitigate any possible risks of delays to tasks on the critical path. The critical path is the longest sequence of events that must be performed on a project to complete it. Any delay in a task on the critical path will delay the project. Other tasks may happen in parallel with the critical path. Critical path analysis is one methodology for project management. There are many other methodologies that may be relevant to your project. You should describe any that you plan to use and show how the customer will benefit from your application of it.

Ingredients How important is staffing to the overall success of the project? What depth and breadth of staffing is available from your company? What skills are required for the project and how you will allocate your firm’s skills sets across the project scope of work? What qualifications are required for each position or role on the project? What are the responsibilities and level of effort anticipated for each role? Who will the key personnel will be? What are the backgrounds, qualifications, and experience of the key personnel? How do the staff you have selected distinguish your firm and will benefit the customer? How will replacement of staff be handled if necessary? How do you recruit new personnel? How are new project staff trained and oriented to your firm, the project, customer, and work site? What is your plan for retaining staff and achieving low turnover? How will staff performance be evaluated? Do you plan to hire staff from the client or incumbent contractor? Approaches If personnel will play a key role in the project, you should consider addressing staffing, whether or not it is required by the RFP. If you already know what staff you will provide, consider: Providing a table that lists them by name, describes their roles/responsibilities, and shows how the customer will benefit from each. Providing a matrix that shows how their skills/qualifications map to those required for the project. Providing an organization chart to show reporting relationships. Providing a timeline that shows when they will be involved with the project. If any of the staff you plan to use are not current employees, then consider providing signed commitment letters from them regarding their commitment to you to work on the project. If you do not already know which staff will be involved, then describe your recruiting process, selection criteria, and schedule. If you do not name the staff and provide resumes, it is important to establish that you have a credible capability to deliver the required number of staff on schedule. One approach to doing this is to provide figures or examples that demonstrate the productivity of your recruiting efforts, for example: the number of resumes your firm reviewed, interviews you conducted, and staff you hired over the past year. If you can, you might also provide examples of projects that were quickly staffed. It may also be a good idea for your recruiting plan to demonstrate your familiarity with the market for the required type of staff at the required locations. If you plan to draw from other projects, you can provide a table showing the number of personnel and their relevant skills. If your turnover rate is lower than the industry average or your benefits package better than industry average, you should provide the details and show how better staff retention lowers risks and costs while simultaneously reinforcing skills retention and the growth of project knowledge assets. On Government proposals, a distinction is usually made between key personnel and non-key personnel. The RFP will generally contain language saying that you must name (and usually provide resumes for) all key personnel. Then if you win the award, they expect you to actually deliver them! There is usually a period in which they do not allow substitutions. Non-key personnel are usually identified in proposals by position and not by name. For non-key personnel, it may be a good idea to provide resumes of the type of people you would supply, as a representative sample. Strategies It is almost always better to name names when you can. Name the staff you will provide. If you can’t name them, then describe what their qualifications will be. When the customer doesn’t require you to name the staff, that is an opportunity to outperform the competition and name them anyway.

Ingredients Who are the subcontractors you plan to use? Do you have any plans for outsourcing? What selection process did/will you use to choose those particular subcontractors and the factors involved: the quality of their work, their reliability, strength of resources, and any established working relationships you may already have in place – joint, successful past performance is a strong factor you’ll want to emphasize? What are the roles and responsibilities each subcontractor will have on the project and the level of effort each subcontractor will contribute? What contractual terms will subcontractors work under? Provide the points of contact for each subcontractor. Describe how you will work with other contractors. Explain how you will manage work performed by other companies. Explain how your quality, risk management, and other plans extend to the portions of the project worked on by any subcontractors. Approaches Sometimes subcontracting is addressed as a routine topic that is part of the Management Plan narrative in the proposal, and sometimes it is a specific requirement of the RFP. In government proposals, a subcontracting plan might be required to show the percentage of work going to different types of companies. This kind of subcontracting plan is often a part of the business proposal and not part of the proposal narrative. When this is the case, the RFP will usually contain a sample so that you understand the customer’s expectations. Strategies If you already know your subcontractors and/or key vendors and what to demonstrate your access to resources and readiness to start, you might provide a table that lists them by name, describes their roles/responsibilities, and shows how the customer will benefit from each. It can also be a good idea to summarize or provide a copy of any teaming agreements, or signed commitment letters to demonstrate readiness. If you do not already know your subcontractors and/or vendors you might describe your process, criteria, and schedule for selection. If you do not plan to use subcontractors, then you might wish to firmly state that you will not require support from outside firms, that any staff providing services will be under your direct control, that there is no risk of delay or disruption due to subcontractors not be ready to perform, etc.

Ingredients What aspects of the project will be performed on-site and which will be performed off-site? Which existing locations (if any) will be involved in the project? What (if any) new locations will be established for the project? Include an explanation of their selection and resource allocation. If the customer has multiple locations, how will you support them? Will you need to conduct any client site surveys? What travel will be required to other locations? Include any related management and accounting processes required. What technology you use for geographically dispersed collaboration? How much shipping/transport you anticipate and how will any deliveries be made? Recommended Approaches If the customer has more than one location, you may have to address how you will provide coverage. If you have more than one location that is involved in the project, you may want to describe the roles of that location’s staff, and how the customer will benefit from that additional support. Strategies If your locations are already established, then you may want to emphasize that you are ready to start immediately and draw attention to your locations. In this case, you may wish to include a sub-heading for location, even if it is not required. If location is important to the client, then focus on selling it by providing: A map that shows how close you are to the client A matrix that shows how your locations map to the clients A chart that shows the role your locations will play in each phase of the project The locations of key vendors or subcontractors A chart that shows what work will be performed at the customer’s site, what work will be performed elsewhere, and how the customer will benefit If you will need to open new locations, then demonstrate familiarity with the real estate market, criteria for selecting a location, and timeline for acquisition. If any of your competitors may need to open new locations, then describe the risks associated with uncertainty in the real estate market and timeline to open a new location. Show how you have mitigated these risks. Samples Customer Location 1 Customer Location 2 Company Locations List your closest locations List your closest locations Resources Describe the resources that you have at those locations Describe the resources that you have at those locations Staffing Quantify the staffing you have available near those locations Quantify the staffing you have available near those locations Capabilities Describe your capabilities at those locations Describe your capabilities at those locations The items you identify in the left column, and details in the other two, should be directly relevant to the customer. Location Benefit to the customer Company Site 1 Company Site 2 Company Site 3 This format is good when you have more locations than your competition and you want to drive home the benefits to the client

Ingredients The following list of ingredients is intended to inspire. Select the ingredients that are most relevant to your needs in this particular proposal, or add your own: How is your company or project organized? Is it organized functionally, by client, or some other way? Do you wish to show all the parts or just the relevant ones? What do you want to emphasize, titles or names? Do you know the names or will you just be listing titles? Should you include photographs? What are your reporting structures and lines of communication? What benefits will your organizational structure provide? What are the points of contact in your organization? Does it reflect the evaluation criteria or demonstrate anything of significance to the customer: Responsiveness Accountability Clarity Comprehensiveness Etc. Does it show sufficient oversight? Does it show roles and responsibilities? Does it show how resources will be allocated? Is there an escalation path for unresolved issues? Recommended Approaches Sometimes you may want to provide two organization charts, one to show how the project fits into the organization of your company, and another to show how the project itself will be organized. This will depend on whether the client cares about your company’s management structure and where the project fits into it. If the customer cares only about the project staff, then a corporate organization chart likely won’t add much value to your proposal. If you know the names of all the participants, include them on the chart. Naming staff can help show your readiness to start quickly and draw attention to particularly well-qualified participants. If you don’t (yet) know the project staff, identify positions by title or role. Either way, it may also be a good idea to include a table defining project staff positions, roles, and responsibilities. You may wish to include corporate functions that will provide indirect support to the project , such as Accounting and Human Resources, on the organization chart if you think that may add value in the eyes of the customer. If the customer will interface primarily with certain people, then you might want to illustrate those communication lines by including the customer’s name. Strategies Your org chart should convey a message, such as we: Have the resources needed Are accessible to the client Are ready to start Will respond quickly Are organized the same way you are Have capabilities that exceed the requirement Have quality and accountability built into our structure Etc.

The Capture Manager is responsible for assessing the intelligence collected by the Business Development Manager and turning into the win strategies necessary to win the opportunity. The last Readiness Review is conducted in two parts, one completed by the Business Development Manager and the assessment completed by the Capture Manager. The completion of the last Readiness Review also completes the hand-off from the Business Development Manager having the lead role for the pursuit, and the Capture Manager taking over the lead role. Both parts need to be reviewed to establish readiness. The first part uses a standard Readiness Review scoring sheet. The second part, completed by the Capture Manager, uses the scoring sheet below. Question, Action Item, or Goal Guidance Score Opportunity Intel Competitive Assessment Is the survey of the competitive environment accurate? Does it reflect all the companies, or at least the kinds of companies who will be bidding? Does it address how each will position themselves and how your company should position against them? Does the competitive positioning provide the win strategies and themes required to win the proposal? ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green Teaming Are all the companies should be on the team identified? Are their roles and responsibilities on the team adequately described? Is the reason for each company being on the team provided, both from your company’s perspective and from the customer’s perspective? ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green Project Staffing Are all required positions identified? Are they filled? Are the qualifications (either of the staff or of the positions) known? ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green Organization How will the project fit into the corporate organization? How will the project itself be organized? Have the org charts been drawn yet? ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green Project References Are all of the relevant experience references for your company identified? Is the information complete and up-to-date? Is the reason each one is relevant identified? ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green Evaluation Criteria How well do you understand what is important to the customer? Do you know their evaluation criteria, weighting, and/or scoring system? Do you know their procedure for making a selection? Do you understand how that will impact the proposal? ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green Potential Graphics and Illustrations Early identification of graphics can make the proposal go faster. Early drafting of graphics can be used to drive consensus regarding the concept of operations, approaches, and other aspects of the project. Early completion of graphics can be used to drive the writing. Is the list of potential graphics complete? Are any drafts accurate? ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green What will it take to win Is the assessment of what it will take to win accurate and complete? Will it adequately serve to define, measure, and assess proposal quality? ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green Proposal Staffing Is the proposal staff list complete and accurate? Have all staff that can be identified been named? Is the level of effort appropriate to achieve the level of quality desired? ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green Use of Consultants Is the number, names, and budget for use of consultants acceptable? ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green Resources Requirements Have all the resources (other than staff) that will be required for the proposal been properly identified? ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green Proposal Budget Is the budget for the proposal acceptable? ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green Readiness to win Is the company properly positioned to be ready to win at RFP release? ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green What else should be added, addressed, or done to ensure a win? List or attach anything you would like done before the RFP is released so they can be tracked. ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green Do have any other comments, suggestions, guidance, or direction to offer? In addition to assessing progress, the purpose of Readiness Reviews is to help ensure that the pursuit is ready to win at RFP release. What can you do to help? ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green What is the customer’s procurement process What steps, events, or milestones must be completed for the customer to release the RFP? What approvals are required? Is there any way you can assist the customer or influence the RFP? ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green Date Reviewed: Reviewed By: Return to the Introduction to Readiness Reviews Topic Hub or go to the next Readiness Review Scoring Sheet?

The following scoring sheet summarizes the questions to be answered, action items to be accomplished, and goals to be achieved for this review. Each one should be assessed to determine if the pursuit is on track to be ready to win at RFP release. Question, Action Item, or Goal Guidance Score Opportunity Intel Do you know the final scope/customer requirements? Has anything changed? Time is running out to take corrective action, so you need to confirm that nothing has changed regarding the scope or requirements. ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green Have you staffed the key positions? If personnel are a key factor in the customer’s decision, you want to know you’ve got winners to staff the key positions with. The closer you are to being ready to start, and the more qualified your staff, the better you will look. ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green What are you doing to monitor the procurement process? What are you doing to look for, prevent, or fix any potential show stoppers? Is the customer on schedule? Have they received all of the approvals that will be required? Have any changes occurred? Are there any problems that could lead to changes? ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green What do you anticipate the evaluation criteria will be? Knowing the evaluation criteria tells you what you need to do to score well and ultimately win. It can also tell you what the customer thinks is important. If you can’t find out about the evaluation criteria directly, you may be able to find out about the procurement policies, past RFPs, and habits. At least discover what is important to them. ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green Are you sure about the value of the opportunity? Has anything changed? Anything that changes on the procurement (scope, budget, acquisition strategy, etc.) may impact the value of the opportunity. A change in the value can impact your pricing and pursuit. ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green How do you think your pricing will compare to that of the competition? While it may be difficult to know the competitor’s pricing exactly, a lot of the time you can discover which competitors tend to have higher or lower prices by the outcome of previous competitions. ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green What is your pricing strategy? What approach to pricing will be necessary to win? The lowest pricing is not always best. Also, the type of contract and the contractual terms can have a major impact. What pricing strategies do you recommend? ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green What are your high level management and technical approaches? Are they enough to win? By this time, you should be able to articulate what your approaches are going to be, at least at a high level. This will help you to know what subject matter expertise you’ll need to write the proposal. ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green Is there anything left to do to influence the procurement? You should already have implemented your plan to influence the procurement by this time. However, there may still be action items remaining, and it’s important enough to pause and reconsider whether there is anything else you can do to tip the scales in your favor. ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green Articulate why your offering will be the best choice Why should the customer pick your offering? ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green Customer Intel What are you doing to maintain the customer relationship and monitor the customer? By this time, your customer relationship should already be established. But a relationship requires attention. What are you doing to ensure that the relationship remains favorable? ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green Articulate why the customer will want to select your company Why will the customer want to select your company? ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green Competitive Intel What are you doing to monitor the competition? Have new competitors arrived? Have any of your competitors teamed together? How are they positioning themselves? Have they done anything to give away their win strategies? ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green Is your team complete? What is the status of any teaming agreements? Has everyone you want agreed to be on your team? While the final teaming agreement may need to wait for the final RFP, have you begun signing non-disclosure agreements, letters of understanding, and other preliminary paperwork? ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green Business Line Specific Do you have all the information you need to design and price your offering? Do you have enough details regarding the scope and requirement specifications to know what to offer and to how to price it? ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green What do you plan to propose that will be better than that of the competition? It is not enough to have something to offer. What you offer has to beat the competition. How do you plan to achieve that? ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green Articulate why the customer will prefer your company over the competitors Why will the customer pick you above the other companies bidding? ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green Self-Awareness and Resources Have you assigned a Proposal Manager and has he/she started? By the time of this review the Proposal Manager should have been assigned and be preparing to start the proposal. ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green Are you familiar with your proposal start-up and RFP distribution procedures? You should review these procedures so that when the RFP is released you are ready to start immediately, without having to ask what to do. ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green Other Intel Describe any additional intelligence collected Links, attachments, or external references to customer documents or other materials are encouraged. ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green Assessment Is the pursuit worth further investment? Is the lead promising enough to make it worth the investment of taking to the next Readiness Review? ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green Is this opportunity on track, for being ready to win at the time of RFP release? Since this is the first review, there is time to collect more information. Is it off to the right start? ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green Are you on track for developing an information advantage? You can measure the strength of your customer relationship by how much it provides an information advantage over your competitiors. ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green What issues or challenges need to be overcome? Do you perceive issues that need to be addressed during future future Readiness Reviews? List or attach them so they can be tracked. ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green What additional questions would you like answered before the RFP is released? List or attach any questions that you would like added to the list so they can be tracked. ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green What action items do you recommend completing before the next review? List or attach anything you would like done before the next review so they can be tracked. ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green Do you have any other comments, suggestions, guidance, or direction to offer? In addition to assessing progress, the purpose of Readiness Reviews is to help ensure that the pursuit is ready to win at RFP release. What can you do to help? ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green Date Reviewed: Reviewed By: Return to the Introduction to Readiness Reviews Topic Hub or go to the next Readiness Review Scoring Sheet?

The following scoring sheet summarizes the questions to be answered, action items to be accomplished, and goals to be achieved for this review. Each one should be assessed to determine if the pursuit is on track to be ready to win at RFP release. Question, Action Item, or Goal Guidance Score Opportunity Intel Are you sure about the scope/customer requirements? The scope can change as the customer looks for consensus, feasibility, and budget compatibility. Because of this, even if you think you know the scope, you need to monitor it for changes. In addition, you should be checking with your technical staff for questions about the scope so that they have enough information to build accurate estimates. ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green When is the project schedule (start, end, major milestones)? If you know the scope and what is driving the customer’s procurement, then you should also know when the customer wants to start. Knowing the completion time and major milestones can tell you something about the level of effort required. ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green Do you have any remaining capability gaps? You need to know the scope in detail to be sure that you know if there are any areas where your company is weak. Time is running out to fill your capability gaps. Teaming takes time and needs to begin now if you are to have a winning team in place at RFP release. ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green Have you discovered any potential show stoppers? In addition to capability gaps, you should look for any requirements that might cause your company to lose interest in bidding. Sometimes a show stopper can be corrected, and the sooner you act the better your chances. However, if a show stopper can’t be corrected, then it is better to no-bid early. ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green What are the staffing requirements? Before you can identify staff to bid and discriminate yourself by the quality of your staffing, you need to know how many people in what labor categories will be required. It’s also a great way to cross check the budget. ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green Has the customer’s acquisition strategy changed? You need to monitor the acquisition strategy for changes to avoid being surprised by an RFP coming out under a contract vehicle you can’t bid, a change in contract type, on or other unfavorable change. ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green Is the customer’s procurement process on track? Are they on schedule? What milestones have passed? Which are still to come? Have they received all the approvals that will be required? If they are delayed, is there anything you can do or information you can supply to help? ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green Can you support your estimate of the value of the opportunity? At this stage, the value needs to be more than just a guess. Show that you’ve done your homework by justifying the value. ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green What past performance/project references should you use? In professional services, your most important qualification is usually your experience. Which of your company’s projects are the most relevant? You may use them as references. Those that you don’t submit as references may still be useful as citations and examples to reference in the text of the proposal. It will be very helpful to have a list of the projects to reference/cite already prepared. ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green What have you done to influence the procurement? (contract vehicle, budget, terms, requirements, evaluation criteria, etc.) What have you recommended or done to change or otherwise influence the RFP to your competitive advantage? What else can you do to influence the procurement? ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green What will it take to win? Assess what you know to determine what you need to do to beat the competition and win the deal with the customer. It’s not sufficient to simply know what it will take; you need to be able to turn that knowledge into action items. ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green Customer Intel What is the status of your contact plan? Your contact plan should now be implemented. What is your progress towards fulfilling it? ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green Does the customer have questions or need information you can provide? The customer may not know the best way to achieve their goals. They may not know what is feasible. You should be as helpful as possible to help them get into position to make a procurement. ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green What do you know about the customer’s preferences? You need to decide your technical/management approaches and select platforms/standard. You will be faced with making trade-offs. You want you decisions to reflect the customer’s preferences. ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green How does the customer make decisions? Does the customer have a process for making procurement decisions? Do they require a consensus? Do they have one? At what level are decisions made? What contacts do you have at that level? ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green What is the customer’s procurement process What steps, events, or milestones must be completed for the customer to release the RFP? What approvals are required? Is there any way you can assist the customer or influence the RFP? ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green What relevant policies, procedures, manuals, rules, and regulations, can you obtain copies of? It helps to know the customers policies and procedures better than they do themselves? This information is often publicly available. Do you have copies and have you studied them? ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green Competitive Intel Have you gathered sufficient competitive intelligence to win? The goal of collecting competitive intelligence is to help you discover how to beat your competition. What have you learned that will give your company a competitive advantage? ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green What have you done to position your company against the competition? What actions have you taken to ensure that your company is better positioned than the competition? ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green Have the desired companies agreed to team? What have you done to implement your teaming plan? You can’t always get the companies you want on your team. Building a team is a process. What companies are you pursuing and what is the status of those pursuits? Will the right team be in place at the time of RFP release? ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green What proposal win strategies will drive home your competitive advantages? Once you have identified your competitive advantages, you need to translate them into strategies and statements that will help you win the proposal. Doing this may identify additional actions items required to win. ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green Business Line Specific Do you have all the information you need to design and price your offering? Do you have enough details regarding the scope and requirement specifications to know what to offer and to how to price it? ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green What do you plan to propose that will be better than that of the competition? It is not enough to have something to offer. What you offer has to beat the competition. How do you plan to achieve that? ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green Self-Awareness and Resources Has the Capture Manager been assigned and has he/she started yet? The Capture Manager should start during this review so that he/she can complete part of the preparation for the next review. ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green Has the Proposal Manager been identified yet? Preparing for the next review will involve proposal preparation. You should identify the Proposal Manager during this review so they can start ramping up before the next review. ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green Other Intel Describe any additional intelligence collected Links, attachments, or external references to customer documents or other materials are encouraged. ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green Assessment Is the pursuit worth further investment? Is the lead promising enough to make it worth the investment of taking to the next Readiness Review? ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green Is this opportunity on track, for being ready to win at the time of RFP release? Since this is the first review, there is time to collect more information. Is it off to the right start? ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green Are you on track for developing an information advantage? You can measure the strength of your customer relationship by how much it provides an information advantage over your competitiors. ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green What issues or challenges need to be overcome? Do you perceive issues that need to be addressed during future future Readiness Reviews? List or attach them so they can be tracked. ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green What additional questions would you like answered before the RFP is released? List or attach any questions that you would like added to the list so they can be tracked. ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green What action items do you recommend completing before the next review? List or attach anything you would like done before the next review so they can be tracked. ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green Do you have any other comments, suggestions, guidance, or direction to offer? In addition to assessing progress, the purpose of Readiness Reviews is to help ensure that the pursuit is ready to win at RFP release. What can you do to help? ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green Date Reviewed: Reviewed By:

The following scoring sheet summarizes the questions to be answered, action items to be accomplished, and goals to be achieved for this review. Each one should be assessed to determine if the pursuit is on track to be ready to win at RFP release. Question, Action Item, or Goal Guidance Score Opportunity Intel Describe the scope/customer requirements in detail. What do you anticipate will be included or excluded? Include everything necessary to estimate the level of effort to fulfill the requirement. These typically include minimum/maximum quantities, and the type of work that is included/excluded. ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green What do you plan to do to influence the requirements? What can you do to influence the scope, requirements, evaluation criteria, etc. in your favor? ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green Are there any gaps between the requirements and your company’s capabilities? Is there anything required that you can’t or don’t want to do? ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green What are the anticipated locations of work? Will the project require work at more than one location? If so, where? ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green What do you know about the customer’s acquisition strategy? What method will the customer use to conduct the acquisition? RFP, Task Order, schedule, contract vehicle, etc. Will the customer use a sources sought notice, draft RFP, or other approach to help finalize the RFP? How many bidders is the customer seeking? ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green What are you doing to influence the customer’s acquisition strategy? What can you do to influence the type of contract, contract vehicle, small business requirements, procurement procedures, etc., in your favor? ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green What is the estimated value of the opportunity? If you can’t estimate the value in dollars, do it in the number of full-time equivalent (FTE) positions, number of units, or some other measure. ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green What is the potential budget and what have you done to influence it? Is the budget funded/ approved? If the customer doesn’t have a budget and if the budget isn’t funded/approved then the opportunity may never see the light of day… However, if can reach the customer before their budget has been approved, you still have a chance to influence it. You customer may need help determining what a rational budget should be. After all you are the experts... ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green What objections, problems, reasons, or limitations might prevent the customer from completing the procurement? What are the chances of this opportunity being cancelled? What can you do to prevent that or overcome the challenges? ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green What procurement milestones, decisions, and events, should be anticipated? What steps will the procurement go through? What should you expect, anticipate, or be prepared for? ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green Does the customer understand how to write the RFP and make a selection? What can you do to help? Often the customer’s technical staff is told to write an RFP by their procurement specialists or customer policy. Often, they don’t know how to write a good RFP. While you can’t write the RFP for them, you can supply them with information regarding what is important, how to mitigate risks, etc. It is a good idea to supply this information in a format that makes it easy to copy and paste… ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green Customer Intel What is the status of your contact plan? Your contact plan should now be implemented. What is your progress towards fulfilling it? ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green Does the customer have questions or need information you can provide? The customer may not know the best way to achieve their goals. They may not know what is feasible. You should be as helpful as possible to help them get into position to make a procurement. ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green What do you know about the customer’s preferences? You need to decide your technical/management approaches and select platforms/standard. You will be faced with making trade-offs. You want you decisions to reflect the customer’s preferences. ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green How does the customer make decisions? Does the customer have a process for making procurement decisions? Do they require a consensus? Do they have one? At what level are decisions made? What contacts do you have at that level? ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green What is the customer’s procurement process What steps, events, or milestones must be completed for the customer to release the RFP? What approvals are required? Is there any way you can assist the customer or influence the RFP? ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green What relevant policies, procedures, manuals, rules, and regulations, can you obtain copies of? It helps to know the customers policies and procedures better than they do themselves? This information is often publicly available. Do you have copies and have you studied them? ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green Competitive Intel Who are the other potential bidders and what do you know about them? In addition to companies performing similar work at the customer, potential competitors include companies with similar capabilities/qualifications and companies who wish to grow their business with the customer or service area. ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green What scope of work gaps does each competitor have? Before you can position yourself against the competition, you have to know where they are vulnerable. What aspects of the project will they have difficulty with or need to outsource? ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green Should you team or bid alone and why? Sometimes it is better to pursue an opportunity with other companies as partners or subcontractors. Sometimes it is better to bid alone. Which is the right approach for this opportunity and why? ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green If you should team, who should it be with and why? You can team with other companies to fill a capability gap, to strengthen a capability, to meet a small business requirement, to bring something unique to the customer, to bring experience, to bring resources, to bring a reputation, to mitigate risks, or even to take someone off the street instead of competing with them. You should be selective in choosing teaming partners. Who do you recommend teaming with and why? ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green What are your competitive advantages? You never want an even playing field. What gives you an advantage over the competition, and what are you doing to widen the gap? ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green Business Line Specific What information do you need to determine if the what the customer wants is feasible? It’s not a valid lead if what the customer wants can’t be done, delivered, or provided. ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green What information do you need to properly estimate and specify your offering? What information do you need that is specific to your business? It could be technical or related to locations, volume, staffing, requirements, scope, etc. ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green How is the opportunity related to your company or business unit’s strategic plans? Not all leads are relevant to the direction the company wishes to go in. Is this lead relevant? ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green Do you plan to provide any demonstrations, do any prototyping or development, or attend any relevant events? Do you need to develop and prototypes or provide demonstrations so that the customer can see your offering or to put you into a better position for being able to deliver quickly? Are there any events where you can get in front of the customer? ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green Self-Awareness and Resources Has a Capture Manager been identified yet? Before the next review you will need to have the Capture Manager in place and up to speed. Has one been identified yet? ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green If your company has a bid/no-bid process, are you prepared for it? Even though the CapturePlanning.com MustWin Process incorporates bid/no-bid considerations, many companies have an established bid/no-bid review that you will still need to comply with. If your company has an existing formal bid/no-bid procedure, do you know what you need to do to comply with it? ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green Are there any contracting issues, policies, or procedures that should be incorporated into your efforts to influence the customer/RFP? Because government contracts are highly regulated, you should review your efforts to influence the customer and RFP with a contracts specialist. Even in commercial procurements it is a good idea to do this. ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green Other Intel Describe any additional intelligence collected Links, attachments, or external references to customer documents or other materials are encouraged. ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green Assessment Is the pursuit worth further investment? Is the lead promising enough to make it worth the investment of taking to the next Readiness Review? ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green Is this opportunity on track, for being ready to win at the time of RFP release? Since this is the first review, there is time to collect more information. Is it off to the right start? ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green Are you on track for developing an information advantage? You can measure the strength of your customer relationship by how much it provides an information advantage over your competitiors. ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green What issues or challenges need to be overcome? Do you perceive issues that need to be addressed during future future Readiness Reviews? List or attach them so they can be tracked. ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green What additional questions would you like answered before the RFP is released? List or attach any questions that you would like added to the list so they can be tracked. ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green What action items do you recommend completing before the next review? List or attach anything you would like done before the next review so they can be tracked. ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green Do you have any other comments, suggestions, guidance, or direction to offer? In addition to assessing progress, the purpose of Readiness Reviews is to help ensure that the pursuit is ready to win at RFP release. What can you do to help? ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green Date Reviewed: Reviewed By: Return to the Introduction to Readiness Reviews Topic Hub or go to the next Readiness Review Scoring Sheet?

The following scoring sheet summarizes the questions to be answered, action items to be accomplished, and goals to be achieved for this review. Each one should be assessed to determine if the pursuit is on track to be ready to win at RFP release. Question, Action Item, or Goal Guidance Score Opportunity Intel What is the scope of the opportunity? What does the customer require? Include everything necessary to estimate the level of effort to fulfill the requirement. These typically include minimum/ maximum quantities, and the type of work that is included/ excluded. ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green What is the potential value or range? At this stage it may not be practical to accurately estimate the value, since the scope may not be well defined yet. But people are going to ask anyway, so you should have an answer. ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green What goals would the customer like to accomplish with the procurement? Why is the customer pursuing this procurement? What is motivating them? What are they trying to achieve? ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green What is driving the procurement schedule? Is the customer trying to complete the procurement by a specific date, event, or other mandate? ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green Customer Intel Who is the customer? Is the buyer the end-user? What organization(s) would be the sponsor, control the funding, have the end-users, conduct the procurement, and manage the project? What are their roles in making procurement decisions? Do you know enough about the customer to impact your win strategies? ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green Who do you know at the customer and how well? Who do you have a relationship with at the customer? Who can you name but don’t have a relationship with? Who will participate in the evaluation and what will be their role? ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green How well does the customer know you? Does the customer recognize you as a qualified and trustworthy vendor? What do they know of your capabilities? ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green What do you know about how the customer is organization? How are they structured (attach organizational chart)? How do they function? How do the allocate authority and decision making? ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green What is your contact plan? You should have a contact plan that identifies who you plan to reach at the customer, when (once, weekly, monthly, etc.) and what you plan to discuss/achieve. ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green Competitive Intel Who are the incumbents (if any)? Who is currently doing business with the customer in similar or relevant areas? ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green What are your strengths and weaknesses? Why should you pursue this and what challenges do you need to overcome? ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green Business Line Specific What do you need to know to validate the scope? What do you need to know to specify your offering so that you can gather the correct information in future reviews? It may be specific to your business and could be technical or related to locations, volume, staffing, requirements, etc. ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green How is the opportunity related to your company’s strategic plans? Not all leads are relevant to the direction the company wishes to go in. Is this lead relevant? ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green Self-Awareness and Resources What questions or goals specific to your company or industry should be added? Certain types of business, technology, and environments require specific intelligence to be gathered in order to be ready to bid. Use this space to address any that might be relevant. ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green Do you know your company’s business development process? Summarize to show that you understand your own company’s business development process (key events, milestones, approvals, etc.). ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green Do you know your company’s for budgeting and tracking pre-RFP pursuit costs? Some companies track and account for the time, effort, and expenses associated with each pursuit. But when they start tracking, how they budget, and how they account for it is different from company to company. ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green How does your lead tracking system work? If you have an existing lead tracking, forecasting, or reporting system, show that you understand what is required to use it. ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green Other Intel Describe any additional intelligence collected Links, attachments, or external references to customer documents or other materials are encouraged. ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green Assessment Is the pursuit worth further investment? Is the lead promising enough to make it worth the investment of taking to the next Readiness Review? ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green Is this opportunity on track, for being ready to win at the time of RFP release? Since this is the first review, there is time to collect more information. Is it off to the right start? ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green Are you on track for developing an information advantage? You can measure the strength of your customer relationship by how much it provides an information advantage over your competitiors. ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green What issues or challenges need to be overcome? Do you perceive issues that need to be addressed during future future Readiness Reviews? List or attach them so they can be tracked. ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green What additional questions would you like answered before the RFP is released? List or attach any questions that you would like added to the list so they can be tracked. ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green What action items do you recommend completing before the next review? List or attach anything you would like done before the next review so they can be tracked. ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green Do you have any other comments, suggestions, guidance, or direction to offer? In addition to assessing progress, the purpose of Readiness Reviews is to help ensure that the pursuit is ready to win at RFP release. What can you do to help? ❏ Red ❏ Yellow ❏ Green Date Reviewed: Reviewed By: Return to the Introduction to Readiness Reviews Topic Hub or go to the next Readiness Review Scoring Sheet?

The scoring system for Readiness Reviews can be used to quantify your progress and readiness. By tracking your readiness you can ensure that you trend towards being ready. By tracking across multiple pursuits you can identify exactly what is helping or hurting your win rates. Will You Be Ready In Time for RFP Release? Readiness Reviews lend themselves to providing metrics. Across a single opportunity you can track whether you are trending up or trending down with your readiness. You should score and track your Readiness Reviews at three different levels: Individual questions Average score by category (Customer, Opportunity, Competitive, and Self Awareness) Average score by Readiness Review stage (1-4) If you track them using a spreadsheet or even a table, you can see whether you are trending towards green or towards red. Obviously you want to see the trend going to green. If people do not understand the Readiness Review process or the expectations of the reviewers, their initial scores may be low. However, you should see these trend up in subsequent reviews. If the team loses focus, you may see scores start to slip. The whole idea of having Readiness Reviews is that you know if people lose focus and can catch it in time to turn it around before the RFP is released. Your readiness for RFP release can also be quantified. Each question is assessed a red/yellow/green score. These can be converted to numbers (1-3) or even percentages. This may help lend the process to other forms of metrics analysis and probability assessment. Tracking Across Multiple Pursuits Across multiple pursuits, you can track how your readiness impacts your win rate by: Converting your red/yellow/green assessments to numeric values Comparing the scores of individual questions to your win rate Comparing the average score at each Readiness Review to your win rate Comparing the average score per category (Customer, Opportunity, Competitive, and Self Awareness) to your win rate Doing this will show you whether relative strength or weakness in an area (question, category, or review stage) is an indicator of win probability. Return to the Introduction to Readiness Reviews Topic Hub.

If you complete all of your opportunity readiness reviews but the RFP does not come out on time, you should put a monitoring program into place. Your plans are based on the earliest anticipated RFP release. But what if it gets delayed or comes out later than that? The Business Developer and Capture Manager should take advantage of that time. The Executive Sponsor should set up a schedule (weekly, bi-weekly, monthly?) to review the status. Suggestions for what to monitor while you are waiting for RFP release: Could the opportunity be cancelled? Could the customer’s acquisition strategy change? Are all necessary budgets and approvals really in place? Could the scope change? Can you add detail to any of the readiness report questions? Is there anything else you can do to prepare for the proposal? Is there anything else you can do to position yourself in the eyes of the customer? You can't run at full speed forever. Should you pause? In addition to monitoring, you have to decide whether to maintain a high tempo of pursuit or slow down to wait for the customer to act. The MustWin Process helps you decide. Are you satisfied with the answers to the Readiness Review questions and do you feel you have an information advantage? You don't ask these questions in isolation where you have no way to assess the answers. You ask them against a specific set of questions including: Your responses to the Readiness Review questions What you have discovered about what it will take to win The questions you will need answered to complete your Proposal Content Plan Regardless of whether you pause active pursuit or not, you'll still need to implement the monitoring program.

The MustWin Process will not break if you start late. In fact, it tells you exactly what you need to do to get caught up. Regardless of how much time is available, you still need to identify, assess, and achieve what it will take to win. Whether you can achieve it depends on how much time is left after you've identified and assessed it. The MustWin Process accelerates these steps by providing the questions you need to answer and what you need to do. The real question is do you have the information you need to win. We recommend starting ahead of RFP release to provide time to gather this information. What you need to do to catch up What you need to accomplish does not change because you started late. You still need to do the same things, you just have less time to do them. Because the MustWin process tells you the questions you must answer and things you must do in order to be prepared, all you need to do is answer them quickly. It’s a bit like cramming for an exam, only worse. You cannot get caught up by skipping steps like the Readiness Reviews or proposal planning. You should not simply start writing based on nothing more than the RFP unless you want to lose. The reason you need to complete the questions for the Readiness Reviews is that they lay the foundation for developing your bid strategies. The only thing worse than bidding at the last minute is bidding without any strategy for winning. The MustWin Process not only helps guide you to develop those strategies, but it helps make sure that you build the proposal document around them. If you want the writing to implement your plans for winning, you need to make those plans before you start writing. Writing first and then trying to insert statements that help the proposal win in a later draft is a strategy that relies on the competition doing a worse job on their proposal than you are doing on yours. That is no way to ensure a win. The MustWin Process is based on building your proposal around your knowledge of what it will take to win. You can’t do that without thinking it through first. And you cannot do it reliably without validating it. You cannot skip steps if you want to win. Is it too late to bid? If you cannot answer the questions, then objectively you are not ready to bid. Your odds of winning if you are not ready are much lower. How much lower depends on how effective you are at answering the questions. This is a good time to suggest reading the topic on “Bid/No Bid Considerations” and “More Reasons to No Bid.” After you read them, go back and read them again. If after answering the questions, you do not have a competitive advantage, then you question whether bidding is still a good idea. If you are committed to bidding in spite of a late start, then you better start working some long hours immediately. You should have started developing your win strategies and draft proposal plans before the RFP is released so that you can complete them quickly when the RFP hits the streets. If you are starting late, you still need to do the pre-RFP steps, but you can’t let it take more than a few days. You don’t have time to warm up or gather your resources. To get your proposal back on track you need your proposal plans in place without delay. If you work hard you can achieve that and the proposal will have a fighting chance. If you delay getting your plans together, it will impact the amount of time to write the proposal and quality will suffer. There is a variation of Murphy’s Law that says that all proposals take the same amount of time. If you start late, you just have to work round the clock to put the same number of hours in as if you had started early. If you do the hard work to get caught up, you will be rewarded by how the process makes the writing easier and by what it does to improve your chances of winning. The good news is that because the MustWin Process defines what it takes to be ready, you can measure your progress at getting caught up. The bad news is that you will know exactly how far behind you are…

The MustWin Process uses a formula to schedule Readiness Reviews: The Business Development Manager should complete each report by the due date entered on this page. The due dates are set by dividing the time until RFP release evenly across the four reviews. On or as soon as possible after that date, the Executive Sponsor should review the report and assess whether the progress is sufficient to be ready at RFP release. To determine the dates, you must have an anticipated date of RFP release — even if you have to guess. You should always use the earliest anticipated RFP release date, since it is better to be ready too soon than it is to be ready too late. To schedule the four opportunity readiness reviews, take the time between now and the anticipated date for RFP release, and divide evenly by five. This will enable you to set the date of the last review with some time left for action items before the RFP is released. Examples: If RFP release is expected in 10 months, then the Lead Identification Review would be at the start of Month 2, the Qualification Review would be at the start of Month 4, Intelligence Review would be at the start of Month 6, and the Bid Preparation Review would be at the start of Month 8. If the RFP release is expected in 30 days, then the Lead Identification Review would be on day 6, the Qualification Review would be on Day 12, the Intelligence Review would be on Day 18, and the Bid Preparation Review would be on Day 24. The dates do not have to be precisely even. You can adjust for weekends, holidays, etc. Should you find that the anticipated date of RFP release has slipped, it’s OK to change and extend the readiness review dates. You want people to be able to take advantage of all of the time available. You just don’t want the RFP to come out before you’ve passed your readiness reviews. Readiness reviews are cumulative. If for some reason you start the process in the middle, then all of the goals of the previous reviews up to that point would be included in the next review. At each review, the Executive Sponsor will assess whether the pursuit has sufficiently fulfilled the goals for that phase.

Readiness Reviews are a methodology we invented to ensure that the pre-RFP process delivers the information you need to write the winning proposal. They do this by making better use of the time available (whatever that ends up being) between when you identify a lead and when the RFP will come out. Readiness Reviews prompt people with what to do and provide a means to track progress and even measure effectiveness. They make the pre-RFP pursuit less of some kind of mysterious art and more of a science. The way they work is to first divide the time available into four equal stages. During each stage you try to find answers and take actions that are guided by a list of goals. Each stage ends with a review. The reviews are conducted against a standard. The standard is whether progress is sufficient to be in position to win at RFP release. Each question, goal, and action item gets graded on a scale that can be easily quantified. This enables you to see whether over time the trend is toward being ready, or moving away from being ready. Each of the Readiness Reviews is a bid/no bid decision. Each review considers whether it’s worth investing more to get to the next review. In addition to stopping low probability leads sooner, they make it easier to pull the plug on valid leads that were not adequately pursued and are no longer competitive. Each review has a separate list of questions, goals, and action items. They build on each other over time. For example, identification of incumbents becomes identification of all possible competitors, which becomes competitive assessments and teaming considerations. Readiness Reviews ensure that nothing gets overlooked and that the information you gather adds up to what you need to write a winning proposal. Readiness Reviews address the problem of getting to the proposal stage and having questions that you can no longer get answers to by bring up those questions earlier. Over the four reviews Readiness Reviews also change from gathering information to assessing information and finally to articulating win strategies and themes. They guide the flow of information from raw data to the things you need to say in your proposal. Because the way we approach proposals measures everything against what it will take to win, Readiness Reviews also guide people from gathering data to using it to identify what it will take to win. It even itemizes this information to form the basis for creating the criteria that will guide Proposal Quality Validation. The result ensures that the proposal reflects what you learned about the opportunity, customer, and competitive environment. It sounds complicated because we get a lot of mileage out of a few lists and reviews by setting them up in an innovative way. The result is fairly simple to implement, highly efficient in terms of the effort it takes, and produces a huge return for that effort. Return to the Introduction to Readiness Reviews Topic Hub.

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Within the CapturePlanning.com MustWin Process we measure progress and quality against what it will take to win. During the critical pre-RFP phase of the pursuit, we use Readiness Reviews to ensure measurable progress towards discovering what it will take to win. Readiness Reviews bring structure to the pre-RFP phase of pursuit and help ensure that you arrive at RFP release and begin the proposal prepared to win. Each Readiness Review has specific questions, goals, and action items that must be completed. We recommend having four Readiness Reviews. With four readiness reviews you can use this technique to schedule them flexibly no matter how much time there is between lead identification and RFP release. This way if you find out about the opportunity one month before RFP release, you have a week to prepare for each review. If you are tracking a year in advance you have three months to prepare for each review. And if you find out about it at (or even after) RFP, it tells you what you need to find out in order to get caught up. If you finish the Readiness Reviews and the RFP is delayed, you have the right foundation to wait and monitor, or continue to prepare. Each Readiness Review builds on the previous one so that information is collected, assessed, and transformed into what stakeholders need. We do not expect people to be able to answer all of the questions we ask. Instead, we look for them to answer as many as are humanly possible, and to provide help, guidance, and alternative approaches for the questions that they have been unable to answer. Smoothing the transitions from business development to the proposal Readiness Reviews also provide a means to transfer knowledge and streamline the transition from business development to the proposal. They help ensure that you can answer the questions needed to write a great proposal and do it from the customer’s perspective. Metrics and Management by Measurement Most companies have regular meetings where they review their leads, gloss over what the don’t know, and put the emphasis on the fact that calls were placed or meetings held. Instead, Readiness Reviews enable you to measure your progress towards being ready for RFP release. You can quantify whether you know what you should. This feedback is important. It shows you how much more you need to do in order to be prepared. It can also be used to show trends or areas of weakness across multiple pursuits. When you score your Readiness Reviews, you can generate a ton of metrics that you can use to assess what impacts your win rate and improve it over time. You can use Readiness Reviews to turn business development from an art into a science. At each review, assess whether the answers provided and actions taken are sufficient to prepare you for RFP release. We use a Red/Yellow/Green scale to grade the answers to each question. You should see answers that score a “Yellow” or “Red” in an early review move to “Green” by later review. While movement in the other direction is bad, it’s good to have an objective way to identify it when you are slipping. Readiness Reviews connect strategic planning to the proposal Your strategic plans should point you in the direction to prospect and provide high level positioning. This positioning lays the foundation for developing your value proposition. When you identify leads, you bring those strategies to the customer. During the pursuit, as you build the customer relationship, gather intelligence, and develop an information advantage, Readiness Reviews guide you through gathering information, assessment, ad articulating your bid strategies and themes. Along the way they also give you the means to connect your strategic plans all the way to the proposal. Improving ROI and making effective bid/no bid decisions Each Readiness Review is essentially a bid/no bid decision. At each review the question becomes whether the lead is worth the cost of preparing for the next review. If a review shows that your company does not have an information advantage or is not prepared to win, you have the opportunity to stop the pursuit without incurring any additional cost. Readiness Reviews help you break out of the idea that a bid/no bid decision happens at a moment in time, and replaces it with a continuous focus on ROI. List of questions and scoring sheets to implement Readiness Reviews: The following items provide the list of questions, goals, and action items in a table that can be used as a scoring and signoff sheet. Readiness Review #1: Scoring Sheet Readiness Review #2: Scoring Sheet Readiness Review #3: Scoring Sheet Readiness Review #4: Scoring Sheet Readiness Review #4b: Capture Report Scoring Sheet

Proposal writing is not about finding the magic words that will somehow compel the customer to select your proposal over all other alternatives. It's really about understanding what the customer needs to see to reach their decision and then giving it to them. And yet most companies fail to do this. The most important skill for winning in writing is writing from the customer's perspective. Your proposal should not be about you, it should be about your customer and be written from their perspective. To achieve this, you need to avoid describing yourself and your offering. Instead, you should be putting your offering in context, based on the customer's perspective and not your own. Even when the RFP says to "describe" your company or offering, you should be putting it in the context that the customer cares about. It really helps to learn how to read your proposal the way the customer will. The customer doesn't really care about you, they care about the outcome of the procurement and what you will do for them. The last thing you want to do is to tell a story in your proposal that the customer doesn't care about. If all you do is describe yourself and your offering, then the customer will not care about your proposal. When the customer looks at your proposal, what do they see? If you are not sure about the customer's perspective, here are 33 ways to see things through the customer's eyes. And here are 22 more examples of things the customer might be looking for. And in case you find the RFP confusing, here are 34 reasons it was written that way. If you still lack insight, you can try making your proposal part of a conversation. If you are trying to write a proposal when you don't know the customer, you might have to make some assumptions. Or you can try writing your proposal dangerously or even ignore the customer's vision. The good news is that if you write your proposals from the customer's perspective, then a proposal beginner can beat their more experienced competition. Most proposals are written about the company submitting instead of being about the customer. Lots of companies even write their Executive Summaries backwards and introduce their proposal sections in painfully ordinary ways. It's critically important that you write the Executive Summary from the customer's perspective. You can write a good proposal by simply answering the RFP and describing yourself and your offering. And that is what most companies do. But you can't write a great proposal unless you matter to the customer. In addition, here are three ways to go from writing ordinary proposals to writing great proposals. This is how writing from the customer's perspective turns proposal writing into a competitive advantage.