Erika Dickson

The Production Manager is responsible for final formatting, graphics, editorial support, reproduction, binding, and packaging for delivery. Responsible for the implementation of the Production Plan and compliance with RFP instructions regarding formatting, packaging, and delivery. The Production Manager also oversees the rendering of graphics and their insertion into the document. Functions as a single point of contact for production assistance, tracking, and quality control. Responsible for maintaining configuration management once production begins. In some companies, the Production Manager oversees word processing and document changes. In organizations that are lucky enough to have professional editors, the Production Manager also oversees editorial support. This is becoming more and more rare in favor of people entering their own changes. The Production Manager functions as a single point of contact for production assistance, tracking, and quality control.

The Process Administrator provides support for the implementation of the proposal process. Maintains process records. Frees the Proposal Manager to focus on the message, assignment completion, and quality validation. For a large MustWin proposal, it’s a good idea to have a person dedicated to administering the process. It facilitates the process if someone is available to help people complete forms and maintain process records. With a Process Administrator to maintain the records, the Proposal Manager will be able to focus more on the message, ensuring people complete their assignments, and quality validation. Traditionally a Process Administrator has been referred to as a Proposal Coordinator, but the difference between a Proposal Coordinator and a Proposal Manager is less clear than the difference between a Process Administrator and a Proposal Manager.

Graphics specialists are often used to prepare graphics for the proposal. Graphic Specialists render the graphics, and may or may not be involved helping to conceptualize the graphics. Responsible for complying with instructions regarding graphic composition, completion of forms related to graphics, and maintaining configuration management of graphic files. Specialists are often used to render graphics. Proposal writers are still responsible for identifying the graphics, but they don’t have to have the specialist software expertise or illustration skills to render the graphics. Companies that do lots of proposals typically have someone in the Proposal Department to provide graphics support. Graphics can also be rendered by consultants.

Most companies have many departments that might get involved with supporting a proposal A Contracts Specialist: Reviews the RFP. Assists with Teaming Agreements. Reviews contractual terms to be included in the proposal. Reviews and prepares any certifications or representations required by the RFP. A Pricing Specialist: Gets it on paper. Leads the proposal process. Other corporate support involved in proposals may include human resources, facilities, and others. You should take advantage of all of the resources available within your company. These may include: Contracts Specialist. A Contracts Specialist is almost always involved in responding to a Government RFP. A company may or may not use them in response to commercial solicitations. When available, a Contracts Specialist should review the draft and final RFPs. Contractual issues like Organizational Conflict of Interest (OCI) can be a Bid/No Bid determination. A Contracts Specialist should also review any contractual terms specified in the proposal and may also review the terms of any subcontracting or teaming arrangements. The Contracts Specialist should participate in the validation of the proposal plans, to ensure that they have adequate opportunities for review. Pricing Specialists. Most large, complex proposals use Pricing Specialists who have the accounting expertise, spreadsheet skills, and access to sensitive cost data necessary to complete the pricing proposal. If the Pricing Specialist is involved with assessing the pricing of the competition or if the pricing involves collecting a large amount of data, then they may need to be involved before the RFP is released. Otherwise, the Pricing Specialist will get involved at RFP release. The pricing proposal needs to be validated and developed through stages, just like the proposal narrative. The initial pricing model (structure, strategy, and approach) should be validated as a plan prior to completing the draft. The draft should be validated and then the numbers refined to produce the final pricing. Typically, the Pricing Specialist will be responsible for preparing the entire price section or volume. Often, at least in government proposals, the pricing volume must be packaged separately from the other volumes and sealed. The Proposal Manager needs to discuss the preparation of the pricing and incorporate the needs of the Pricing Specialist into the schedule, validation plan, and other proposal plans. The Capture Manager will need to meet regularly with the Pricing Specialist to provide data and guidance towards preparing a winning bid. Human Resources/Recruiting. Some RFPs require you to provide the names and/or resumes of staff being bid. Sometimes you will have to recruit staff in order to do this. You should take advantage of your company’s Human Resources/Recruiting function to assist with this. Facilities. You need the help of your Facilities Manager to locate space for the proposal, obtain badges/entry clearances for consultants and subcontractors, and locate space for the project after award.

Key responsibilities include: Opening the doors to resources Setting the tone Fighting indecision Providing oversight Approving the review plan The Executive Sponsor’s hands-on involvement with the proposal may be extensive or could be very little, depending on his or her interests and priorities. If you are the Executive Sponsor for a proposal, even if you never touch the proposal itself, you can have a major impact on the success or failure of the overall effort. Here are some things that you can do to make a big difference to the proposal that do not require a lot of your time or require you to get down into the weeds and micromanage things. The Executive Sponsor Opens Doors to Resources Instead of the best staff being assigned to a proposal, most proposals are done by staff who happen to be available. This often means staff who have never done any proposal writing before. The number one thing that you can do to help a proposal is to make sure the best resources are assigned to the proposal. Often proposals do not need a lot of people participating; what they really need are people with experience who are good at proposal writing. These people tend to come at a premium and are often highly in demand and swamped with requests for support. The Executive Sponsor has the clout to get their time, whereas the Capture Manager and Proposal Manager may not. If you want to win, you should push resources on the proposal team instead of waiting for them to ask for resources. Most staff have had managing to a budget drilled into them for their entire career. They are used to compromising and working with the limited resources available. They may not even think about using staff on priority projects or that report to other business units. They may be too quick to accept the resources made available to them instead of getting the right resources. In addition, you will usually have more experience and know more people in the organization. In addition to staff, you can suggest other things that might not normally be considered, like training or the use of consultants. If you want to win, you will make sure that your staff are not pulling their punches regarding resources, and open doors that normally wouldn’t be open to them. The Executive Sponsor Sets The Tone The staff contributing to the proposal will usually not report to the Proposal Manager. The Proposal Manager will need your support in order to drive the staff working on the proposal. Don’t wait for an issue to develop before providing that support. Instead, set the right tone from the beginning. If the proposal may require an all-out effort, then tell your staff that is what you expect. Tell them what the stakes are and how the organization will benefit if you win. Tell them that you expect them to work late or on weekends if they need to in order to meet their deadlines. It’s so much easier for the Proposal Manager when staff have already heard from their supervisor. It means something different when it comes from you. When it comes from the Proposal Manager it may mean a power struggle or passive resistance (which can be even worse). The Executive Sponsor Fights Indecision Indecision can kill a proposal. Proposals get started late because people can’t decide whether to bid. Writing assignments are late because people have trouble making trade-off decisions regarding what to bid. When decisions are made, they are often revisited when people have second thoughts or others get involved. If you want them to make the decisions on their own, then tell them that (and avoid the temptation to second guess once they are made). It helps to make your expectations clear. As the Executive Sponsor you can help force decisions and make it hard for people to revisit a decision once it’s been made. Sometimes all you have to do is say from the outset that you want people to be decisive and stick to their decisions once made. If you want them to bring decisions to you, then tell them. The Executive Sponsor Provides Oversight Do you want to participate in reviews? If so, which ones? Do you want to be the last person to read the proposal and make comments before it goes out the door? Unanticipated change cycles can be a major problem in a deadline-driven situation. Your level of involvement may depend on whether you just need to be comfortable that they are doing a good job or whether you expect to read every word and personally do everything you can to improve the document. You need to be upfront about your expectations so that the team can anticipate and accommodate them. As the Executive Sponsor, you also need to provide some level of oversight to make sure that the team is working in a way that will produce the level of quality you expect. As the Executive Sponsor, you define the standards for quality and performance. If you want the team to take the review process seriously, you need to communicate to them that you take it seriously. The Executive Sponsor Approves the Review Plan Sometimes the team will anticipate an Executive Sponsor’s involvement in a review, only to find that the Executive Sponsor doesn’t have time to commit to it. Executive Sponsors often show up to review meetings without having read the RFP or even the proposal itself! If you don’t have hours to dedicate to a review, then let the Proposal Manager know so they can assign someone else to that spot on the review team. They can still provide you with a copy so that you can look at it when you have time.

Key responsibilites include: Capture Managers must not only sell to the customer, but also must sell internally to gain support and resources for the pursuit. A Capture Manager must know about the customer, the opportunity, the scope of work, project management, budgeting, pricing, contracting, proposal writing, and how to obtain, allocate, and steal resources within the company. Congratulations! You have the most challenging job in winning new business. It is also the most important. A Capture Manager has all of his or her eggs in one basket, being dedicated to the pursuit of a Must Win opportunity until it is awarded. If the Capture Manager is not dedicated, then they may be pulled in too many directions to give the opportunity the attention it needs. If it is truly a Must Win opportunity, then it deserves to have at least one person dedicated to its pursuit, and that person is the Capture Manager. If you aren’t dedicated, then you’re being pulled in too many directions and can’t give every opportunity the attention it needs. The Capture Manager will take over a lead that has been identified and initially qualified. You should immediately qualify it yourself, and continue to do so every day. Is it real and is it worth investing in its pursuit? Sometimes the best thing you can do for your company is to terminate a pursuit rather than to invest further in it. The sooner you kill an opportunity that is not worth pursuing, the easier and better it is for the company. When you are asked to be the Capture Manager for an opportunity you should not say “yes” until you have considered everything above. Do not play unless you know you can win. Initially, the Capture Manager works in partnership with the Business Development Manager who identified the lead. When the RFP is released, the Capture Manager works in partnership with the Proposal Manager who will lead the effort to develop the proposal document. Throughout the pursuit the Capture Manager is responsible for making sure that the right intelligence is collected so you can make informed strategic and tactical decisions. This does not mean the Capture Manager collects it by himself or herself — it means the Capture Manager must lead the effort and ensure the team gets what it needs. The Capture Manager is responsible for obtaining the resources to complete the proposal and for deciding what to propose. The Proposal Manager will assist by defining and administering the proposal process. But the process will only be successful if the company brings the right information and resources to the pursuit. To obtain the resources needed to capture the opportunity, the Capture Manager must take advantage of everything he or she knows about the company and the people who work there. This is where the Capture Manager must be able to persuade internally — the Capture Manager must convince people that the opportunity is worth the effort in order to get the right people assigned. The most important thing the Capture Manager does is make decisions: What should the win strategies be? What should the approaches be? What should the pricing be? Be decisive. Many teams go wrong by taking too long to make key decisions or worse by waffling. The Capture Manager must lead the team to make decisions, validate that they are correct, and then stick to them.

Key responsibilities include: Pursuing as many new opportunities as possible. Developing customer relationships that facilitate discovering and researching new business opportunities. Becoming the expert on what the customer really wants. Helping to position the company to win. Gathering intelligence and making sure the proposal reflects it. The Business Development Manager is expected to gather intelligence about the customer, the opportunity, and the competition that will be crucial to winning the opportunity. Any intelligence you gather that indicates an opportunity is not real or worth pursuing is just as valuable as the intelligence that makes that opportunity look good. The Business Development Manager does most of his or her work before the RFP is released. Once the RFP is released, the customer may no longer be willing to talk, so the Business Development Manager must anticipate the questions that people will have during the proposal process and get the answers before the proposal even starts. When the RFP is released and people ask questions that you didn’t anticipate, the Business Development Manager will try to get answers. If the company has to proceed without answers, the Business Development Manager may be in the best position to guess what the answer should be. When a Capture Manager is assigned, the Business Development Manager will help get the Capture Manager up to speed on the opportunity, customer, and competitive environment. The Capture Manager will continue to need input and to take advantage of your customer relationship throughout the process. When the proposal phase begins, the Business Development Manager should personally make sure that the proposal reflects what the customer wants and what you know about the competition. The Business Development Manager’s knowledge about the opportunity, customer, and competitive environment should go well beyond what is in the RFP and is vital — no one else may have that insight. Business Development Managers rarely take a writing role in a proposal effort, but they should make sure that those who do have writing assignments take into account everything they know about the opportunity, the customer, and the competition. The proposal that does the best job of speaking to what the customer actually wants (regardless of what it says in the RFP) is the one that is most likely to win. The Business Development Manager’s job is to give the company that edge. Preparing the proposal will require addressing many, many tradeoffs. The Business Development Manager’s understanding of the customer’s preferences should be used to help the team make the decisions the customer would prefer. The Business Development Manager should participate in the strategy sessions to offer this insight, and should review the proposal and make sure that it speaks to what the customer really wants. The Business Development Manager may need to coach the proposal team and give them the information they need to make sure that the right story makes it into print. If it doesn’t, then all of the careful positioning and work may have zero impact on whether your company wins the opportunity.