How do you know when it's time to take on the sacred cows, break old habits, and go through the effort required to change how everyone at your company reviews proposals?
10 signs that it’s time to reengineer your approach to reviewing proposals
Ask yourself if you see your company in any of the following, because you can't maximize your win rate if:
- You don’t have a written definition of what proposal quality is
- Your proposal process consists of writing in anticipation of a big review and then final production
- The only criteria reviewers have to assess what it will take to win is the RFP
- You rely on people to tell you whether your proposal is any good, instead of criteria
- Your reviewers show up unprepared, turning your reviews into exercises in proposal sight reading
- You don’t separate what to review from how to review it
- You review against the same criteria for every proposal, instead of criteria based on what it will take to win that particular pursuit
- Everyone defines the scope or criteria for each review differently
- Writers don’t know what to expect from the reviewers
- The goal of the review is something ambiguous like “helping,” “providing feedback,” or “catching mistakes” instead of validating the proposal against what it will take to win
Whether to reengineer is really a return on investment (ROI) consideration, and that makes it worthy of executive-level attention. If you do the math, a small change in win rate is worth a considerable amount of effort. And we're talking more about changing culture than actual expense. How much does the company currently invest in finding new leads against its current rate, and what dose that return? How much better is the return if you increase your win rate against your current leads by improving your proposal reviews?
If you see your company in the list above, it's time to start asking that question.
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