Master Proposal Startup Information Checklist

This book is the implementation of something we have recommended people do for years. Now that we've done it for you, you can put it right to work.

In 2007, CapturePlanning.com first published our MustWin Process Workbook, an off-the-shelf set of process documentation covering business and proposal development from lead identification through award. The MustWin Process uses something called Readiness Reviews to bring structure to the pre-RFP phase and to enable people to measure their progress toward being ready to win at RFP release. But what happens when you identify a lead at RFP release? Some people say that you shouldn’t bid. But some leads can only be discovered at RFP release and it’s quite legitimate to pursue them.

In the MustWin Process we recommended that you take all of the questions, goals, and action items from the Readiness Reviews, combine them and do them all at once. This tells you what you know (and what you don’t) so you can make an informed decision about whether to bid and if you do it will give you the information you need to determine what your bid strategies should be.

This book does that for you.

It is the result of taking the questions, goals, and action items from our Readiness Review methodology and turning them into one big checklist.

It can be used in a number of different ways. We find it to be especially useful for people who don’t have either a formal process or structure. You don’t have to have some big “process” with all the implementation effort and training that implies to pull out a handy checklist and use it to do things better. That’s what this book is all about.

And for those of you who do have a formal process, you will find topics and ideas in here that you can use to enhance what you have and take it to a higher level.



This ebook contains 135 critical questions in 9 categories that you should answer before you start your next proposal.

Are you ready to write the winning proposal?

The answer to this question depends on how well you can answer the questions that will come up when people try to write the proposal. This checklist can help you anticipate those questions to either determine whether you have the information you need or to help you get it.

It's all ready to go. You can use this checklist:
The materials we publish have been fully vetted by millions of people in our audience over more than 10 years. This ebook is written for RFP-based proposals, but you can also use the questions to drive sales proposals that don't have RFPs. It is written to handle the complexities of bidding U.S. Government proposals, but without the jargon so that it's applicable to all kinds of proposals written in response to an RFP.

You can see the Table of Contents by clicking on the image thumbnails.

The 20-page proposal ebook is in PDF format and can be downloaded and put to work immediately upon purchase. It comes with a coupon worth more than the price of the book, so you can upgrade to a full PropLIBRARY subscription once you see how valuable the content is.



P.S. If you're already a PropLIBRARY Subscriber, you get the book for free. You also get the Microsoft Word source document so you can easily customize the questions to match the particulars of your business. Check out the Subscribers Only section in the Downloads Library...
  To guide the pre-RFP pursuit by helping those involved in lead qualification and intelligence gathering to obtain the right information needed to close the sale with a winning proposal. As a gateway into the proposal or as a bid/no bid tool. It will become clear whether you have bid strategies that differentiate your company and provide the customer with reasons to select you and whether you know enough about the customer to write a proposal from their perspective. You can even quantify things by tracking how many questions were answered. As a bid strategy development tool. By pointing out both what you know and what you don't know, it makes it easier to figure out what your bid strategies should be. You can use it to guide the proposal startup, as a precursor to planning the content of your proposal. The more information you gather in response to these questions, the better the guidance and instructions you will be able to provide the proposal writers. It is the difference between asking writers to respond to the requirements and asking them to support specific bid strategies in their response to the requirements. You will also have the information they need to write the proposal from the customer’s perspective instead of simply describing your company and its offering. The checklist will also help writing proceed more quickly and prevent the writers from getting stuck by a question they can get an answer to later.