News & Knowledge Center
Category Results for Proposal Doctor
Getting a non-producer to deliver? Ask the Proposal Doctor
Dear Proposal Doctor,
I have one non-producer on my proposal team. Everyone in the organization has told me that this guy is the absolute right person to craft a 10-page section on a topic that he knows inside out. But, he doesn’t deliver. He keeps saying it is in progress, and I will get something soon.
Others have told me not to worry. However, as a proposal manager, how can I not worry? This person could make or break the entire proposal. Time is ticking. Please…
Questioning the questions? Ask the Proposal Doctor
Dear Proposal Doctor,
The battle over which questions to send to the government customer on a long and not-very-well-written RFP has begun. The desktop publishers want to ask about fonts. The graphics people want to ask about color and foldout pages. The solution architect wants to ask about specifications and performance metrics. The contracts people want to suggest new terms and conditions. The pricing people want to ask about….everything.
Just collecting, vetting, discussing, formatting, and submitting the questions could eat up our entire response time. What…
Shaking an incumbent out of its complacent rut
Dear Proposal Doctor,
I am working with a team that is about to bid on a contract for which they are the incumbents. They have been doing this work for a while and they get plenty of kudos from the customer.
However, re-competes are always difficult. These people cannot generate any ideas about how to do things better or differently in the future. They are convinced that they have the answers and that the way they have been delivering services up until now is actually the…
Do I have to understand the proposal contents as the Proposal Manager? Ask the Proposal Doctor
Dear Proposal Doctor,
Do I have to actually understand what is in the proposal I am managing? Sometimes this is an overwhelming task, and it distracts me from the blocking and tackling of the day-to-day management.
Often the material is technical and written for people who are “inside the bubble” and who understand all the jargon and acronyms. This makes it difficult to know if the writing is not persuasive or if it is intrinsically not understandable to a layperson. Yet it is hard to give…
How to screen and interview proposal managers?
Dear Proposal Doctor,
My organization is woefully short of proposal managers and I have been under pressure to hire more. We advertise in the usual places and we get applicants.
The interview process does not seem to be a good predictor of who will be effective and who will be a good fit with our environment. No matter what questions we ask, we don’t seem to find out the right information. Sometimes we are pleasantly surprised; more often, we are not. This means we might be…
Pressing commitments – how to be “fair” as proposal manager?
Dear Proposal Doctor,
I am running a big proposal. Several people on the team are critical to the effort because of how much they know. Each seems to have some kind of personal commitment that cuts into their day several times a week. It’s either kids, medical appointments, other professional commitments, a sick relative, a household repair, or something else.
I don’t want to have one standard for most of the team (you need to be in the office) and another standard for a select…
Fed up with proposal politics? Ask Proposal Doctor
Dear Proposal Doctor,
My proposal has become a hornet’s nest. The capture manager is intensely unpopular. She makes arbitrary and often unwise decisions with zero transparency. People have to go behind her back to get her decisions reversed because she will not engage in discussion.
Although this could be a unifying force, instead the proposal team has broken up into factions, each trying to curry favor with senior management in an effort to get the capture manager replaced with a candidate of choice. The amount…
How to escape from proposal scheduling hell
Dear Proposal Doctor,
I am in scheduling hell. Three proposal managers and a proposal coordinator have vacations planned in the next 2 months. All four need the time off, and all four have already postponed vacations in anticipation of upcoming RFPs (none of which arrived on schedule).
Commercial and government customers alike plan to issue an RFP on a certain date and then encounter roadblocks that result in delays of up to a year. How can I plan effectively and still give my staff the…
Beyond proposal burnout – what to do?
Dear Proposal Doctor,
With only 2 weeks before a major proposal submittal, the key people on my team are in an advanced state of burn out. Some are sleeping on couches in the office rather than going home. Others come in to work not having slept at all.
It’s impossible to move any deadlines and still get the proposal done, and it’s going to be impossible to meet the deadlines given the level of exhaustion. Because of multiple proposal extensions, this situation has been intensifying…
Why show up if everyone else wants to run the proposal show? Ask the Proposal Doctor
Dear Proposal Doctor,
All of a sudden, everyone on my team is obsessed with fonts and kerning and other aspects of desktop publishing. People who should be worried about the solution and the price are weighing in on the appearance of the document. Everyone has an opinion on the best color scheme, margins, headers, footers, and text boxes.
Isn’t this my domain? Shouldn’t I have the final say on this? Why is everyone else trying to do my job? What is the point of my…
