Creating Winning Proposals for Government Contractors

Join us for our proposal development seminar covering everything you need to create winning proposals. This course covers the following topics:

• Understanding the Business Development Life Cycle—we discuss proposal roles and responsibilities, the “Dream Team,” and best practices framework.

• Conducting Pre-proposal Preparation—we examine assigning resources, baselining your solution, creating a “Strawman,” and preparing for “Kickoff.”

• Developing Your Proposal—we review kickoff preparations and the kickoff meeting, storyboards and annotated outlines, graphics development, and resumes and past performance development.

• Conducting Proposal Reviews, Production, Submission, and Post-submission Activities— we address the various kinds of proposal reviews—who, what, where, when, why, and how? We delve into proposal production—where the “magic” happens! We review post-submittal activities—you’re not finished yet!

Course Outline

• Analyzing the RFP—how to analyze the RFP; evaluate sections C, J, L, M, and appendices; and deal with desired and mandatory requirements.

• Designing Your Proposal—how to build an effective proposal outline as the foundation for a fully compliant offer and how to use compliance matrices to facilitate proposal evaluation.

• Developing Effective Themes—how to use our proposal writing techniques to develop themes, discriminators, and ghosts quickly and how to use hot buttons and other client concerns to develop winning proposal strategies.

• Writing Executive Summaries—how to write executive summaries using proposal-writing techniques that ensure RFP compliance, summarize the proposal, feature your discriminators, and present effective and winning themes.

• Writing Technical and Management Solutions—how to write effectively using different techniques to create persuasive text, add clarity, relate to the reader, and maximize point scores.

• Writing Past Performance and Past Experience—how to understand the difference between past experience and past performance and how to present these important elements of your proposal.

• Writing Personnel Resumes—how to get maximum score for your resumed personnel and use key and critical personnel in your proposal.

• Conducting Effective Proposal Reviews—how to plan, manage, and implement effective proposal reviews including color team reviews and final proposal reviews.

• Using Advanced Proposal Techniques – how to use advanced graphical techniques throughout your proposal from the cover to the detailed technical section.

• Increasing Your Win Probability After Proposal Submission – how to prepare for discussions, oral presentations, and final offers and how to continue improving your win probability after proposal submission.

• Improving Your Business Development and Proposal Processes – how to use “best practices,” learn from wins and losses, and continually improve your business development and proposal process.

This full-day course qualifies for 10 APMP Continuing Education Units (CEUs).

Course Instructor

Featuring:
Beth Wingate, AM.APMP, APMP International Director of Education and Lohfeld Consulting Group Managing Director, Proposal Development and Corporate Communications

Creating Winning Proposals is taught by Beth Wingate, Managing Director, Proposal Development and Corporate Communications. Beth has more than 22 years’ proposal development, management, and corporate communications experience. She helps clients develop proposals, improve their proposal operations, and build their corporate communications programs. Beth specializes in managing responses from large government procurements to task order proposals. She previously served as Proposal Center Director for Lockheed Martin. Beth is the 2010–2011 Director of Education for the Association of Proposal Management Professionals (APMP) International, 2008 and 2009 President of APMP’s National Capital Area (NCA) Chapter, and 2005 to 2007 NCA Chapter Executive Summary Newsletter Chairperson, publisher, and editor. Beth holds APMP professional accreditation.