To Bid or Not to Bid
The bid/no-bid decision is the most important decision you can make in the bidding process.
Color Team Reviews—Purposes and Goals
Beth Wingate provides tips for running effective color team reviews – and tells “what” to review to ensure a compliant, compelling proposal.
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Right-sizing Your Capture and Proposal Process
Understanding the effect capture and proposal processes have on overall operations is the key to an effective process implementation such that the end goal – business growth – is a natural consequence of the planning and activities.
Integrating the Capture and Proposal Management Processes in Business Development
Bob Lohfeld shares his insights and suggestions for improving processes within the opportunity identification and assessment, pursuit, pre-proposal preparation, proposal development, and post-submittal phases.
Resolve to Improve Your Win Rate
Let it be resolved that this will be the year in which we raise our new business win rate, write better proposals that cost us less to create, and leave the practice of working to exhaustion on late-night proposals as our final fond memory from the year now past.
5 Passing Grades You Need to Lead the Pack
Ensure you proposed solution meets or exceeds government requirements and resonates with your customer.
Ask the Right Questions to Understand Customer Objectives
RFPs generally do not contain objectives and must be deduced from research or discussions with government personnel — preferably before the RFP is released. Because those discussions are so important, you must plan and practice so you know what questions you are going to ask and who is going to ask them.
How to Build Professional Skills in Proposal Management
Dear Proposal Doctor,
I have been in proposals for five years and love the industry— I am one of those anomalies that thrive on little sleep, junk food, and a drive to win! I am hungry to improve and learn as much as I can.
Two Hats
Dear Proposal Doctor,
People say I have a big head, but believe me, I would prefer to only wear one hat. Unfortunately, my capture manager is not doing his job. Communications with subcontractors are erratic and inconsistent, the pricing team does not have a strategy, and progress towards a viable solution is slow. Every time I jump in to help with these items, the team is so grateful to have someone providing direction. In fact, if not for my efforts, nothing would have been accomplished on many fronts that should be the responsibility of the capture manager. Wearing two hats is exhausting and I’m only getting compensated for one. How can I get my capture manager to do his job?
Creating an Optimal Path for a Losing Proposal
Dear Proposal Doctor:
I am currently the proposal manager on what I believe to be a losing proposal. We have never met the customer and have no first hand insight to the customer’s requirements or hot buttons. Our technical architect has developed a solution that meets 75% of the customer’s requirements. My management is very enthusiastic about our chances of winning. What should I do?