Subscribe to our blog series and follow us on LinkedIn to get tips for overcoming proposal challenges in the REAL WORLD, rather than IDEAL WORLD scenarios.
Our blog series will provide the advice proposal training programs don’t typically cover… what to do when all the proposal “ducks” aren’t in a row. THINK Proposals’ adaptable, scalable strategies have helped propel teams to success on pursuits at every level of maturity.
In our experience, proposal training focuses on the ideal situation, often resulting in the proposal world being governed by a plethora of shoulds, that include:
Capture should be completed before the RFx is released
The entire team should be engaged and available throughout the process
A solution should be developed before you start writing the proposal
The schedule should be respected and kept by all teammates
If proposal professionals ran companies or consistently had the authority to implement the best practices proven to lead to a win, we would be doing all the shoulds for each opportunity. And we should continue to work with our teams and companies to implement strong capture, go/no go decisions, etc. because they produce results.
But let’s be real - many times there isn’t capture, SMEs are overloaded with billable work, and proposal and solution development happen at the same time. In addition, schedules are often compromised by other pursuits, customer meetings, addenda/ amendments, company events, vacations, extensions, elections…you can see where this is going.
So how do you, as a proposal professional, survive and thrive in this environment? How do you submit a great proposal despite these and many other obstacles?
THINK Proposals’ 2019 blog series will explore the realities of proposal development and bring you “real deal” strategies to leap over roadblocks without elves or faeries.
Keep up with our blog posts to:
Overcome limited capture information
Develop a flexible proposal schedule that works
Get ahead of the curve by maximizing pink review effectiveness
Structure reviews to make the most of reviewers’ time and get the comments you need, when you need them
Hack the writing process and eliminate the mid-proposal rewrite loop
Nail compliance every time
Prepare an outline that evaluators will thank you for
We’ve tested these actionable tips over the last 20 years and we want to share them with you to help you maintain your sanity (and even have a little fun!) when some or none of the shoulds happen.
We should add: we are BIG fans of the shoulds and have helped firms implement winning proposal processes. We also understand that, even when the advice is followed, challenges still happen. Through this blog series we want to provide you with our experience overcoming them!
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