Contribute to the success of businesses by working side by side to help them grow. To become successful based on the success of the companies we support.
To have other companies believe we contributed to their success.
© 2009 Business Development Solutions, Inc.
1. Collect relevant past performance - Rare is the proposal that doesn't include Past Performance. Why wait until the final push? Collect it early and start to put it into a standard format. If you have experience with the client you may already know how they prefer to see it presented.
2. Collect boilerplate - Nearly every proposal contains boilerplate information about the company. Collect the information and tune it for this effort.
3. Start to Storyboard - Once you have a glimpse of your story, start to capture it. Move engineering diagrams, workflows, thoughts on key discriminators, etc from the back of napkins to your story board.
4. Draft your Executive Summary - Most proposal efforts contain an Executive Summary; perhaps a couple of pages that neatly summarize important points. Once you know your program management, technical, risk management or other critical approaches, know your discriminators, etc. why wait? Come up with a solid draft.
5. Create a proposal template - Have you seen a similar scope RFP from this customer or perhaps a Draft RFP for this opportunity? If so, create your proposal template and be ready to fill in the blanks as information becomes available.
6. Create a shared document work space - If you have a server on which to host documents; create the virtual workspace, assign necessary permissions and start populating the folders.
As a consultant, I recently debriefed a company CEO and the Senior Management Team on our joint preliminary efforts to qualify a major opportunity for their company. Along with two of the company's key employees we, amongst other things, reviewed the draft Statement of Work and System Performance Specifications, took a first cut at competitive intelligence and began to put together a matrix of company wide skill sets, knowledge and past performance for making a credible bid / no-bid decision. This up front due diligence was critical and being done well before the RFP hit the street. The company was approaching this opportunity capture the right way.
Towards the end of the brief, the CEO asked what we thought the proposal effort might entail. How many pages allowed for technical, program management, pricing, etc? Based on another recent RFP of similar scope from the same customer, we were able to intelligently assume a 30 day turnaround, 100 page technical page count, etc. These fairly short but intense proposal efforts can really strain a company's resources and the CEO expressed concern about their ability to respond. His concern was not misplaced.
As a consulting proposal professional I know that, even with outside help, the company responding to the proposal not only pays for the effort but also has a major stake in providing personnel resources. This CEO was most concerned about providing the people. Still, he gave an OK to continue the due-diligence and pre-RFP work, while postponing a final bid / no-bid decision pending final RFP release and results of our continued due-diligence.
But what about staffing that proposal effort? One way to handle the load and avoid completely overtaxing and exhausting your resources during an intensive proposal effort is to take a steady strain on the effort - beginning well before the RFP clock starts ticking. By that I mean not waiting until RFP release to start the proposal process.
When the RFP hits the street, everyone should be ready and available. Note that if the RFP response is from a team, make sure the team mates know exactly what their proposal responsibilities will be. RFP release is not the time to start negotiating for internal or another company's personnel.
An added advantage to compiling available information early, drafting what you can and taking care of some of the proposal admin is that it allows time to concentrate on the important stuff when the RFP hits the street.
Seek additional areas where you can get a head start. The proposal effort may still tax available resources and be stressful, but hopefully somewhat less so.
Happy proposal writing.
Hank