The Seven Deadly Proposal Sins, Part 3: Greed

This seven-part series is based off of the most common proposal mistakes that we see throughout our work. In our first two parts we discussed the sins of Pride and Gluttony. Committing one or more of these proposal sins is the surest way to lose a bid while wasting...

The Seven Deadly Proposal Sins, Part 2: Gluttony

In Part 1 of our seven part series on the Seven Deadly Proposal Sins, we covered Pride, which is often synonymous with incumbentitis. Thinking that “the customer loves us too much to lose,” underestimating the competition, and developing proposals that are...

The Seven Deadly Proposal Sins – Part 1: Pride

Olessia and I recently spoke at the 2014 NCMA World Congress on proposal quality control. As we were working on the presentation, we started talking about the common proposal flaws we keep encountering on our clients’ proposals. We came up with the seven deadly...

Turning Ops Personnel into a BD Army

Training your operations people to be business developers reminds me a lot of patrolling in Afghanistan. On a patrol, security is everyone’s job, but it’s not everyone’s full-time job. Although the most experienced soldiers can better recognize something unusual, more...

The Difference between Proposals and Super-Proposals

Cue “Welcome to the Jungle,” by Guns and Roses. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQJJjcrwXQE). Slash’s guitar riffs sound as smoke forms and Megamind exclaims, “You dare challenge Megamind?” Titan, the eventual antagonist of the movie, responds with a not-so-witty...

Nailing Business Development for Indefinite Delivery Vehicles

In the U.S. Army Infantry, the actual execution of an ambush is less than 10 minutes. Once the mission starts, you move to the area, set up, conduct a leader’s recon of the ambush site, set up security elements, plan the firing line, place your gun teams, and...