My 7-year-old daughter, when working on a puzzle, knows to glance at the whole picture first, before starting to assemble the pieces. So, her process is to study the picture, and then find a corner piece to which she then starts adding pieces.
What separates outstanding proposal managers from mediocre ones is the ability to lead their teams in developing winning content on top of running a smooth process. No matter how compliant and attractive the document may be, most often it is the substance that will distinguish a winning proposal from the rest. Many proposal managers rely on Subject Matter Experts (SME) to create the substance, but most SMEs require guidance, facilitation, and significant rewrites in order to produce something innovative and compelling. Rarely is a proposal team blessed with a solution architect who can guide the SMEs. In the majority of cases, a truly top-flight proposal manager steps up to become that solution architect, to ensure that their proposal content shines.
As a proposal manager getting a proposal plan approved, I always found it difficult to get my management to approve a budget that was based on 40-hour weeks for employees and 50, 60, or even 70-hour weeks for consultants. It just didn’t look good: a consultant often cost more per hour than an employee, and got paid for every hour worked to boot. Yet, I managed to stay on budget and win. I would like to share how I did it with you.
We all hate being wasteful. I gather this is why some people feel that they don’t really want to spend money on pursuits until they get to a real battle – the proposal. They avoid pre-proposal work or capture, thinking that it’s there for those with bigger budgets and deeper pockets. After all, who has time or money anymore for lengthy brainstorming meetings, large Black Hats, proposal development before an RFP ever hits (so you get to rewrite the sections almost from scratch when the RFP is out and your SMEs really focus on the problem), or composing lengthy PowerPoints for your management to feel comfortable.
Should proposal professionals redefine the way they think about themselves? Eric Gregory of CACI, Inc., delivered a keynote address at the APMP International Conference that caused some serious audience buzz at the follow-on networking session. He somberly stated that proposal professionals are different from the “normal” folk: we are warriors, the vanguard, the point of the spear, pioneers, adventurers, the legion, the cavalry…
A business owner has two options when engaging consultants: they can either outsource the proposal work entirely, or have consultants augment your business development team. Typically, there are severaltypes of situations when you should hire proposal consultants:
