Overcoming Difficulties in Calling Government Customer

Overcoming Difficulties in Calling Government Customer

At OST, we often get a call to line up proposal support for an upcoming RFP. We hear that “RFP is about to drop, so send us a proposal manager, pronto.” Instead of reaching out to our consultants, however, we first pick up the phone and call the contracting officer to...

Top 7 Problems With Proposal Win Themes

Most companies, despite their best intentions (and even understanding of what a win theme is supposed to look like), fail to sell in their proposals. Win theme is one of the top five elements of proposal persuasion – and if they don’t work, it will be much harder to stand out.

Time pressures force the team to start writing before themes are sufficiently developed and the entire proposal process begins to unravel. Here are the top 7 problems with win themes we have observed in a number of companies, no matter what their business size and maturity level has been.

Obtaining Senior Management Buy-in

As I was teaching our IDIQs and Task Orders course on Monday, we were reviewing the best practices for a quick and efficient proposal development process. One practice was conducting a proper kickoff meeting. After attending many proposal kickoffs (some of which included a proper breakfast and a long PowerPoint), and then watching a proposal unravel, I have figured out what needs to happen in order to prevent a disaster. I distilled the information that needs to be shared with the proposal team into nine kickoff goals. It doesn’t matter what the size of the team is and what the length of a proposal is, you have to address all the goals – or there will be problems, guaranteed.

Reminder and Olessia’s 5 tips for proposal professionals

I am in foggy San Jose in Silicon Valley, teaching a course for Stevens at NASA Ames. It is an intense, inquisitive, and exceedingly bright group of students. Some of their questions got me to remember some truths in the proposal profession that I began to take for granted – so I am sharing them with you after quickly jotting them down at 4 am (I am still on the East Coast time).