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Improving the Proposal Process
If you do a lot of proposals, you can benefit from formalizing your proposal process and studying best practices. A well organized and planned proposal process can eliminate much of the chaos and last minute panic that so often haunts proposal development. Well thought-out proposal procedures will also help you coordinate efforts and help you win more proposals.-
Having a process defined and documented is only the start. Most companies struggle to get their process implemented. Here are some tips that can help you survive the experience. -
If any of these signs apply to your organization, then it may be time to throw out your proposal process and reinvent a new one.
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If you want to consistently win your proposals, you need to formalize your processes. Unfortunately, a fully mature process is difficult to achieve. Even if you can get all the details right, getting everybody up to speed, able, and willing to execute them can be a nearly impossible challenge. So we thought we'd share some of the secrets we've picked up over the years. -
Here is a set of principles that can help guide the design of a successful proposal process. They provide a set of standards that you can assess your proposal against. After all, if you don't know your goals, it's difficult to achieve them.
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If you ask a proposal specialist whether they have a process, they will almost always answer "yes." It would be embarrassing to do otherwise. Yet, if you examine how things actually get done, you'll find most of them are not actually following a process. Do you fall into any of these traps? -
Some people think that quick turnaround proposals are simply a matter of following the same proposal process, only doing things faster. Some people are also wrong.
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How do you know if your proposal process is delivering what it should? Here are 11 questions that your proposal process should answer. -
In the past, project references were static summaries that were often kept as a collection of re-use files. With the advent of past performance evaluations, this way of keeping project information may no longer meet all of your needs.
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Some companies have dedicated Business Developers, and others leave the task to their project managers. Regardless of your background, if you are assigned the role of Business Developer, then you need to know what is expected of you. -
Congratulations! You have the most challenging job in business development. It is also the most important. The only chance you have of succeeding is understanding what is expected of you.
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When you have a chance to re-write your business or proposal development processes, if you start by drawing a flow chart, there's a good chance you process implementation will fail. Luckily there's a better way... -
If there is one universal rule for proposals it would have to be plan before you write and write to the plan.
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The story of how one company overcame the struggle for acceptance of their proposal process by embracing something so counter-intuitive, most people would never think of it as a way to gain process acceptance. -
It's not enough to have a process and tell people they should follow it. If you want people to follow your process you need to be able to articulate what's in it for them. And you have to do it from their perspective.
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Instead of begging people to follow your process, wouldn't it be nice to have them seek you out on their own initiative. We found a way to make that happen and we're willing to share... -
There is a big difference between reading the guidance provided by a process and understanding the consequences if you skip steps. Real understanding only comes when you start using the process to do real world proposals. Share one company's lessons learned from their first proposal.
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People often hold "lessons learned" meetings after a proposal submission. If you really want to use these sessions to improve your proposal quality, you need to re-think how you collect your lessons learned, and what you do once you have them. Find out how to turn lessons learned into positive change. -
People struggle to make the transition from the business development process to the proposal process. Most of them compound the struggle because they are looking at it the wrong way.
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What makes a process successful are the tools that people use to execute the process. You need to make it easier for your stakeholders to execute a proposal using your proposal than it is to execute a process without your process. The tools and job aids you offer will determine how easy that is. Here is a list of 101 things that should be part of your business development process. -
Here is a high-level view of the stages a proposal typically goes through. It's a good orientation for someone new to preparing proposals in response to Government RFPs.
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Everything in this article has actually happened to me, although not all on the same proposal.
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