Business Proposal Writing: Things you have to know!
Write a Business Proposal: Fail Big Time!
Each and every business proposal you produce is different. Each RFP RFQ or ITT “exam” question you reply to will be distinctive and each unrequested proposal you make will be individual. Business proposal writing is an 80% mechanistic and logical process. Successful business proposal writing uses the remaining 20% to produce highly focussed progressive content which plainly and quickly gives the assessors your message, backed up by evidence. Messing up that mechanistic element reduces time and effort available to focus on the key bid winning elements and poor business proposal writing is the result. must avoid the following failings to give the team the very importantextra time for innovation and imagination and ensure clarity and brevity with winning proposal writing:
Failing #1 – Not having a structured proposal writing process operating before the RFQ/ITT/RFP arrives.
For a team to work during short bid periods the process to be followed must be assimilated by all team members before the arrival of the ITT/RFP/RFQ. The only new information provided should be how your process is being tailored for a particular opportunity.
Failing #2 – Not making sure the whole team understands what is expected of them and others.
Some roles appear for every proposal, e.g. physical bid document production manager, volume boss, programme manager, engineering development and system engineering manager, production manager etc. It is particularly important to make sure the whole team understands the function and responsibilitiesof all other team members: Who is responsible for what? How will they deliver it? How do I support them? What content and evidence will they require from me?
Failing #3 – A team that doesn’t understand how the bid will be managed.
A good deal comes about in a short time-frame during a bid as every aspect of a full programme has to be resolved in a much condensed form. The capture manager will press things alongby setting apparently extremely hard bid programme milestones/demands and will use progress management tools and daily management events to monitor improvement. These are always tailored to the current proposal but will have common traits with all other bids. To avoid wasting time through continual explanation and justification of the process it is essential that team-members understand the mechanical process being used and how they support it.
Failing #4 – Not defining a proposal file structure set up in the company IT System.
Bids vary in intricacy and nature and everyone has a different mind’s image of how data should be structured in the proposal directory. This causes stress as helpful files and libraries such as risk lists, acronym and naming protocol lists are hard to find and files may get replicated. This becomes far worse in larger opportunities where more engineering is required and the offering more complex. A defined document structure, which everybody is required to use, prevents this. The structure used is trivial provided it reflects all stages of programme and engineering development and incorporates bid specific files, such as proposal writing, colour review/edit stages and costing/ pricing activity etc. A structure just needs to be defined, executed and people need to start using it during day to day work. That way when a bid comes in people intuitively know where information resides.
Failing #5 – Not spending enough time preparing the proposal content before asking team members to contribute.
Handling the effortof a large team is much more successful when a core, senior/experienced, team – representing project management, engineering, production and marketing – triages the proposal effort by: reviewing the RFP sections; establishing the outline solution; decomposing the requirement into proposal sections and producing a set of written instructions for each contributor. The key staff should also identify a set of work packages to look at innovation and solution risk mitigation. Between 1/8 and 1/4 of the time available should ideally be used for planning. If it isn’t the planning effectively gets done as part of the review process when the profitable business proposal writing should be being done.
Implementing all of these steps will dramatically improve the time available for the team to generate a winning business proposal. The good news is that steps 1-4 can be completed before you receive the RFQ/ITT/RFP. Don’t omit step 5, though, it is this coupled with the adapted colour review process which will ensure the best possible proposal you can compose goes from the door on delivery day.
The bid and proposal manager can learn all about proposal writing by buying the eBook Proposal Writing the Smart Way from Business Capture Mastery.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 28th, 2010 at 3:56 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.