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BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT INSTITUTE INTERNATIONAL

Insights and Innovations for Sustainable Business Winning© 2020 All Rights Reserved

Presented by

Howard Nutt, Executive Director

Business Development Institute International

Five Best Practices to Transform Your Success as a Proposal Professional



Case for Proposal Best Practice

◼ The “science” of proposal management

➔ Generally applicable to range of proposal environments

◼ A known body of practice

➔ Correlation to performance

➔ Fairly broad acknowledgement

◼ Issue of actual usage

➔ Opportunities for proposal managers in the gaps Copyright © 2019. All Rights Reserved.

Business Development Institute International



Leverage for Proposal Professionals

5. Continuously Improve Capability

4. Assure “Winning Proposal”

3. Build Team Competence

2. Plan for Proposal Success

1. Validate Proposal Readiness



1. Validate Proposal Readiness

◼ Best practice – mature offering baselines sufficiently prior to start!

◼ Opportunity – influence internal decision-makers to assure proposal readiness

4



Proposal Readiness Checklist

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Customer Intimacy Competitor Knowledge

• How strong is our relationship?

• Have we shaped requirements?

• Do we know their “hot buttons”?

• Have they validated our basic approach?

• Who are our competitors?

• What is their relationship with the customer?

• What are they offering?

• How could they beat us?

Offering Maturity Program Viability

• Can we meet requirements?

• Do we meet risk parameters?

• Do we need development beyond program scope?

• Do we offer winning value-for-cost?

• Can we meet the customer’s budget target?

• Are there any contract/other “red flags”?

• Is our program team defined?

• Is our management “on board”?



Proposal Readiness as Strategy

1. As part of project in-take, perform a simple readiness assessment

➔ Use capture plans, gather data for proposal plan, and/or interview project leaders informally

➔ For immediate purposes, use your assessment to target proposal information needs

2. Assign a readiness rating to each quadrant (just for you!)

➔ Most common approach is “stoplight rating,” but others possible

➔ Keep this strictly for internal purposes and never for attribution

3. Accumulate the data over time until you have a good sample

➔ Correlate your preproposal readiness assessments with actual win/loss results

4. Share findings with management as “process lessons learned”

➔ Again, no attribution, no finger-pointing… just “here’s what we’ve learned”

5. Use data to advocate adoption of simple approach to mitigate proposal risk



2. Plan for Proposal Success

◼ Best practice – complete defined planning tasks before kickoff meeting

◼ Opportunity – set firm expectations for proposal manager planning

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Attachment 2. Writers’ Information and Guidance

• Individual writers packages with partially completed writing plans that include specific guidance

Attachment 3. Draft Executive Summary

Proposal Kickoff Checklist

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1. Proposal Project Summary

2. Customer Profile

3. Competitive Analysis

4. Proposal Strategy and Themes

5. Staffing, Roles and Responsibilities

Attachment 1. Response Development Schedule

Key Information

from Capture Plan

What Distinguishes

Top Performers!



Kickoff Discipline as Strategy

1. Review your proposal process using an input-output analysis

➔Highlight inputs that are “must have’s” for successful proposal development

➔Allocate as many as appropriate to your “proposal countdown” checklist

➔Also consider broader industry best practices

2. Embed critical items into your proposal plan template

➔Prioritize planning elements as pre-conditions for holding a kickoff meeting

➔Advocate and defend the 20-percent rule (20% of time to planning)

3. Put as much effort into a fully prepared kickoff as you would into a completed proposal – metric by which a proposal manager is judged

4. Hone this discipline as part of continuing process improvement



3. Build Team Competence

◼ Best practice – assure that proposal teams have needed skills

◼ Opportunity – add training and coaching to proposal professionalism

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Proven Training Approaches

◼ Integrated Competency Development

➔ Comprehensive training program based on a broad BD competency framework

➔ Differentiated training based on BD/Sales functional roles

◼ Targeted Proposal Training

➔ Proposal-oriented workshops at set intervals

➔ Participation of selected proposal contributors based on the proposal forecast

◼ In-Process Team Workshops (JIT)

➔ 10-15 modules, each requiring 10-20 minutes

➔ Standalone or used to reinforce other training

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Team Training as Strategy

1. Review your proposal process from a skills and competencies perspective

➔ Writing vs estimating, creating new content vs answering questions, etc.

2. Poll your proposal participants to understand their needs

➔ Simple question: “What things do you find hard to do during a proposal?”

➔ Remember: These are pain points but not necessarily all that they really need

3. Adopt a training model – most likely a hybrid approach

➔ For formal delivery, consider how to make it as timely as possible

➔ For process enablement training, consider module size, duration, and timing

⚫ Always best to align with process steps, but easier if training is online and on-demand

⚫ Supplement with individual coaching of new or potentially weak proposal contributors

4. Make feedback on skills and competencies a routine part of “lessons learned” collection, analysis, and implementation



4. Assure “Winning Proposal”

◼ Best practice – routinely apply “winning proposal” criteria

◼ Opportunity – maintain a high standard for proposal products

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EX

AM

PL

E:

ST

RA

TE

GIC

US

E O

F T

HE

ME

S



“Winning Proposal” Checklist

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Strategic Focus

Responsiveness

Compliance

Competitive Focus

Document Design

Visualization

Quality of Writing

▪ Compliance: Adherence to all instructions and requirements for the proposal and program

▪ Responsiveness: Completeness of treatment for all requirements, proving understanding, etc.

▪ Strategic Focus: Presence of clear approach to all issues, expressed in themes and discriminators

▪ Competitive Focus: Use of executive summary, trade studies, and other content to support win strategy, themes, etc.

▪ Quality of Writing: Use of top-down writing approach – well-organized, easy to read, etc.

▪ Visualization: Use of figures, tables, and other devices –effective and well integrated with action captions

▪ Document Design: Use of presentation techniques that facilitate messaging and allow ease of evaluation



Proposal Quality as Strategy

1. Audit your proposal document template – align with “winning proposal” principles

➔ Special focus on top-down writing, theme placement, and summary graphic requirement

2. Develop expertise in “conceptual graphics” for visual messaging

➔ For help, see Mike Parkinson’s book, “Do-It-Yourself Billion Dollar Business Graphics”

3. Conduct proposal quality assessments of your proposals

➔ Perform assessment in parallel with Red Team Review

➔ Minimum standard = application to strategic and major proposals

4. Use “tiger team” approach to implement fixes during final proposal draft

a. Prioritize introductions and section summaries

b. Be sure that each section has a “section graphic” – i.e., a conceptual messaging visual

c. Focus on content / coherence of “theme tree” – i.e., real benefits to real customer issues

d. Don’t worry about detailed editing until the more strategic items are addressed



5. Continuously Improve Capability

◼ Best practice – systematically improve processes and products

◼ Opportunity – take control of proposal process improvement

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Appraisal Findings – Typical Companies

0

10

20

30

40

50

Perc

ent

Respondents

OFT

EN

NO

T A

T A

LL

US

UA

LLY

AL

WA

YS

SP

OR

AD

ICA

LLY

Use of Lessons Learned

Only 30%



Systematic Improvement Planning

◼ Feedback from proposal teams

➔ Typically, online survey routinely given to all teams

➔ Standard questionnaire, tailored as appropriate

◼ In-process metrics to identify problems

➔ Spend profiles by functional groups

➔ Targeted proposal steps, including review performance

◼ Formal program to analyze, vet, implement, and review improvements

➔ Trends from ongoing proposal team feedback, plus formal “lessons learned” from strategic proposals

➔ Compiled into annual review with senior leadership team

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Process Improvement as Strategy

1. Build a group charter, articulating core values that your team needs to deliver to your company and its proposal stakeholders

➔ Include a strong focus on the needs of your internal “customers”

2. Develop a lessons-learned feedback form

➔ Keep it short, with the 3-5 areas you think are most important

➔ Allow for narrative elaboration, but keep it anonymous

3. Poll proposal teams, especially those for strategic pursuits

➔ In some bid environments, you may want a separate form for these

4. Aggregate and track responses and data

5. Periodically review with senior management

➔ Highlight patterns of positive and negative feedback

➔ Present recommendations for process improvement

➔ Report progress on current improvement projects

Sample Lessons-Learned Feedback Areas

1. 1-2 things that went well

2. 1-2 things that went badly

3. Rating on how well trained

4. Rating on tools & templates

5. Rating on reuse library

1 2 3 4 5

1 2 3 4 5

1 2 3 4 5



Leveraging These Strategies

◼ Validate Proposal Readiness

➔ Correlated to critical success factors

◼ Plan for Proposal Success

➔ Correlated to process efficiency

◼ Build Team Competence

➔ Correlated to ongoing competency development

◼ Assure “Winning Proposal”

➔ Correlated to internal customer feedback

◼ Continuously Improve Capability

➔ Aggregated to prioritize process improvements

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What Sustains Top Performance!



Conclusion

◼ Improve win rates by 40-50%

➔ Direct correlation to solution and proposal readiness

◼ Increase capture ratios by 2X and more

➔ Direct correlation to outcomes for strategic pursuits

◼ But most importantly – take charge of your proposal professionalism!

➔ Improved proposal process productivity and product quality

➔ Advanced professional and organizational value

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These are the kind of things that support advanced APMP certification!



Howard Nutt▪ APMP Charter Member (1989)▪ APMP Fellow (Class of 2002)▪ APMP McRea Founders Award (2002)

Executive Director,Business Development Institute International

[email protected]

+1.602.502.5100

Contact

mailto:[email protected]

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