Category: Proposal Strategy

Creating Balance During the Proposal Pursuit

Post author By Chaz
Post date September 23, 2017

Creating Balance in the Proposal Process — Creating Balance during the proposal pursuit.

The idea of work-life balance has gained a lot of popularity in recent years as millennials have entered the workplace. Working a 9 to 5 and then going home and turning off work is getting harder thanks to mobile connectivity. Instead of looking at work and life as two separate places, what happens when we start examining them as intertwined pattern woven together. Each strand has a different color, a different meaning, but when woven together, produces a beautiful pattern. When our work-life balance is working, this pattern is really nice to look at. When it’s well…we usually start looking for another job but we don’t really ever think about what went wrong in the process.

As a manager, if you can extend your empathy out and start focusing on creating a family environment in the office, you’ll find the benefits rewarding. This attitude will help you as a manager start to feel less stress because you’re not trying to compartmentalize people and things and instead, viewing them as an organic extension of your mission and values.

Here are three ideas for a more balanced workplace:

Trust as a foundation. Establishing trust as a major element of your team is key to getting the most out of employees in your organization. What you can see in a lot of organizations are elements for creating distrust. Although time sheets are required for billing, and open floor plans are more efficient, your employees may feel like they’re constantly being watched. Although some of these tools and strategies may be operational necessities, creating ways to make a workplace feel like a place of trust are even more important than ever.
Failure is okay. Not only should failures (big and small) be okay, but the lessons learned should be rewarded. If your team is pushing limits to their creativity, there are bound to be some failures along the way. At Facebook, “Fail Faster,” was a key mantra. The faster the Facebook team failed, the quicker they got to the right solution. The main point being, once your team gets over the fear of failure, solutions and success come faster.
Have a framework to work through disagreements. In many organizations, the fear of conflict can paralyze progress. As a team, it’s important to have a framework for working through problems so these issues don’t fester and create blocks in your team’s productivity.

Working and winning projects can be an intense process. Long hours and tight deadlines can really create a lot of drama for proposal teams. In order to keep the team working well, a deep foundation of trust, openness to failures, and a framework to work through disagreements are all key to making sure a team survives all of the bumps in the road. Contact us for more help with training your proposal team.

Proposal Strategy Proposal Teams

Boost Proposal Team Morale in Five Ways

Post author By Chaz
Post date August 16, 2017

Boost Proposal Team Morale in Five Ways

A proposal team working on a tight deadline can create a steam-cooker-like environment. Even the nicest marketing professional can get snappy when an architect, senior planner, and project manager are giving three different directions for an upcoming shortlist presentation. Although it’s important the best product gets submitted to the client, breaking down the team in order to get it to that point is not ideal, because usually there is another deadline sneaking up immediately behind your current one.

Avoid crushing your proposal team’s morale by using these five tips during your next project pursuit: Delegate and Support New Team Members, Communicate Daily, Be Positive, Don’t Practice “Dirty Delegation,” and Make Internal Debriefing a Positive Experience.

1. Support New Team Members

In the 11th hour of presentation prep, it’s easy to want to take the PowerPoint privileges away from the struggling newbie navigating the mouse and looking for the right function for the past 10 minutes, but don’t do it. You may not remember it, but you were once new to your job. The novice navigating PowerPoint might actually know what they’re doing, but the lack of sleep, nerves, and poor direction is causing this newest team member to move at the pace of molasses. In this moment, if you and your team can stay calm and patient, not only will you boost your team member’s confidence, you’ll build loyalty.

2. Communicate Daily

In agile methodology, there is a daily stand-up meeting. This is a short meeting (key word being: short) to address what each team member will be working on that day. If you have remote team members and you’re preparing for a deadline that’s 2 weeks away, a daily call (FaceTime even better) is a great way to keep your team engaged. If you don’t have time for 10-minute meeting leading up to the submittal or presentation deadline, why are you even chasing this pursuit? Make sure you discuss how your team will connect through the entire proposal pursuit process at the kick-off meeting.

3. Don’t “Dirty Delegate” or Redo a Proposal Team Member’s Work

If you’re in a management role, it’s very easy to take work away from a direct report (a.k.a. Dirty Delegation) or redo someone’s work if it’s not meeting your or others’ expectations. But guess what, not only did you just insult your team member, you just built a wall of distrust between you as well. This team member is now going to have more anxiety about working on a project and it’s going to slow them down. If you have a new team member, you must give him or her time to learn how to work with your team. Otherwise, you’ll have turnover and you’ll have the “why can’t we find good people” problem.

4. Create a Positive Proposal Team Environment

It’s a common complaint in the A/E/C industry that marketing people can’t get their project teams to write narratives on time or produce slide content. Why? Your project teams are terrified to write content that’s going to be critiqued and ridiculed. Many times, your best engineers, architects, contractors, and project managers are not your best writers. They have the most knowledge but getting that information from their brains to paper is going to take positive persistence on repeat.

5. Make Internal Debriefing a Rewarding Experience for Each Proposal Team Member Involved

Most people hate the annual review process so you can imagine how an internal debriefing feels. Make this a positive experience by incentivizing team members to disclose lessons learned. Mark Zukerburg coined the phrase “fail faster so you can find a solution faster.” The idea that you can find the perfect proposal and presentation process for your team doesn’t exist, rather, you should consider a Kaizen philosophy or “continual improvement.” This type of environment creates a trust centered environment that results in great work and winning processes.

Summary

Whether you work on proposal teams within a large organization or a smaller one, building an approach that helps each team member function productively is critical to helping your firm win work. Whether you are a marketing coordinator, manager, or design professional, you can ensure your team creates the best proposal or presentation possible by delegating to and supporting new team members, communicating daily, delegating responsibly, being positive, and conducting internal debriefs. By creating a supportive, and learning-focused environment, you can build proposal and presentation teams that love pursuing new opportunities without the stress and fear.

Proposal Strategy

Better Proposals Start With a Kickoff Meeting

Post author By Chaz
Post date January 7, 2015

Woman training team of people — Businesswoman Making Presentation To Office Colleagues

If you are pulling a team together for an RFP pursuit, it’s a good idea to have a kickoff meeting to outline expectations and deliverables. This will ensure a great proposal in less time and hopefully less pain. The best way to avoid a mad dash to the deadline is to have a kickoff meeting immediately after the pre-bid meeting.

Meeting Preparation

Only invite key staff members to the kickoff meeting. Usually the project manager, marketing coordinator, and business development manager are involved in these meetings. When setting up the meeting with your team, make sure you tell everyone in your calendar invite to read the RFP first before showing up to the meeting. It doesn’t hurt to attach a copy of the RFQ or RFP so there are no excuses for not reading it.

Proposal Plan

The best way to prepare for a kick-off meeting is to prepare a Proposal Plan.

1. Pick your favorite tool (Word or Excel).

2. Create a proposal outline in a table format based on the structure the RFP provides. For example:

Section 1: Understanding of Services and Approach
Section 2: Qualifications

3. Add two columns, one for “Who’s Responsible” and “Deadline,” respectively.

4. Create space for the team.

5. Create space for relevant project experience.

6. Proposed Schedule: Draft 1 will be completed on this date, Draft 2 will be created on this date.

7. List general proposal requirements (12 point font, double-sided, 50-page limit, number of copies, etc.)

8. List proposal delivery requirements (time, place, etc.)

9. Additional Questions to ask the procurement specialist.

Don’t Leave Until You Have the Answers

Do not leave the kickoff meeting until you have every item on your proposal plan taken care of, someone responsible for giving you the information, and a date and time when the task will be completed. In some cases, this may be you for most of the items, but the main point of this exercise is accountability.

Follow Up

When the deadlines approach, start following up with team members and remind them, “This is what we agreed to at the kickoff meeting, do you have item 2 ready?”

Summary

Stick with the process! Your team will get used to the overall process and it will make getting your content together easier. If you have any questions about proposal plans and kickoff meetings, please contact us.

Proposal Strategy

4 Tips for Pre-bid Conferences

Post author By Chaz
Post date January 5, 2015

Audience Listening To Presentation At Conference

I went to a pre-bid conference today for a county design-build project. It was lightly attended by mostly the subconsultants who were looking to sign on with a prime contractor. It’s always interesting to observe how different companies approach the pre-bid conference. You see the various consultants that are actively trying to sign up with a contractor and the contractors trying to avoid making any commitments to team – for now.

When I attend pre-bid conferences, I usually try to do four things: be visable; listen to all of the information; ask questions; and pay attention to the pre-bid attendee list. Below is a little more information about each tip.

Proposal Strategy

Why You Need A Proposal or RFP Consultant

Post author By Chaz
Post date December 31, 2014

It’s Competitive Out There!

When you’re submitting a proposal, you’re probably competing against strong firms with huge budgets and resources. Not only can we help you compete with the competition, we’ll make your company stand out as a leader in the field. Here are 10 reasons you need to hire a proposal consultant for your next RFQ or RFP response:

You don’t have enough money to hire someone full time but still want a high-quality RFP response. Hire us as you need us. We’ll create a great proposal for you in less time and you’ll get a better product.
We have more experience creating and submitting RFP responses. We have experience submitting RFP responses to multiple client types for a variety of industries. We’ve submitted winning proposals for healthcare, software engineering, civil engineering, and commercial construction firms.
You’re much better at operations than proposal writing. Wouldn’t you rather be doing what you’re good at? Let us take care of the proposals and you take care of operations.
Formatting is a pain. Formatting your RFP response in the way the government agency wants it can take a lot of time and effort. We’re pros at doing this.
RFPs aren’t written in normal English. Most RFPs were written by procurement staff and lawyers. Sometimes it can be a challenge to determine what the agency is really looking for in your RFP response. We have experience with a variety of agencies and can create strategic responses to better position your firm for a win.
Private proposals and government proposals are not the same. We can help you understand the differences and how your firm can compete in different markets.
A proposal expert can help you sell your company better than you can. A proposal consultant can give you an objective view of your company and create a strategy that will differentiate you from the competition.
Every government agency is different. What works with one agency may not work with another agency. You need to know the differences between agencies so you’re not disqualified from a pursuit.
Your competition can hire a copywriter, graphic designer, and editor to work on their proposals but you can’t. It can be challenging to look as good as your competitor if your competitor has more resources than your company does. We can help you look as good as the big guys.
Paper, printing, and binding, oh my! Every detail counts. We take into consideration the packaging of your proposal and make sure every detail of your paper submittal looks as professional as possible.