Richard White has over 40 years of experience in writing federal proposals. He has written proposals for federal contracts exceeding one billion dollars. His philosophy on proposal writing is:
Proposal writing is an inherently complex and chaotic process. It is an expensive and risky game that neither the government nor the vendor wants to play but must because taxpayer dollars are being spent. The game must be played by the government’s rules to a fault and this requires a highly structured and systematic process. The process must begin with a customer a customer relationship and provide a mechanism of technical specialists to translate customer requirements into a clear and concise solution. Without the relationship and the process, you will not win the game.
Most companies do not write federal proposals well and their proposal writing process is chaotic.
Writing a proposal is a very costly process. To do it well, a company must have a Proposal Manager with extensive experience and good writing and management skills. Unfortunately, the Proposal Manager can’t write the subject matter solution (called the “Technical Approach”) required by the customer. The drafting of the Technical Approach requires the participation of technical specialists. Many technical persons lack writing skills because their educational focus was naturally on other matters and they run for the hills when they hear the word proposal.
Proposal writing is often treated like the ugly stepchild. In many instances, the process of writing a response to a federal Request for Proposal (RFP) is not a process at all. Rather, it becomes a series of chaotic events culminating in a last-minute crunch the day (and night) before the proposal is due. The chaos is centered on the Proposal Manager. Although the Proposal Manager can produce the majority of the proposal, the manager must prod and cajole technical staff to produce the critical technical solution to the customer’s problem. Most proposals win because of a customer centric, compelling Technical Approach. Those creating the Technical Approach are usually at the center of the chaos.
Mistakes made by most companies also include:
- Inadequate funding and an insufficient dedication of staffing resources to the project
- Writing proposals that never had a chance of winning because the company did not have a pre-existing relationship with the customer
- Not having a highly structured, integrated sales and proposal writing process
- A lack of understanding of “defensive” proposal writing
- Not having an incentive system and structure in place that motivates your technical staff to write effectively
The Solution
- Integrate the sales and proposal-writing process.
- Implement a structured, documented and automated proposal-writing process.
- Invest in building a database of up-to-date resumes and summaries of corporate experience.
- Automate and "version control" your old proposals and Management Plan boilerplate.
- Purchase CRMFederal, our web-based software product that integrates sales and proposal writing and focuses on building customer relationships.
CRMFederal is comprised of ten web based tasks beginning with customer relationship building and ending with a completed proposal. Processes within tasks are activated through a web browser. Model proposal text and templates are provided in downloadable Word format.
Call Matt Hankes at 301.652.9504 EXT. 26 for additional information on CRMFederal.
