The art of writing a proposal is not rocket science but it does take experience. As contracting veterans know, RFP's demand that candidates meet a number of requirements - all or most of which must be addressed in the proposal. Good proposal managers possess the skill to recognize what is important and what isn't and to ensure that the final product is an easy-to-read, structured document. Many businesses don't have proposal managers and those that do overwork and overload them. To make matters worse, experienced proposal managers are a scarce commodity.

Drafting responsive proposal content requires a staff with good writing skills, technical expertise and more time than most imagine. Writing a page of clear and concise content takes far more time than even experienced writers estimate at the onset of a proposal effort. Original text must be edited repeatedly and those writers assigned to a proposal must also address their normal work tasks while trying to write the proposal.

Effective proposal writing and a company's ability to perform after winning an opportunity do not necessarily go hand in hand. The business which submits the best proposal may not eventually provide the best contract performance because the skill sets of the two endeavors are vastly different. Ideally, a company possesses both skill sets but often the best proposal does not come from the company that can provide the best value to the government.

So how does a company write winning proposals effectively? Although difficult to achieve, a company must have one or more experienced proposal managers. Management must support proposal mangers in every way possible and the proposal mangers must implement a very structured process for the writing of each proposal. The efforts of your sales staff and proposal writers must be tightly integrated so that your company ends up writing fewer proposals which, in the end, have a higher probability of winning.

Fedmarket.com Proposal Template Services

• Fedmarket.com offers a general proposal template for companies that offer services and solutions. Our template can be bought separately or as part of our CRMFederal software product which was developed specifically for writing proposals.
• We can also develop more specialized templates for individual companies.
• Specific templates, created for high-dollar projects, are offered for select Requests for Proposals.

Call Matt Hankes at (301) 654-9504, Ext. 126 for more information on proposal templates.

Writing and Managing Winning Proposals (1-day seminar)

Does your business spend weeks and countless resources pulling together a proposal that it submits at the last minute? The reality is that most companies have a 5% chance at winning contracts when they "take a shot" at responding to RFP's that they found on the web.

"Writing and Managing Winning Proposals" was specifically created to lighten the load on the number of responses to RFPs and win more government business. The tools and insight offered in this class are well worth your return on investment!

A Complete Business Process for Sales & Proposal Writing

• An interactive tool to help technical writers think
• Time saving model text
• Proposal writing instructions and electronic content generation
• Proposal library and version control
• A training tool for new proposal writer

is about developing relationships, our interactive technology enables you to know how strong your customer relationships are and your chances for success in a simple and straight forward manner.

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