Our last installment discussed the concrete steps that should be taken to minimize haphazard and disjointed efforts to write federal proposals. This installment presents additional information on how the sales and proposal-writing process can be integrated. To have success in the federal market, you must have focused sales efforts to build trust-based relationships with federal customers. Successful federal proposals are based on the intelligence gathered from the customer.

Proposal writing should not be thought of as a separate process or discipline. Rather, it should be thought of as the critical final step in the sales process; in other words, it should be the step used to close the sale. The entire process should be one, highly-structured process.

The 10 Steps to Federal Sales:

1. Identify the opportunity and build the customer relationship.

2. Manage the opportunity using a customer database.

3. Complete a Customer Intelligence Questionnaire (CIQ) as you build the relationship and communicate your solution to the customer.

4. Develop selling points based on the CIQ. The CIQ and the selling points will show how strong your relationship is with the customer.

5. Make a Bid/No Bid decision based on the strength of the customer relationship.

6. Prepare your Executive Summary based on the CIQ and the selling points.

7. Develop a proposal outline and schedule.

8. Develop a proposal kickoff meeting.

9. Write a defensive proposal based on the CIQ and the Selling Points. Your proposal will then reflect the strength of your customer relationship.

10. Control proposal versions.

You can build your company's integrated sales and proposal-writing processes by combining a CRM database product and existing standards and procedures (such as corporate experience and resume databases).

In the alternative, consider purchasing CRMFederal, Fedmarket.com's new web-based software product debuting in January 2006. The new CRMFederal product includes the Proposal Architect, our current proposal writing product. Current owners of the Proposal Architect will be provided with access to CRMFederal at no charge.

CRMFederal walks the user through ten, web-based tasks beginning with building customer relationships and ending with a completed proposal. Processes within tasks are activated through a web browser. Model proposal text and templates, all of which may be downloaded, are provided in Word format.

Call Matt Hankes at 301.652.9507 for additional information on CRMFederal.