Setting (or adhering to) an ironclad due date

Most reactive proposals have a due date that you can’t miss, even by seconds. Remember, it’s called a deadline for a reason — and if you miss crossing that line, you’re dead.

Many proactive proposals have loose due dates. Your salesperson may convince the customer that a problem needs solving, and so the customer says, “Bring me a proposal” with varying degrees of urgency. Your job is to firm up that date with the salesperson or the customer so you have an endpoint to aim for. Set this date in stone, even if your customer later extends the due date or if your salesperson gets distracted by other opportunities. In both reactive and proactive situations, extensions or delays are a pain to proposal managers because everyone else tends to relax when given more time and milestones are more easily missed. Avoid falling into this trap and the scramble that inevitably results when the due date suddenly looms.

Allotting ample time for production and delivery

Proposal production entails formatting, printing, assembling (sometimes of multiple volumes), and double-checking to ensure that everything is in the package or on the disk and that it complies with all requirements. Not all aspects of the production process are within your control, so you must be conservative when you schedule this activity, and protect this portion of the schedule above all others. Because production (even purely digital production) occurs late in the schedule, any activities that run late affect the production process.

If you’re going to adhere to the production schedule without sacrificing quality, you need to establish a firm cut-off time after which no changes can be made to the graphics or text. You must weigh the benefit of additional changes with the risk of faulty production or late delivery and resist editorial changes beyond a pre-established date and time. Maintaining a production checklist like the one in Chapter 16 can help you make the right decisions at crunch time.

Before scheduling tasks that occur earlier, be a little selfish. You need time to ensure a quality product that makes it to the customer on or before its deadline. Consider a range of contingency plans at the production and delivery steps; you never know what kinds of delays can occur if you outsource printing or if you must send the proposal package any significant distance. When you allocate time for production, consider the impact of worst-case contingencies, such as computer viruses, power outages, and equipment malfunctions.

Setting aside appropriate time for production is a task you normally must fight to keep. Few of your team will understand the amount of work required to prepare a document for production. The work happens behind the scenes, and out of sight is truly out of mind. But no one likes a whining proposal writer, so establish the time, build in a little more for contingencies, and defend the time by repeating how crucial this step is to success.

To ensure sufficient time to produce professional proposals, schedule your desktop publishing resources well in advance. You may also find it helpful to do the following:

• Format documents parallel to the writing and editing process (as long as they’re separated by section or volume and organized in a logical manner that doesn’t impede progress or version/configuration control). For example, after you’ve written Section 1, send it to the production team for formatting while you begin on Section 2. After Section 1 has been formatted, the production staff can return it to you for final editing and formatting checks.

  This parallel approach is ideal for large submissions; you or your production team can format smaller proposals after all writing and editing is complete.

• Align document formatting with major review cycles. Remember that reviewed files may require reformatting, particularly if writers, editors, or reviewers introduce errors into electronic files. Generally, the larger the document, the more times it needs to be reviewed and potentially formatted or reformatted.

  Most production specialists can format roughly eight pages per hour, using a document template. If you need to format your files more than once, include those iterations in your estimates to create an accurate understanding of how many hours you need in the schedule for completion of this work. Tracking this and other productivity metrics over time can bring huge benefits to your scheduling process.

Allocating time to establish the proposal infrastructure and plan the rest of the project

This is one out-of-sequence task that you should work into your schedule early. Setting up a proposal infrastructure (that is, an online or physical workspace for authoring and sharing documents, controlling content versions, communicating with team members, collecting data and artifacts, and managing workflow) and creating realistic plans are critical for a successful proposal because both decrease your overall effort. When responding to an RFP, your planning process can take from 10 to 20 percent of the total time available (this includes preparing for the kickoff meeting, setting up a collaborative workspace or tool, establishing a contact list, defining roles and responsibilities, and developing the detailed schedule).

To be safe (on a complex project), also reserve 10 percent of the available time to manage unforeseen events, such as a proposal writer with writer’s block, a family emergency, or a customer crisis that requires immediate attention.

Allowing sufficient time for proposal reviews

Anyone who works directly on a proposal is too close to the work to be able to review it for quality, compliance, consistency, and influence. To accomplish this crucial task, you need to bring in experts who haven’t been involved in developing the solution or writing about it to take a fresh look at the proposal before you publish it.

Reviews (meetings you hold to assess key activities or deliverables) reduce the overall cost of your proposals and ensure the accuracy and validity of your content. We recommend holding a variety of reviews throughout the proposal process, and we provide guidance for them in several chapters: For competitive reviews, refer to Chapter 5. For final proposal reviews, see Chapter 12. And for daily stand-up reviews, check out Chapter 14.

Beware: Reviews consume considerable time in your schedule. After each review, you must allocate additional time to read and understand the feedback and work it into the next draft. You also need time to determine how best to respond to reviewer comments. Depending on the size and complexity of the proposal, and the number and availability of reviewers, review cycles can take anywhere from half a day to a week. Determine the appropriate number of reviews early, and avoid adding review cycles unless the solution changes significantly or the due date is extended.

The most important review (and in in the case of smaller firms and opportunities, the only review) is the final proposal review. For major proposals, allocate a minimum of two weeks before submittal. Allocate at least a day for small proposals. The final document review team determines the proposal’s compliance and alignment with your customer’s mission, needs, requirements, issues, and hot buttons, and it provides concrete suggestions for improvements.

If you’re a lone proposal writer or your proposal opportunities are moderately complex, consider the following alternative review practices:

• Use a style sheet to ensure consistent content. Most large organizations have a corporate style reference for business writing. If yours doesn’t, use style guides such as the Associated Press Stylebook or The Chicago Manual of Style. For your projects, create a standard style sheet that denotes your preferred usage, punctuation, capitalization, and use of industry jargon and acronyms.
• Schedule downtime between writing and reviewing. A waiting period away from the document allows you to find errors and validate ideas more easily and without emotional baggage.
• Have your workplace peers edit your work to ensure high-quality content, style, and grammar. If you’re part of a proposal department, ask your peers to review your work and offer to do the same for them. Look for opportunities for substantive, grammatical, and general stylistic improvement.
• Create functional or technical reviews with your organization’s subject experts to ensure accuracy, persuasiveness, and appropriateness. Try to use objective reviewers not linked directly to the proposal in progress.

Considering your remaining time

After you set your infrastructure, planning, production, and delivery times, list the rest of the tasks that you need to start and complete between planning and production. Check out Chapter 6 for the detailed process steps in the proposal writing element of the proposal development stage to guide you as you list your tasks. At a high level, these steps include the following:

• Preparing the summaries
• Describing your solution and matching it to the customer’s needs
• Writing the letter of transmittal
• Writing, editing, reviewing, revising, and proofing the content

We know what you’re thinking … hey, that’s the bulk of the work! And you’re right — it is from a labor standpoint. But the ultimate success of the detailed “creative” work really depends on the standard proposal elements we cover in Chapter 9, which provide the foundation for a quality proposal.

Sequencing the tasks and subtasks

As you develop your schedule, include as many levels of tasks as you need to describe the work in detail. Be sure to identify any dependencies for each task (such as supplies, approvals, or other tasks that need to be completed before another can begin or be completed). A detailed task schedule ensures that each activity reflects the best use of time and resources.

Here are some tips for establishing and ensuring accountability:

• Set the start and end dates for each major task and subtask. Set these dates by team member and for the project as a whole.
• Post each assignment on the proposal schedule, the project timeline, or in the collaborative workspace. Note names, task descriptions, task durations, outcomes, and deliverables.
• Explain the assignments to all team members. Make sure they understand their start and end dates and get them to commit to meeting their deadlines. Explain the consequences for your bid if they miss these deadlines.

• Ensure that one person alone is accountable for a task or subtask. That person can, and often must, reach out to others for help, but he must take accountability and ownership for the task. If the owner has to transfer the task to someone else, make the handoff to the new owner clear and explicit.

  Be transparent, reasonable, and honest about the schedule with all team members. Respecting team members’ time will help you gain their trust.

• Remind team members of their commitments. Advise them that you’ll publicly announce the upcoming start and end dates in team review meetings. Let them know that you’ll also remind them privately. Many collaborative platforms allow you to send calendar reminders when task deadlines are approaching. If you don’t have such a platform, send “friendly” reminders via email a day or two before the deadline and copy in the boss.

  These tactics may irritate some people, but everyone will thank you when the proposal is finished.

• Stay focused on the end result. If you discover that your team members are working on tasks that you haven’t placed on the schedule, either assess their value and revisit the schedule to add them or clarify the work assignments for the team. If your team is working on multiple ongoing tasks or tasks that have long lead times (the time between knowing a task must be accomplished and when it’s due), set a series of near-term, interim deadlines to drive priorities and keep them on track.

All too often, organizations expand or contract the time frame for a task to fit the available time. Develop and apply standards for common proposal development tasks, based on your experience.

Publishing your schedule in a variety of formats

Your team members can’t adhere to a schedule if they don’t know it exists. You must ensure that the proposal schedule is visible and clear to the entire team, preferably on a collaborative platform that enables easy access and updates when needed. If you don’t have access to a collaborative platform (see Chapter 13 for more on proposal tools), create a timeline in project management software, on a spreadsheet, or in a calendar view.

Not everyone sees a schedule in the same way. Some contributors need to see only certain elements and deadlines for which they’re responsible. Some may be constrained by software (they may not have your project management application). Be ready to provide the schedule in an appropriate format for the project’s complexity and the individual contributor’s needs. If you work in an online system, the format may be set. But you don’t always need a Gantt chart or even a spreadsheet to keep people on track (they’re great for complex bids with lots of contributors and milestones). For less complex bids, consider using the Word-based, sample schedules for 10-, 30-, and 60-day proposals we provide online via the appendix. You can adapt them easily for your specific needs.

One way to help participants visualize the proposal process in detail is to use action-based plans. Action-based plans are usually based on detailed diagrams. They address specific proposal tasks on time scales, showing specifically when the tasks are to be done and who should perform them. They assume that the readers understand the task and how it needs to be performed.

Gantt charts are the most common format for this kind of plan. A Gantt chart is a grid that maps and allocates tasks on the vertical axis against time scales on the horizontal axis. Gantt charts are widely used in both proposal planning and wider project management. (They’re also known as horizontal bar charts.)

They’re not hard to make, even if you don’t have project management software (the Gantt chart is a standard output format for these programs). Open a spreadsheet. In the left column, list all the activities and milestones in your project (you may want to number them if your list is long or has multiple substeps or activities). In the next column (to the right), list the names of the people assigned to “own” each activity or milestone. In additional columns, identify the time increments you want to track your project by (days or weeks, usually). Then identify the dates for milestones and deliverables. For an example, head to the appendix.

A well-conceived Gantt chart often underpins and expresses a bid process better than any other document. It typically shows the following elements:

• Stages of a bid process
• Start and end dates of specific tasks
• Milestones, key decision, and review dates (these are sometimes the same thing)
• Role allocation (by color-coding, shading, and so on) for bid team members and partners
• Prioritization of tasks (by color-coding, shading, and so on)
• Leave/vacation arrangements (you can then use a Gantt chart to help define or work around these arrangements)

Some bid activities depend on the successful completion of prior activities. The process of discovering these dependencies and anticipating what tasks need (and then placing these prior requirements on the grid) is one of the strengths of this type of planning. If activities are time-critical, you can prepare for dates slipping by advancing the completion point on the plan.

Action-based plans typically have several iterations. When starting a new plan, initially start the process away from the grid. Capture all tasks and milestones on blank sheets of paper or on sticky notes. You can then order them on a grid.

Completed action-based plans for large-scale bids can be as expansive as multiple sheets of paper that you can post on a wall. However, a user-friendly, single legal or A4-sized page remains the most useful size for sharing, analysis, and discussion. If you want to record extra detail related to a particular stage, such as preliminary activities for a large, multistakeholder kickoff meeting or the many needs of the final pre-deadline phase, produce an “exploded” version of the plan for that time period.

Figure 8-1 shows an action-based plan in a Gantt chart format with task division and allocation. It also shows an “exploded” final week for mapping more intensive activity detail.

Use whatever scheduling tool or software makes sense, given the size and complexity of your organization and the proposal you’re working on. In some instances, a spreadsheet or a manual scheduling tool is sufficient. Larger proposals often require automated tools that adjust interim deadlines automatically when an extension is given or a material change occurs.

Understanding the proposal budget

The biggest part of any proposal budget is labor, and this aspect of the budget may include permanent titles that are exclusive to creating proposals (for example, proposal manager, proposal writer, proposal editor, graphic designer, and production specialist), people who work in business development roles, and sometimes people assigned to reviewing proposals.

Labor can represent more than 90 percent of a proposal budget. In addition, the budget includes costs that relate to specialized software and tools, travel, lodging, and meals for remote proposal support, office and production supplies, and printer leases or outsourced production costs.

If you’re part of an in-house proposal team, you need to understand how bid and proposal funds are assigned and tracked. The more you know about the funds available, the more you can ensure that you have the funds to get the resources you need most for any particular opportunity. Just be aware that the amount budgeted for an opportunity is usually based on the bid’s importance to the organization’s growth strategy or its desire to retain an incumbent contract. The more efficiently an organization budgets for its resources, the more money it has to support a bid, maximize the number of jobs it can bid on, or “wedge” in an unexpected opportunity. For this reason, you need to advocate allocating funds to projects based on likelihood of return (read: winning a deal).

Building a proposal budget

To build a strong budget, use historical expense records and receipts to determine how you spent money in the past to pursue a bid and write, review, and produce a proposal. Then estimate the resources you need to pursue, write, and produce your proposal, including any other direct costs like travel, products, and supplies peculiar to the opportunity.

Table 8-1 provides a list of potential budget-tracking areas.

In the appendix, we provide a link to a sample budget template you can use to record your potential proposal expenses. Any proposal budget is risky, because most proposal expenses are variable. For example, a customer may release an amendment to adjust requirements, which increases your labor costs as you respond to the new requirements.

Reserve at least 10 percent of your budget to address unforeseen factors.

If you build a budget, you need to track your expenses by it. Track and analyze all your expenses to increase your budget’s accuracy over time. Maintain performance metrics, and keep records of budgeted versus actual expenses.

Proving your value

Increasingly, proposal professionals are challenged to do more with less, while increasing productivity and maintaining win rates. Proposal budgets are shrinking while tracking reports and cost justifications are on the rise. Tracking your costs against detailed budgets, and then comparing those costs to the revenue your proposals help generate, can help you demonstrate your value to your organization. At the very least, it demonstrates that you’re a good manager of the resources that are allocated your way.

Small businesses usually have limited proposal budgets and limited access to collaborative software or equipment. You may be even more challenged if you’re the sole proposal support person because you have to be proficient in numerous competencies (for instance, sales support, proposal writing, and customer service) and with a range of software tools — yet you may not have clearly defined roles or responsibilities and even less authority.

If you’re in this situation, you can partially overcome limited budgets by

• Setting standards for proposal content through templates and content reuse
• Relying on proven proposal development techniques that have worked for decades without extensive software and hardware
• Defining expectations and timelines for other personnel who work to support proposal development
• Being aware of outsourcing opportunities to provide development or production support in case of emergencies

Deciding whether you need a partner

As your business assesses opportunities, you collect and analyze a lot of information about the customer’s requirements and the competitors likely to bid against you. From that information, you establish win strategies, solution approaches, and price estimates. From that knowledge, you generate a list of required resources (for example, personnel, facilities, and equipment) and capabilities (such as staff skills, technologies, and problem solutions) that you need to have to win. But is your business equipped to provide these resources?

For large and complex opportunities, most businesses have gaps and insufficiencies. Use your SWOT analysis from Chapter 5 to compare your abilities with that of your competition. If you come up short, you should either look for a partner or decline to bid.

Use the SWOT analysis to assess your organization’s relative competitiveness as a solo bidder, as a prime contractor, and as a subcontractor. Honestly comparing your organization’s strengths and weaknesses with those of likely competitors (in relation to the customer’s needs and expectations) helps you identify potential partnering candidates that can neutralize your weaknesses and improve your firm’s chances of winning.

To work with a partner, you need executive support, whether you’re the prime contractor or the subcontractor. And although no executive wants to admit that the business is too weak to win as a prime contractor, few like to share revenues with a partner. You need to show senior management that partnering is the only way you can increase your organization’s probability of winning. After all, a percentage of something is better than all of nothing.

Selecting a partner

Select partners first on their ability to increase your chances to win and second on their ability to be a good team player. Find out whether the potential partner has worked with the customer successfully before, or whether they currently work with them. Make sure the potential partner wants to work with the customer and with you. If you’ve never worked with the potential partner before, ask an executive to reach out peer-to-peer for a preliminary discussion, and follow it up with other peer-to-peer discussions between the departments that will be involved in the bid.

Always investigate potential partners. Some that look good on paper may be serious liabilities if the customer doesn’t care for them. Use personal and professional contacts in the customer’s organization, industry, and local community to build a clear picture of the firm. Research the partnering organization through Google, Dun & Bradstreet, and industry publications to gauge its performance and reputation. Make sure an organization will be an asset, not a liability, before you invite it to join your team.

When you’ve identified and vetted the best potential team members, you need to invite and convince each partner to join the team, in priority order. Contact the most appropriate decision maker or influencer and explain the rationale for having his organization on the team, its proposed role in the upcoming contract, and its responsibilities during the opportunity and proposal phases. Avoid detailed discussions of win strategies until the firm has committed to joining the team and signed a nondisclosure agreement.

Before you launch into the invitation discussion, ask whether the organization is already committed to another team. You don’t want to share any information that may fall into the hands of a competitor.

Negotiating and documenting partnering agreements

Always thoroughly document the operational, financial, and legal aspects of the negotiated partnering agreement. The terms and conditions of the partnering and subcontracting arrangements need to be mutually acceptable — and perhaps acceptable to your customer. Partnering agreements need to be negotiated by officials with decision-making authority, reviewed and approved by your lawyers, and signed before you proceed.

Partnering agreements should include clearly defined

• Scopes of work, product or service specifications, and targeted work volumes
• Participation levels in proposal activities
• Allocations of proposal costs
• Confidentiality agreements, exclusivity clauses, and other legal liabilities and limitations