Ten fundamental activities are critical to every successful proposal: These are activities that a proposal manager must execute on every single proposal, regardless of size, duration, industry, format, technology, or level of complexity. When we conduct lessons learned meetings after submitting a bid, we often find that the mistakes we made resulted from a failure in conducting one or more of these fundamental activities. Our literature, our coaching, and our training often fall short in providing guidance on proposal fundamentals. Furthermore, where we do have content relating to these tasks, the tools and templates are difficult to implement, because they assume unlimited time, people, and budget, as well as comprehensive and accurate information about the customer and the competition. Few proposal managers operate in that ideal environment.
It is time for our profession to return to the fundamentals and develop tools applicable to the real proposal world that we inhabit. How well we execute these fundamentals is directly related to whether we win or lose.
Wendy Frieman is a proposal manager with professional-level certifications and recognition as a fellow by both APMP and the National Contract Management Association. She has experience in contract execution, business development, and capture in addition to proposal management and writing, both as an employee and as a consultant in large and small companies across multiple sectors.