Because this is the first week of the Friday outline feature — and because this is so closely related to the first outline on proposal contents — I’m making today a two-fer with the outline below. This time around the topic is proposal processes: What to look at and how to divvy up the work, from the time an RFP first comes in the door until you put it in FedEx.

BASIC PROPOSAL DEVELOPMENT PROCESSES

Review

• Management function
• Good fit?
• Competitive landscape?
• Risk/reward ratio>
• What questions must be answered by the potential client before proceeding?

Outline

• Start with order / requirements of the RFP, if listed
• Determine unque/highest values of your team’s approach
• Write the executive summary first; build document from that foundation

Write

• Assign boilerplate retrieval to admin staff
• Small proposals generally written by one person (proposal manager); larger ones may be assigned by section to team members
• Price the work after the workplan narrative is complete, not before

Critique

• Requirements Review (”Did we answer all the requirements?”)
• Red Team review (”What will someone think seeing this for the first time?”)
• Flyspecking (”is it free of typos or other embarrassing mistakes?”)

Financial review

• Is the work priced competitively?
• Have contingencies been identified?
• Have we left room for negotiation?


Submit

• Admin process (leaves proposal manager free to move onto the next thing)

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