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HAPD Week 6: Path to Pink Team All bold red fonts are links. Monday, 29-April-2019 TBD Tuesday, 30-April-2019 TBD Wednesday, 23-April-2019 TBD Thursday, 25-April-2019 TBD Friday, 26-April-2019 TBD Quiz and Discussion Week 6 Quiz - TBD Week 6 Discussion - There is no discussion this week.  Where to find the Final DOE ORISE solicitation The ORAU RFP and final DOE ORISE solicitations have been released (O

HAPD Week 5: DOE ORISE Final RFP and Proposal Schedule All bold red fonts are links. Monday, 21-April-2019 John is presenting a review of the Rapid Proposal Writing presentation (review for the mid-term exam in Week 6) on Monday at 9:00 AM ET - 10:00 AM ET The ORAU RFP and DOE final RFP have both been released - see below for links. We will be reviewing the RFP and planning our next steps on Monday. Our first major milestone will be the Pink Team Review.  Dead

HAPD Week 4: DOE ORISE Win Strategy and Proposal Plans All bold red fonts are links. Monday, 15-April-2019 to Wednesday, 17-April-2019 We continue Module 3.2 Intro to Pre-RFP Planning and we will be finishing our proposal schedule, which is posted here. We will develop outcomes tables for our content plans - instructions are posted here. The outcomes tables are due in your content plans by COB Week 4 Tuesday. Post these to your Week 4 Writer Folder.  We will a

HAPD Week 3: Proposal and Response Planning Monday, 8-April-2019 to Tuesday, 9-April-2019 We continue Module 2.6 and Exercise 2.2, which introduce the beginner to the basics of the content plan: Formatting and how to plan your content for your assigned sections. There are references to additional sources of learning for desktop publishing and writing, including videos and articles. The second Week 2 Exercise is introduced – planning and writing your first compliant proposal secti

HAPD Week 2: Government RFP and Proposal Basics Overview of Week 2: This is a busy week! Monday, 1-April-2019 Module 2.1 introduces the world of federal acquisition and proposals. Emphasis will be on the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR), acquisition planning, requirements definition, the acquisition process, and risk. This module will be presented via web lecture and includes reading assignments with links to selected readings. This week’s quiz includes a lot of questio

This form above is what you use to enter or edit an RFP requirement in MustWin Now. The key is how simple it is. Just enter the RFP section number and text. The parent requirement is for indentation level, which you may not have to enter at all since when you click the "+" symbol in the column with the RFP requirements, MustWin Now knows who the parent is. Then pick whether it's an instruction, evaluation criteria, performance/delivery requirement, or other requirement from a list. This will hel

What you see in the image above is a section of the RFP linked to a proposal section. This is part of building an RFP compliance matrix. But what's special about it is that MustWin Now remembers all the linking and when you are in your Proposal Content Plan you can see the full text of the linked RFP items. For more info, see also: MustWin Now: Everything you need to know In the image above, the Executive Summary has been selected from the proposal outline. The linked RFP items (in this

Sometimes people get stuck writing a technical proposal about something in which they are not an expert. Sometimes the subject matter experts aren’t available or don’t exist within your organization. You can do research, but you can’t become an expert in a week or even a month. So how do you write a technical proposal that competes against real experts, proves your credibility, and earns your customer’s trust? If you’re the stuckee, we have good news for you. We have a little trick that may work

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Companies generally start to embrace a proposal process when the number of people involved grows large enough to become difficult to coordinate. It would be better if they began to embrace a process as soon as they start caring about their win rate.  The MustWin Process on PropLIBRARY enables a team of people to work together to maximize the company’s win rate. That’s great, but what if there’s no team? What if you are the team? Then doesn’t a proposal process designed to support large team

Put the RFP aside, just for a moment. Meditate or ponder on the following before you start typing. Ask yourself, "Why should the customer select my offering over their other alternatives." Reach beyond your company's experience and qualifications. Reach all the way to why the customer will be better off if they select you, and how what they will get will be superior if they select you. Consider what matters or should matter to the customer about what you are going to write about.

We publish our newsletter weekly. You will receive the next one when it comes out. Please make sure to put it on your email white list or move it to your priority tab so that your email software doesn't hide it from you.   Here is the link for downloading your copy of our eBook: Turning Your Proposals Into a Competitive Advantage   Here are some other useful links: Beginners should start here Why your good proposal is going to lose What is the simplest, eas

I’m passing some of my time in isolation talking to people free of charge and assessing how to improve their pursuit and capture processes in the new world we find ourselves in. We can talk about reengineering how you go about winning business and come out of this better than you ever were before. Want to know what Carl would recommend? Just ask me. Click here to send me a question Or use the widget below to grab any open spot on my calendar before they’re filled and I’ll

Let’s start with the end result we’d like to achieve. A winning proposal. Now let's work backwards. In order to win the proposal we need the top score. In order to get the top score we need to build the proposal around what it will take to win: A proposal that reflects what matters to the customer in a form that follows the RFP’s instructions, is compliant with all requirements, and is optimized against the evaluation criteria, with no weaknesses A differentiated offering that the

You’ve got to start somewhere. So companies often start by responding to as many RFPs as possible, hoping to win a few to get the company established. Once they are established, they can reassess and start doing things strategically. When should they reassess and begin to change? That day is now. How do I know? Because your win rate is so low that you can double your revenue by increasing your win rate without chasing any more leads. Your win rate is low because you’re bidding without a com

Pursuit and capture set the stage for the proposal. But while the proposal process gets a lot of attention, pursuit and capture are often left to someone to just figure out. The roles are commonly referred to as sales, business development, or capture. Without much process or at least guidance, the entire pre-RFP phase can devolve into an exercise in lead tracking instead of lead pursuit and capture. This table implies what you should accomplish during pursuit and capture. You can build a p

Most proposals are won or lost before they begin. Either you go into the proposal with an information advantage, or you are trying to fake your way through the proposal without one. Even though this is true, most companies don't have a mature process for pursuing a lead before the proposal starts. Their process amounts to: Hire a good salesperson, whatever that means, to dig up some information. Create the illusion of process by having bid/no bid reviews.  As a company matures,

Most companies think that the best way to win on price is to figure out what price your competitors will bid and try to come in below that. But that’s just believing the lie. It also doesn't point you towards any viable bid strategies other than lowering costs and hoping the customer lets you get away with it without destroying your past performance record. It sets you up to bid less for the same amount of work, and either make little or no profit, or to actually lose money. When it’s up to

Instead of looking at preparing proposals as a process, try looking at it as solving problems. A "process" implies steps. Proposal development is reactive, so processes based on steps tend to fail. But solving the problems you will face in preparing a proposal implies the process. The problems you face also imply the goals you should have. Most companies that think they have a proposal process still spend their time solving problems. So looking at those problems in an organized way can help you

Our instincts betray us. Playing it safe will lower your chances of winning. In our regular life, sometimes playing it safe is necessary for continued survival. But in order to have a superior, winning proposal, it must first be different. Different in a way that no one else can match. You don’t get there playing it safe. Anticipation and research. What professionals do is try to anticipate the issues, conduct research, and start the proposal already informed with your mitigations and s