Planning your proposal with the end in mind is an intuitive task for most proposal professionals that I know and work with. This is such an important idea that it bears repeating and reinforcing.

I thought of this recently due to a bad experience. We hired a fencing contractor to build a secure privacy fence around our yard. We have a new dog that is a digger and can jump at least as high as I am tall. We hired a man who said all the right things, was licensed, etc. I can talk endlessly about our own lessons learned and perhaps that will be posted at another time. I want to talk today about the lessons our contractor hopefully learned and how that applies to the proposal world.

Each time we asked our contractor a question about the fence, his response, was essentially, "I didn't plan for that." He didn't have a schedule with a firm deadline. He didn't have a plan to keep us updated as we were out of town while he was working. There was no reliable mechanism to review his work in progress. He had little control over his subcontractors and had not worked to earn their trust. In short, he was "winging it."

The upshot of this is that our fence, which should have taken a week to complete, was not 100% completed after five months. Yes, five MONTHS. The fence is secure and functional and does the job that's needed. However, the finishing touches were not completed and, while fully functional, would never pass a beauty contest. How does this relate to proposal preparation?

  • While compliance to the requirements is critical in proposal development, a functional, easy to follow presentation is also very important.
  • All proposals, like a fence job, should have a schedule that includes milestones. Sticking to milestones is important for accountability. Milestones include color reviews; these are critical.
  • Treating partners, subcontractors, and employees with respect and honesty is just as important as how you treat your partners, subcontractors, and proposal team members.

If you would like to discuss this in more detail, please contact me on info@perfblue.com. Thanks!

Attribution

"Failing to plan is planning to fail." - Alan Lakein

"Plans are nothing; planning is everything." - Dwight D. Eisenhower

About the Author

Drew Cotterman is the Founder and President of performanceBLUE, LLC, a professional proposal development firm. He founded the firm in 2010 after working in the proposal world for more than 20 years. He provides capture support; proposal development including management, writing, pricing, graphics, desktop publishing, and production support; process training; and employee mentoring.