With the right process, your proposal team can work together seamlessly. This leads to elevated win rates over time, reduced wasted efforts, and easier information sharing across future bids. Ultimately, an effective proposal process is crucial for sustained growth through successfully winning new work for your organization.
Build a Dedicated Proposal Team
Your first step is to establish a core proposal management team. This group owns the proposal process from end-to-end. Build your team with experts from key departments like technical writing, sales, subject matter experts, and executives. Provide training if needed to ensure everyone understands the proposal process and their individual roles. New tracking software to monitor employee productivity and project progress more efficiently.
Clearly define responsibilities for each phase of the proposal lifecycle. For example, sales may identify the opportunity while subject matter experts and technical writers draft content. Graphics designers develop visual assets. And executives or senior management provide final reviews and approvals.
Centralize Proposal Information
To work efficiently, your proposal team needs a streamlined system for housing information, assets, and status updates. Many organizations rely on cloud-based tools like Box or SharePoint to collaborate across departments. Others use dedicated proposal management software or customer relationship management (CRM) systems for enhanced features.
Your centralized system should include:
- An asset library for graphics, resumes, boilerplate content etc. that can be reused.
- A repository for finalized proposals and information on past bids.
- Dashboards for tracking active proposals and identifying bottlenecks.
- File sharing for easy collaboration across the team.
Establish a Repeatable Process
Every proposal is unique. But your underlying process should be consistent and repeatable. Subject matter experts provide invaluable knowledge and insights in their respective fields, enhancing the quality of decision-making and problem-solving processes. Outline the individual steps your team will follow for each bid, such as:
- Opportunity identification
- Early decision to bid/no-bid
- Kickoff and preliminary research
- Drafting, review and approval
- Final polish and submission
- Follow up and debrief if needed
For every major milestone, define who is accountable, required inputs, expected outputs, and success criteria. Also build in quality assurance steps such as peer reviews.
Document this process in a proposal guidebook or central knowledge base. Update it regularly based on lessons learned from each proposal.
Leverage Templates and Standard Content
Don’t reinvent the wheel with each proposal. Leverage user-friendly templates, style guides, and a library of approved content.
For example, keep pre-approved passages about your company history, capabilities, and credentials. Build a menu of past performance profiles and case studies that can be easily customized. Maintain template layouts for different sections like executive summaries, technical approaches, management plans, and resumes.
The goal is to provide frameworks that speed up writing while ensuring consistent quality and branding across proposals. Enforce rules about using the latest approved templates and library content.
Automate Where Possible
Manual administrative tasks like file formatting, copying and pasting content, adjusting images, and proofreading can drain time during tight proposal deadlines. Look for ways to automate elements of your process.
Handy automation tools include:
- Content wizards that prompt writers for key inputs and auto-generate full passages
- Software for identifying duplicate text across documents
- Built-in review and redline processes rather than emailing drafts
- Tools to reformat content for different purposes
- Automated assembly of final proposals
Start slowly with small amounts of automation. As your team gets comfortable, scale up repetition tools to further accelerate your process.
Analyze Performance and Metrics
Finally, put metrics in place to monitor the effectiveness of your proposal process. Examples of key performance indicators include:
- Bid win/loss rates
- Number of proposals submitted annually
- Average time to complete proposals
- Staff hours per proposal
- Cost per bid
- Customer satisfaction scores
- Staff satisfaction metrics
Analyze these metrics on an ongoing basis to identify opportunities for improvement. Review numbers regularly as a team and brainstorm ways to optimize efficiency, boost quality, or increase win rates.
Conclusion
An organized, metrics-focused proposal management process is invaluable for bidding consistently, efficiently, and profitably on new business. By centralizing your system, leveraging templatized content, defining clear roles, and looking for automation, you can improve quality and speed. Be sure to analyze performance regularly. Continually refine your process to ensure your proposal machine runs smoothly even facing aggressive deadlines.
