Getting Your Proposal Started

A famous quote on writing: “The hard part is getting to the top of page 1.” - Tom Stoppard

Most proposals turn out to be more difficult than they should be for two reasons:
1. The effort is not started early enough
2. People are too anxious to get to the writing

Everyone knows that once the RFP is out the proposal effort is going to be a race to the finish line, and it is not a long distance run, it is a sprint. So why do so many companies wait until the RFP is out to start the effort? A good racer spends time preparing for the event before the gun goes off. You can do the same with your proposals.

If you have tracked a program and spent time marketing the effort then there should be a good deal that you already know about what will be required in the RFP. It is also common for the government to publish draft RFP’s which do not tend to change dramatically when issued as final.

With this information in hand you can, before the RFP comes out, begin to:
Ü gather resumes and place them in a common format
Ü gather data on the appropriate approach/solution you will propose (what we refer to as ‘information chunks’)
Ü develop win themes
Ü develop competitive ghosting concepts
Ü and develop competitive discriminators

All of these items will become useful as part of your proposal architecture, which needs to be put together and thoroughly detailed out before you start writing. This is the second big mistake that organizations make; they start to write too soon. The writing of the proposal will be much easier, and more effective, if it is guided by a well thought out and documented proposal architecture. While most organizations know they should take this step (every proposal training class, book, and consultant talks about it) rarely is it done well and often it is not done at all.

Just doing a decomposition of the RFP and creating an outline for the proposal does not constitute proposal architecture. Think about what an architect does when designing a building. They do not simply make up a list of what the building will contain and what materials will be used. They develop conceptual drawings and then detailed drawings to show exactly what the building will look like and how it will be built. Your proposal architecture needs to do the same thing.