Assemble the Team

If writing proposals is your job and yours alone, assembling the team is easy. Pour yourself a cup of coffee, sit down at your desk, and the team is ready.

Complex proposals, or proposals that have extremely short deadlines, may require contributions from multiple contributors. In Chapter 16, where we discuss what's involved in setting up a dedicated proposal operation, I review the types of contributors you will want on a basic proposal team—a proposal manager, one or more writers, a graphics specialist, and one or more subject matter experts. It also makes sense to include the account manager, salesperson, or business development personnel who have uncovered the opportunity and who know the client best. Other participants, at least at the initial stage of a proposal project, might include senior management, financial analysts who can work on pricing issues, a contracts expert if there are unusual terms and conditions in the RFP, and perhaps a representative from marketing. If your solution will involve combining efforts from a number of departments, such as software development and customization, customer training, and customer support, these departments should be represented at the outset so they at least have this opportunity on their radar screens.