Methods: Incorporating Best Practices


If your proposal center has clearly defined processes that enable the entire team to understand a customer's needs and requirements fully, your center will be seen as a professional unit focused on business development. If it has processes that it consistently follows that control how a proposal gets printed and bound, it will be seen primarily as a production shop. Obviously, both kinds of processes are important, but in my experience proposal teams usually ignore the importance of the first kind, those that are directed outward toward the deal.

To operate efficiently and effectively, a proposal center must be based on a solid process model for handling opportunities and collaborating with the rest of the firm, particularly the sales organization. That process model must be:

  • Rigorous enough to capture the complexity of creating proposals

  • Flexible enough to work in the company's dynamic business environment

  • Simple enough to be communicated to internal customers and learned quickly by new employees

  • Metrics-based so proficiency and progress can be tracked

You need a clearly defined and documented methodology for handling each proposal, supported by checklists, guidelines, and other job aids. When you develop and implement your process for managing proposals, be sure to publicize the linkage between that process and your company's overall sales or business development life cycle, so that others in the company will see that you are supporting their interests, too. Establish a formal process for waiving or deviating from standard procedures.

The actual production of a proposal is generally a low-level activity, primarily involving final editing, formatting, binding, and delivery of the document. However, one aspect of proposal production that should be owned by the proposal organization is the development and use of electronic processes and systems to store, manage, retrieve, and distribute information and reusable content. Developing electronic stores of reusable information will provide more time for strategic thinking.

A proposal operation can provide leadership in two other areas of production without diminishing its role as a strategic resource. First, you can take the lead in identifying requirements for your company's visual identity and in assuring consistent implementation of the identity guidelines. This responsibility is usually owned by the marketing department, but if they aren't doing it, the proposal team should.

Second, the center should create formal review processes and integrate them into the production process to assure high-quality output. The focus should be on both document quality (spelling, grammar, formatting, and so forth) and content quality (customization to the client, effective presentation of a win theme, accuracy of information, relevance of credentials and other supporting materials included).




Persuasive Business Proposals. Writing to Win More Customers, Clients, and Contracts
Persuasive Business Proposals: Writing to Win More Customers, Clients, and Contracts
ISBN: 0814471536
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2004
Pages: 130
Authors: Tom Sant

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