We return to a frequent topic - - the practice of some companies to submit proposals that are both poorly written and not organized well. Although it may seem that we are beating a dead horse, the issue repeatedly surfaces and our message bears repeating. The following is a true story. The situation described occurs more than most companies are willing to admit. The situation was as follows:

ABC Company has ten days to write a fifty-page proposal for IT services. Management panics and assembles a team of project managers and IT employees. Top management believes they have done their part and either doesn't listen during the team meeting or sneaks out to check their stock prices. After all, it is management's prerogative to delegate and to leave the details to their personnel. Furthermore, proposal managers often want to dictate writing schedules but not actually put a pen to paper.

At the company's initial meeting, themes were developed and assignments were given with instructions to go away and write. Management failed to assign the task of writing the Executive Summary. The company's IT personnel are strong technical people but not sales oriented and wouldn't know a winning theme if it hit them in the face. Some technical people can write but don't want to do so. Others can't write or don't want to try. If they actually want to try to put something together, they are afraid that their writing shortcomings will be apparent. To further complicate matters, strategies and themes were discussed at the meeting but no one saw fit to take notes on the discussions.

ABC's technical staff slaps something together. By the way, the onsite technical people working on the proposal are not producing revenue (or billing their time) because the agency client watches them carefully and is also upset because the technical staff has been pulled off the contract to do ABC'S internal work. As a result, ABC has not only lost revenue but the written work produced is less than stellar. This is called wasting precious profit dollars.

The first draft ABC's staff produces meets the rudimentary requirements of the Request for Proposal (RFP) but it is exceedingly dry and does not contain a single value proposition for the customer. Top management scans the results and panics. They force the proposal managers to come out of hiding and actually write. After several 24-hour workdays, ABC produces an acceptable proposal and the delivery of the proposal is made within two minutes of the deadline. Thankfully, there were no backups on the Beltway. Those concerned about revenue turn to prayer and vow that the next one will be different. Management screams that ABC must put some structure in the proposal-writing process and then gets involved with other issues and forgets about the problem.

In future installments we will discuss how to structure the process and minimize the chaos. Note we did not say eliminate the chaos. Why is chaos inherent in the process? Because management and sales people have the customer knowledge and winning themes but hate the process of proposal writing. Most technical people hate to write and the ones with the knowledge base to formulate a solution for the customer have full-time jobs performing under existing contracts.