Federal proposal writing is inherently chaotic, a drain on billable hours, and crucial to revenue generation. The quality and clarity of a proposal usually doesn't win a contract; it sews up (closes) a new sale or defends your position as the incumbent contractor. It gives your fans on the evaluation committee "the paper" they need to select you.

The Management Dilemma

Many companies waste huge amounts of money and "professional capital" in writing proposals. The primary cause of this waste is lack of an organized business process to begin the writing process. Typical, practices include:

1. Each proposal is mostly new content rather than a refinement of legacy solutions; those solutions that are unique to a company and represent its value.
   
   
2. The proposal team circles, discusses their ideas and thoughts in a meeting in a scattered manner, circles some more, and begins writing without a detailed, cohesive outline. This results in false starts, poorly organized content, and content without a winning, customer-centric tone.
   
   
3. The Executive Summary, the "select us for these reasons" piece, is written last rather than first.
   
   
4. Technical writers produce too much unfocused content without an outline and detailed writing guideline. The result is material that reads like a corporate brochure and drones on and on without saying much except we are a world class organization that is imminently qualified to serve you. This is not what federal evaluators want to hear.
   
   
5. Proposals are not concise and easy to read with a compelling executive summary that says it all. This is what evaluators want, less work and a quick read to put you first in the responsive pile and then the best value pile of one.

The Solution

The solution to the proposal dilemma is iron-fisted control of the proposal process by an experienced Proposal Manger. You have to hire one if you don't already have one. Or you can grow one internally. The Proposal Manger has to have the complete backing of management. We recommend going as far as having a Chief Proposal Officer. The Proposal Manager has to control the writing process with a structured business process and many companies have some form of a process in place.