The process of producing a quality proposal is inherently prone to problems. As discussed in the previous newsletter, it is difficult to manage the process and is costly. When a company does not win a bid opportunity, the morale of its staff often suffers.

Mistakes made by most companies include:

• Inadequate funding and an insufficient dedication of staffing resources to the project
• Management's failure to provide adequate leadership and moral support
• Writing proposals that never had a chance of winning because the company did not have a pre-existing relationship with the customer
• Not having a highly structured, integrated sales and writing process
• A lack of understanding of "defensive" proposal writing
• The absence of an experienced Proposal Manager
• Not having an incentive system and structure in place that motivates your technical staff to write effectively

Change the way proposals are written within your company to eliminate these mistakes. Sometime this requires a sea change in the way management thinks about proposal writing.