Most people do not like to write and this is particularly true for writing complex federal proposals. Those who do tend to postpone their writing tasks because writing is hard work. Federal proposal writing is also a very costly process. To do so well, a company must have a Proposal Manager with extensive experience and good writing and management skills. It certainly helps if your Proposal Manager has patience, is persistent and possesses a calm demeanor under pressure. Such traits are difficult to find in one person.

Unfortunately, the Proposal Manager can't write the subject matter solution (called the "Technical Approach") required by the customer. The drafting of the Technical Approach requires the participation of technical specialists and, unfortunately, many lack good writing skills because their educational focus was understandably targeted on other matters.

To worsen the difficulties, most technical writers are fully billable on contracts leaving only nights and weekends to work on proposals. When management gives technical writers un-billable time for proposal writing it is usually limited because of the impact of un-billable time on profitability.

Taken together, all of these proposal writing difficulties make proposal organization and management particularly critical. An effective proposal writing business process is required to optimize the inherently limited time of technical writers. It is usually the technical approach that makes a federal proposal a winner and effective proposal management results in the best possible technical solutions.