Laura’s Winning Ideas

Would it help if you could have proposal images and/or audio available to the customer at their convenience?

Below, you can watch a PowerPoint presentation I created for an SMPS meeting several years ago. I can restrict access to the folks whose email addresses I provide, or leave the file open to the public.

The service I’m using here is authorSTREAM. The service is free, so its a good thing to tuck away in your bookmarks.

Laura Ewing just showed me a new site to research federal contracts.

http://www.usaspending.gov

Very nice interface. I’ve played around with it a few minutes and easily found contracts for clients and their competitors, as well as which agencies are contracting.

Tuck this one in your bookmarks and backup your bookmarks!

Technorati Tags: proposal database,contracts database,competitor data

QUESTION: Hello Laura. What kind of unwanted reactions might I encounter when trying to convince my business committee to accept my proposal?

ANSWER: When you are creating a proposal not based on a formal Request for Proposal, there are a few differences.

However, in all cases, nothing surprising or new should appear in a proposal.

First, don’t create the proposal in a vacuum and surprise your business committee with it. This is quite likely to fail.

You need to do some "business development" before you write your final draft.

Pick out the members of the committee, and meet with as many as possible one-on-one. Show them what you have in mind and ask for their input. They may point out some issues and offer suggestions of changes to overcome those issues. They may see an opportunity to pair an objective of their own with your proposal, and adding these elements guarantees their support.

When you make the formal presentation of your proposal, you should ALWAYS be able to predict the vote quite accurately. All great proposal managers do this. We quiz and ping the folks responsible for gathering intelligence and make sure they’ve discussed any unique ideas with all the decision-makers before we ever write the final proposal.

Take care,
Laura Ricci

I’m always happy to answer questions. Contact me by using the button at the top of this page or click here to "Contact" me.

Do you need an industry organization or are they just a good place to hang out when you are looking for a job?

If you do business development, then networking is a requirement of your job. But if you do proposals, it can be hard to get out of the office.

So, if you specialize in proposals, do you need an industry organization?

Probably.

Some organizations fall short on offering a reason to attend, beyond an expensive lunch out of the office and some time to meet and make some friends in the industry. Since most of us can’t talk about our work, it can seem more sensible to use the time to run a few errands instead.

Here’s why I try to get out to industry meetings:

• New Ideas. Good speakers bring something valuable I can take back to work.
• Good discussion recharges my batteries to come back refreshed.

The benefits outweigh the time and money invested.

That said, it can be a chore to gain the freedom to attend industry organization meetings. It’s hard to make it to meetings if your organization feels it is a waste of effort and/or time.

Some executives say what many of them think:

• “Those meetings cause problems because everyone there is looking for candidates or jobs. I don’t want to lose my folks.”
  • Vice President of California A&E firm
• “Proposal folks are disposable. We aren’t going to pay for extras when we know they’ll burn out and leave in a couple of years anyway.”
  • Vice President of Tennessee ER firm

Here’s where organizations can help themselves by helping you. Show bosses the benefits of your organization in a way they understand. Find, and publicize the economic benefit of membership to the Boss:

• Subcontracting relationships which proved to be the winning combination for a great project — which started with introductions at your monthly meeting.
• Project opportunities identified weeks earlier (at your monthly meeting) so that intelligence could be gathered to win a great project.
• Proposal ideas that became part of the proposal used to win a great project — came from a speaker at one of your meetings.

An economic benefit grabs the attention of executives more quickly than any other approach.

Let me know if providing this benefit creates a surge in attendance for your organization!