Proposal Land

Better RFP Responses & Management
 
Proposal Land

Buddy & Me: Way Up North

 

Condescension is death to all relationships, I expect. It’s certainly hard on proposal-team coherence.

Diversity is our strength? Well, maybe. But when the teams include retired military and life-long civilians, and technical and seriously non-technical personnel, there are lots of opportunities for disrespect to rear its ugly head. Preventing it (ideally) and dealing with it when it does arise (inevitably) are two tasks they don’t mention when you get press-ganged into proposal management.

On a lighter note, mansplaining *can* be funny, and so it was this time. Right after my blood pressure subsided.

And on a helpful note, here’s a training flowchart on this very subject: BBC Worklife.

 

Lose the Convolutions

 

I still can’t recommend
JoshMBlackman and
RandyEBarnett’s book
enough.
– Seen on Twitter

As RandyEBarnett said wryly on his RT, “I’m glad I read all the way to the end of the sentence.”

Do what you want in Twitter Land — everyone else does — but lose this sort of construction in Proposal Land. No evaluator should have to read to the end of the sentence to get your meaning the right way around.

I don’t know why we sometimes write in this backward way (Does it sound more emphatic? More artistic? More smarter? Dunno.) but when clarity matters, go for the straight declarative, as the original tweeter did in the rest of his recommendation:

It’s very clear,
and the accompanying videos are great.
These are cases everyone should know
and this is a book everyone should own.

All right then.  Just say it.

I highly recommend the Blackman/Barnett book.

We’re not writing literature.

Term: MACA

 

Months after contract award. Almost never used in the expanded form because the acronym is so cool. Who says Proposal Landers are nerds?

Used to identify when milestones will occur and/or when written deliverables are due. Pronounced as “ma-ka,” rather than being spelled out.

Proposal Priorities

 , ,

Stop. Go look at this now.

Maslow’s Hierarchy & Proposals

I love it: Work your way up the hierarchy, and allocate time accordingly.

Here’s another way to think about it.

 

I expect there are other ways. Mostly what matters is to think: To be intentional, as some would say, about where the team spends its time, and what they focus on, rather than just running around madly.

Part of thinking is understanding why our processes are as they are, so we know when to change them. For that, check out these related posts:

The Most Important Thing in RFP Responses

The Second-most Important Thing in RFP Responses

The Third-most Important Thing in RFP Responses

The Fourth-most Important Thing in RFP Responses