8 Ways to Make Your Proposal Team a Success
Whether you have dedicated proposal writers or your sales team submits proposals (or something in between), there are many factors that impact the success of your proposal team. This post covers a few ways you can make your proposal team more successful.
Establish Approved Content Library
If you’ve read any of our posts, you know that we’re big advocates of having a content library. Competitive and engaging boilerplate content makes it easier for your team to pull together proposal content and then customize it for that particular opportunity. Starting from scratch each time or pulling from recent proposals means your team is spending too much time compiling content and not enough tailoring it to the specific client.
Instead, establish a content library with approved content for your most common sections. Don’t feel like you need to have one piece for each section either. Feel free to create multiple versions of the same content that speaks to a particular audience, such as three company overviews targeting the specific industries you support (ex. Government, nonprofits, and education sectors). This makes the content more tailored in the beginning of a project and will save you time in the long run.
Develop Clear, Repeatable Processes
One of the biggest time wasters for proposal teams is not following a clearly defined process. This leads to confusion and lost time while scrambling to pull together your proposal. Creating a clear and repeatable process for creating proposals will make both your team and your clients happier.
A few types of processes to make sure you have in place include:
An easy-to-use and customizable template
Clear approval procedures (see below)
Signature process (for RFP forms)
Production process
Content creation & revision process (i.e. a proposal manager, writers, etc.)
Content library update process
Document Competitive Positioning
It’s hard to win a project if your proposal team doesn’t understand how your company competes. To make the proposal strategy easier on your team, create a few resources that highlight your company’s competitive positioning. Include any key features or benefits of your solution and why customers tend to choose your business. If possible, include key phrases and/or themes that should be included in proposals by each type of solution.
This will allow your proposal team to incorporate those selling points throughout all proposals without needing extensive meetings for each opportunity.
Invite Sales to Share Customer Insights
Your sales team most likely has the best relationship with your clients and prospects, and they should be sharing insights throughout the proposal process. If you have a dedicated proposal writer or team, ask sales to create 3-5 key pain points for the customer that the proposed solution solves. The proposal team will then be able to explain to the customer within the proposal why your company is the best choice for their specific challenge.
Have 1 Project Manager per Proposal
One thing you absolutely must do is to establish only one project manager per proposal. This person will be responsible for ensuring all of the needed content is included within the proposal. In small businesses, one person typically fulfills all roles in the proposal creation process, but if you have more than one person involved, designate one project manager up front to ensure that you don’t miss anything due to miscommunication.
When there are multiple people leading a proposal, it’s easy to assume someone else is taking care of it, which leads to missed deadlines. Avoid this early and define this role at the beginning or have an established process that applies across all proposals.
Create Proposals Only for the Best Opportunities
It’s tempting to send in a proposal for every opportunity, but that’s not always the best strategy. Oftentimes, this leads to low win rates and high burnout. Instead, create a framework for prioritizing proposals and spend time personalizing only those that are a good fit for your business.
Operate on an Earlier Deadline
If you’re responding to RFPs, the deadline will always be looming in the distance. Even the most organized teams tend to work up to the deadline, and the best way to beat this is to set an earlier internal deadline. Make a deadline that gives you time for a final proofread, to print documents, or to have a final approver. If you’re adding content up until the last minute, you’ll likely miss something and hurt your chances of winning that contract.
For teams where multiple people are contributing, it is essential that everyone agrees to and operates by the deadline established by the project manager. This should be defined when creating your proposal processes as a company to ensure that all team members understand the importance of meeting the deadlines.
Limit Final Approvers
When you’re bidding on a large project, it’s tempting to have everyone give final sign off. If this is near the deadline, however, this often results in last minute changes and repeated revisions that marginally improve the proposal (if at all).
Instead, get feedback from key people early in the process and incorporate it during earlier phases. The final approvers should be limited to 1-2 people who are clearly defined in your proposal process to avoid last minute scrambling or changing of the content.
Next Steps for Proposals
If you follow the above tips, your proposal team will be much happier and more streamlined when responding to proposals. For more proposal tips, check out a few popular posts below.