Proposal Management Best Practices, Part 4: Define Roles And Tasks Clearly

When it comes to proposal management, there are a lot of moving pieces to manage, and organization shouldn’t be the thing that keeps your proposal from winning the bid. 

You may not manage the people who work on your proposal, but it is your job to lead them. While the standard team size is half a dozen, it isn't unusual to see 20-30 people on the team. Especially on larger, more complex proposals.

Defining roles, responsibilities, and tasks up front will set the team's expectations, establish trust, and help keep the chaos to a minimum.

Prior to the Kick-off Meeting, set a meeting with the executive team and appropriate managers to establish roles, responsibilities, and tasks. They will know who has the expertise and who is available. They will help you staff the proposal so you can establish the schedule and clear the way for the Kick-off Meeting.

Assign an accountable lead and secondary support role to every proposal section. Assign your review team now; you're typically drawing on executives so you'll want to get on their calendar early. On smaller bids, the writing will no doubt fall to the leads. On larger bids, these book bosses, volume leads, or section leads, will assign subject matter experts to write and oversee the writing activities to keep them on track.

When it comes to assigning tasks, remember, the majority of people tasked to work on your proposal have full-time jobs. They are software developers, project managers, trainers, etc. Take time to listen and understand their conflicting responsibilities and be flexible – never forget that people need rest.

The team will be more productive, and more likely to follow your leadership, when you respect their boundaries and use their expertise, and time, wisely. Just be sure to give yourself the same flexibility; take time to restore your energy as well so you can be there for the team.

Tip: Instead of emailing out spreadsheets, centralize your team's tasks and deadlines and automatically trigger reminders using workflow. This will automatically trigger email notices and reminders, including a link directly to the document. Experts can also use this to monitor their tasks on their Dashboard, and even sort by urgency.

Next in our series on proposal management best practices: Why you should build and share an online calendar road map that syncs with your team’s personal calendars.