Proposal Management Best Practices, Part 5: Build A Calendar Road Map

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. 

The team may rely on the account executive for strategy, but they look to you, as the proposal manager, for leadership and advice on how to write and review the proposal. 

Don’t tell them their tasks; show them how each task depends on another and how delays impact milestones by building and sharing an online calendar road map that syncs with their personal calendar.

A calendar road map of tasks, milestones, and deadlines is a great way to help the team visualize the plan, get them on the same page, and establish priorities. People are just more likely to step up when they understand where their piece of the puzzle fits in the big picture. And they're more likely to keep your proposal "top of-mind" when your milestones appear on their personal calendar. 

Setting up a calendar road map will also help you track a very important aspect of your proposal – your budget. Staying within your resource allocation is a key to success, and a detailed calendar road map lets you monitor the hours estimated for writing, reviewing, traveling, etc. while keeping your management team abreast of issues. Centralizing this activity means you'll be able to quickly report and analyze – and better estimate a budget on future proposals. 

Large companies will have a wider breadth of subject matter experts to pull from, but have a harder time being flexible to changes in schedule. Smaller companies need to balance their time spent on proposals against billable work, but will have an easier time communicating with each other and responding quickly to changes. A clearly defined calendar road map will help to ease the pain in both scenarios. 

Next in our series on proposal management best practices: Why the Kick-off Meeting is a critical first step to getting your team on the same page about process, responsibilities, schedule, and expectations.