5 Best Practices for the Proposal Manager

By Cheryl Smith
 8 min read

5 Best Practices for The Proposal Manager

This eBook equips you with the top 5 best practices for overcoming these challenges and mastering your proposal process. Whether you’re a veteran or just getting started in the industry, these strategies will help you lead your team effectively and efficiently to secure those coveted contracts.

Contents

  1. Planning for Success: Lay the Groundwork
  2. Craft a Winning Proposal: The Power of Compelling Narrative
  3. Lead Your Team to Victory: Collaboration is Key
  4. Polish Your Gem: Mastering the Art of Revision
  5. The Role of Technology: Efficiency
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About the author

Cheryl Smith

Senior Content Writer

Cheryl Smith has been writing and managing proposals since 1998. Shipley trained, she has helped establish proposal centers and advised on capture strategy, coached orals teams and lead marketing, communications and knowledge management programs. Cheryl is a graduate of The George Washington University with degrees in Theatre, Communications and Literature. 

As a proposal manager, you wear many hats - strategist, organizer, writer, cheerleader, and sometimes even therapist. You are the glue that holds your team together, ensuring a winning bid is delivered on time and within budget. Yet, as a proposal manager, you also juggle a variety of challenges. Strict compliance, rogue experts, and tight deadlines under extreme pressure.

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Planning for Success: Lay the Groundwork

Taking time to plan and lay the groundwork for your proposal is an investment that pays off. It ensures you build a strong foundation, gather the right information, and use it to your best advantage. This proactive approach strengthens your proposal for maximum impact.

Embrace the Early Bird

Don’t wait for the RFP to drop. Insert yourself into the sales process and their pre-RFP efforts. Start digging for competitor strengths and weaknesses, client-specific win themes and evidence.

Understand the Rules

When the RFP drops, skim for key sections on deadlines, evaluation, and submission guidelines. Dissect the RFP, develop your compliance matrix, and clarify anything ambiguous. You are now the compliance authority.

Schedule is your Ally

Consider what it will take, in expertise, time and budget, to win. Create a timeline that sets realistic milestones and uses your team’s time wisely. Break down tasks and assign roles and responsibilities to keep your team on track.  

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According to APMP, 49% of organizations say they plan to increase the number of RFPs they respond to in 2024.

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Craft a Winning Proposal: The Power of Compelling Narrative

Crafting a winning proposal isn't just about filling out forms. It’s about telling a story, because people are naturally drawn to stories. By harnessing the power of storytelling, you can craft a winning proposal that captures attention, engages readers and builds credibility.

Know Your Audience

Analyze the client’s needs, challenges, and goals. Define your value, win themes, and how you solve the problem. Annotating your outline with these details gives your team a consistent understanding that minimizes revisions.  

Storytelling Sells

Think of this as a hero’s journey. Your client faces a challenge. You help them overcome it. Outline their pain points and the emotional toll. Showcase your experience by outlining a clear path to a happy ending.

Common Elements and Customization

Stock your library with pre-approved content for common elements to avoid recreating the wheel. Add adaptable content that can be easily customized for more unique requirements.

"Storytelling is not merely a commercial ploy. It is a necessary ability for entrepreneurs, business owners and leaders who wish to distinguish themselves in today's competitive and noisy market."

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Lead Your Team to Victory: Collaboration is Key

Leading a proposal team isn't just about delegating tasks. Imagine a symphony orchestra. Each musician brings a unique skill, but without a conductor, the music would be chaotic noise. Leading a proposal team is similar. You have talented individuals - subject matter experts, researchers, writers - but their efforts need direction and coordination. By leading them you help them contribute their best work. 

Communication is Paramount

Change happens fast, as amendments drop and conflicting schedules block progress. Maintain consistent communication. Regular meetings and frank conversations keep everyone moving forward.

Understanding is Key

Understanding how each contribution fits into the bigger picture fosters ownership. Show them how one section depends on another, and how each should flow logically into the next.

Empower Your Team

Make it easy for experts to discuss and share their perspectives across document sections. This makes double-checking facts and eliminating redundancies faster and easier.

51
%

of RFP teams report that their top challenges are collaborating with subject matter experts (APMP)
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Polish Your Gem: Mastering the Art of Revision

Reviewing and revising is not just about catching typos; it's about refining your message, strengthening your arguments, and amplifying your value proposition. By mastering this art, you transform a promising draft into a persuasive masterpiece that stands out from the competition.

Leave No Stone Unturned

Conduct rigorous reviews focused on improving accuracy, consistency, clarity, and overall persuasiveness. Analyze and score according to your compliance matrix and the evaluation criteria.

Seek Diverse Perspectives

Include reviewers with different perspectives for comprehensive results. Teams who work in-parallel spot issues and improvements earlier for strengthening content quality without major revisions downstream.

Revise to Strengthen

Eliminate unnecessary elements, refine your core message, and section transitions. Strengthen your arguments, rewrite for clarity, and ensure your claims are supported. Above all, ensure your client is the hero of the story.
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Proposal writing is an investment in your business.

According to APMP, RFx have influenced around 30-40% of company revenue over the past five years. 

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The Role of Technology: Efficiency

Proposal development can be a time-consuming and error-prone process. Technology offers a helping hand. Document collaboration and automation tools free you from repetitive, manual, and often tedious proposal tasks. By removing these time-consuming tasks from your process, technology frees up significant time for strategic thinking and innovation. Or bidding more proposals with your same staff.

Seamless Collaboration

Skip the emails, version control, and “pens down” for reviews. Write and review together, in-parallel. Writers get the guidance they need real-time without brining your process to a halt.

Effortless Workflow

Eliminate time-consuming gaps between contributors, and keep the workflow moving Without the need for manual transfer, you eliminate delays, and information and understanding getting lost in the shuffle.

Faster Content Reuse

Skip the content search and stop recreating the wheel. A well-stocked content library accelerates writing and customizing content. Secure, discriminatory AI quickly surfaces relevant content faster.

Skip the Reformating

Skip formatting and reformatting. Automatically layout and format your proposal. Without touching every sentence, paragraph, table and image corrupted during content development.

Bid More with Your Same Staff

Unlock your proposal process logjam. Imagine the extra hours you and your proposal team can invest in quality and bidding more with your same team. A crucial edge in today’s competitive landscape.

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According to APMP, most companies see a return on investment (ROI) in less than one year with RFP software.

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Mastering the role of proposal manager is about more than just It's not just about meeting deadlines; it's about fostering a culture of planning, collaboration and efficiency. By implementing these five best practices, you will empower your team to create exceptional, quality proposals that resonate with customers, win more contracts, and drive business growth. 

Remember, a successful proposal manager is at the center of collaboration, working across team boundaries, and knowing how best to work across those team boundaries, every day. 

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