The only meaningful date on any proposal calendar is the date the proposal is due to the government. All of the other dates for gate reviews, color reviews, drafts and milestones are false idols to which you fall prey. For decades, well meaning proposal managers have created calendars with dutiful dates on which the work was to be finished. No mind to quality, no matter to conceptual content – when the first draft is due it is called done.
Writing a winning proposal has little to do with drafts. Drafts are the illusion of progress. Until you have a clear understanding of what done means, drafts and dates are meaningless. Your goal is to make done mean unfettered stakeholder approval. Only then can done deliver the value you desire and result in the win you deserve.
Nowhere is there an RFP with absolutely equal components. In some price is most important, in others the technical solution prevails and most commonly you find the reference to best value. No matter, however, as most proposal teams lop all of the pieces into a parallel list of tasks and deliverables.
To treat components of vastly different value with the same effort is wasteful, at best. Moreover, it falsely assumes your team has all of the information it needs for any given requirement at any given point in the process. Reality never works that way. Better, create a task backlog which prioritizes the items of most business value with clearly defined dependencies. If the dependencies are not ready, the task waits. This is a very effective way to ensure focus on the right priorities.
The old approach to the proposal process uses color reviews to gather feedback on the team’s progress. Red team, pink team, blue team, green team – each group tasked to be a fresh set of eyes to critique the current work product. Too often, these reviews end in meaningless feedback quickly ignored by the check-the-box mentality of following a process. Why? Ambiguous roles mean the value is questionable, often contradictory and trapped in an ill-defined morass of subjectivity. Instead, review team members should each represent a stakeholder voice asked to advocate their position throughout the process. Who will speak on behalf of your customer, the evaluator, the business owner, your operations team? Those voices tasked to work together result in a better product that meets collective stakeholder objectives.