Chet’s Blog

The picture above was taken at Wakula Springs where the movie “Creature from the Black Lagoon” was filmed in northern Florida.

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FIRST DRAFT REVIEW PROCESS

You are invited to participate in the First Draft Review to be held in the War room.

This will be an all day review beginning at 9:00 AM that will allow you to read and mark up a single copy of the entire first draft of the proposal.

The Following process will be observed:

1- A single draft of each Sub Factor and volume will be cut into packets

2- Each packet will have a sign-off sheet attached to it with your name on it.

3- At the beginning of the review, select a draft packet

4- Read the requirements from the RFP (Section L, M, Specification, SOW and other RFP materials)

5- Read the associated draft hand written remarks on the storyboard wall.

6- Next, read the draft packet and ensure that you recognize the following:

6a. A response for each requirement in the outline

6b. A recognizable theme or strategy at the beginning of each first, second, third and fourth level paragraph

6c. Graphics with action captions that tell the evaluator what the goodness of the graphic is without making them search for it (If there are none please make a suggestion or better, draw a draft idea).

6d. Check traceability from the approaches approved and comments on the Storyboards to the draft

7- Mark up the draft with your comments and initial them so that other reviewers and the authors can contact you about them

8- Place the packet back on the table for another reviewer and select another packet to review

9- Repeat the process

10- Once you have reviewed and signed off on all of the packets you are finished with the review

11- If you have questions during the review contact the proposal manager.

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The Proposal Manager has a wide range of responsibilities. From leading the morning status meeting to planning reviews to helping individual authors create storyboards, drafts and graphics he or she must be a person of many talents. Datawrite proposal consultants have these talents. Let’s look at a laundry list of some of those duties:

• As the Proposal Manager you’re responsible for getting the team through all of the milestones we have discussed: strategy development, storyboard development, draft development and all of the reviews in between,
• You will be a part of the committee deciding the Bid/No Bid decision
• You must develop the proposal plan and keep all of it’s elements up to date
• You will be tasked to ensure an outline is built that meets all of the requirements in Section L Proposal Instructions, The Evaluation Criteria in Section M and all of the other RFP requirement documents
• As questions come up for the government it is your job to collect, format, review and send them out. When the answers return it is your responsibility to get them out to the team for comment.
• Each review team needs to be selected and contacted well in advance of the reviews. You must develop the review procedure and their agenda. You must also prepare for the reviewers by sending out all of RFP documentation, proposal plan and approved strategies.
• The Proposal Manager is also responsible for calling a morning status meeting. After the final RFP is released these meetings should be held a minimum of six days a week.
• The Proposal Manager is the lead man for coordinating draft and graphics development with production. The Production Coordinator will need to know your schedule and how it relates to their resources (word processing, graphics and editors).
• Working with Production, you will have to approve standards for formatting and graphics (color, font type and size).
• The Proposal Manager will have to keep upper management informed of progress and budget expended on the proposal.
• Delivery strategies must be carefully planned with a backup delivery.

And if that isn’t enough the Proposal Manager will have to act as referee and arbitrator for all of the countless personnel hassles that will arise on a daily basis. For when people are under pressure, things get hot.

Tags: Proposal Manager

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CRYSTALS FOR CLARITY

It was a brisk autumn day in the northeast. Driving through the northern farm land was inspiring. The corn had been harvested and pheasant ran through the broken stalks. Farm wagons loaded with pumpkins and colorful gourds dotted the roadside. Frank and I arrived at the client site in a small town still dominated by its Civil War heritage. The proverbial war heroes atop their forever more still steeds supported the local pigeon population. We were ready. We had a fresh set of overheads with us tailored to this client’s market and product.

Soon we were in the boardroom. The president of the company, a large friendly, avuncular man greeted us. He was confident, acted with camaraderie towards his subordinates and did everything he could to make us feel comfortable. There were fresh noshes and coffee and all of the electronic hookups and cables available to do our job. For this was in a time before wireless. I did notice some odd looking round glass-like disks on the table before each seat. They were about as big as the diameter of a Susan B. Anthony silver dollar. There was a Archipelago Bergamot Tobacco candle burning at the center of the table. It is an amazing scent.

As we all sat down the president and his crew picked up their crystal disks and placed them on their foreheads. The little disks seemed to stay in place when pressed. They could see our looks of confusion.

“Man made crystal,” the President informed us. We use them to improve our thinking. We were polite about this revelation and were each given our own disk of the clear glassy product. We held our crystal to our foreheads while making the pitch since they kept wanting to fall off. There were a lot of questions afterwards and everyone seemed marvelously in sync with each other. We got the contract. We also got to hold onto our crystals.

MANAGING COMPLEXITY

If we could all believe in the crystals and use their power it might be a useful tool for proposal management. For if there ever was an art that needed to keep diverse disciplines in sync with the ability to see into the future, it is this one. The method of managing a proposal can be taught to some degree. What can’t be taught is the ability to keep a step or two ahead of the fray so that no unexpected event can grievously impact the development cycle. These proposal management sections will talk to a few techniques to achieve proposal risk containment.

First, who gets picked to be the Proposal Manager? In a large organization that considers the bid a must win, it could be a director, maybe a vice president, a seasoned program manager. Will this person really manage the proposal? Does he understand how to give birth to something as complex as a new program? They must. For a proposal is nothing less than that. If they don’t understand all the program nuances they will need an assistant proposal manager, usually a consultant to guide them through the chaos.

Managing a proposal means waking up in the middle of the night to go over and over a list of topics you cannot forget to bring up at the next morning status meeting. It means explaining over and over how the simplest cross reference mechanisms will work in your favor with the evaluators. What seems obvious to you seems complicated, administrative and inconsequential to an untrained team. Only you know that using the cross reference matrix to track deadlines, to structure, to organize to continually status, run down action items and to follow up with everybody’s questions is the only way to get a superior package out the door. You may not invent the better algorithm for supplying signals to the processor used in the design, but you as the proposal manager should know how to articulate the design and how to win the government’s point for each of its requirements. To do that, you must go out of your way to integrate yourself into the development time of each team member. The few minutes that you spend daily talking with them is worth a hundred emails.

FRANK SAYS: Everybody can’t be good at everything. A brilliant engineer still needs someone to help him explain the brilliance to others. This ability to articulate complex technical approaches in a clear concise manner is just another tool in the club bag of the professional proposal consultant.

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The sun was coming up red hot that morning not far from the Mississippi River. You could see the long barges pushing through the muddy waters as they navigated up the winding river to the Crossroads. Frank and I got into our rental and sped through the early morning haze. The proposal that we were working on was going into the final throws of production and we still didn’t have an executive summary. A few people had been writing versions of one for the last month but the Program Manager had thrown them all into the burn basket and one-by-one had fired all of the writers. It wasn’t an enviable assignment. But now it was up to us. “No surprise to me,” said Frank, “wait until the very end then throw it into the consultant’s lap.” “That’s why they pay us the big bucks,” I said. “Well, I guess we know what to do,” Frank said with a certain air of resignation. Together we chimed in, “Just follow what it says to do in the book.” Frank picked up his copy of my “Proposal Smarts” from the car seat and we both laughed. Sometimes it works out to be the experts. We knew exactly how to write an executive summary of value. And now you will too.

INTRODUCTION – A STORY THAT SELLS

Now for the good stuff: here’s where the fun begins. You’ve got all of the proposal baselines and strategies figured out and reviewed. You’ve articulated your best lead-ins for all volumes and sections. The art is the ability to condense all of this data into a story that an executive with very little time can read and comprehend in fifteen minutes or less. The reader should walk away convinced that your team is the best. The reader should also be compelled by the summary to start reading the details in your other volumes. As President of Datawrite, Inc. I have spent years leading the development and writing of executive summaries that help win major projects (www.datawrite.com).

Channeling all of your best thoughts into a comprehensive three to ten pages is a daunting task. But what is the guide for the outline of such a document. You can’t just assemble the first two pages from each volume. That would be way too long and complicated. There is only one guiding instrument to use for the Executive Summary outline (unless Section L instructs otherwise) and that is the flow and priority of the evaluation criteria in Section M. You can never go wrong by hammering home each of the solutions that you think will give you the most points from the evaluator. This approach is like a Morning Briefing in the military. Each point in M is addressed briefly and succinctly in the customers own language.

All graphics should play off of those in the volumes and should follow their style. The summary is not a place to begin a new proposal that does not mirror the original. It should have a bold feel although it doesn’t have to be specially printed (usually frowned upon by evaluators). Remember, the executive summary is just that. Executives do not want hard to read technical approaches and trade-off studies. They want the details distilled into easily digestible charts and enumerations. They want a document that they can use to explain to their counterparts why they have selected your company above all of the rest. If you try to get too detailed they’ll throw up their arms in frustration and go on to the next company’s submittal. It’s like giving them a good Hollywood read – keep it simple yet compelling. Make them believers and you’ve done your job.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY OR NOT

What if the Government doesn’t ask for an executive summary? Should you give them one anyway in hopes that they read it?

Sometimes it’s a good exercise to go through just to crystallize all of the major approaches for the team to read. Like a proposal bible. Putting it into the submittal is a tricky business especially if the volumes they have asked for are page limited.

One sure fire approach is to a lot three or four pages at the beginning of each major volume as a summary section. This will allow you to tell your story and give the evaluators a mind set on your approach before they read the details. Just call it an Introduction and keep it short. At the end of your summary have a paragraph called “Roadmap.” The Roadmap explains that layout of the rest of the volume and calls attention to the fact that they have just completed a proposal overview.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The best executive summary I ever saw was conceived, created and printed in a week. I’ve seen companies pay to have people labor over other summaries for months in a row. The resulting products were not very impressive. So, here’s a good formula for completing a top notch executive summary:

You will create storyboards for the Pink Team that will be a first glimpse of the emerging exec summary. But since the proposal process is an iterative one, your summary will by necessity grow and change with the evolution of the development of the draft and final draft.

Step 1 - Wait until all of the lead-ins to major volumes and sections have matured.

Step 2- Conceive a “win” or an “elevator” graphic that gives every important message the government needs to award you the program.

Elevator Graphic

This terminology came about when a young acquisition specialist had to give his boss a single graphic that illustrated exactly why his team had selected a particular contractor in a solicitation evaluation. I also call it the “Win Graphic.” The trick was that it had to be compelling enough to accomplish the job on the short elevator trip from the first floor to his boss’s boss on the fourth floor of a mythical building. Ideally this graphic is a clever mix of drawings and focus boxes. The colors are of the same pallet as the rest of the proposal.

Step 3 - Make a copy of the introductions you have for each of the proposal volumes after the first draft review. If there is no introduction for a volume this will remind you to write one. Remember each volume gets a mini exec to lead the evaluator into your major approaches and solutions. It should always be followed by a short roadmap for that volume. Volume introductions should have more detail than you will actually use in the exec summary.

Step 4 - Arrange each one of the summaries into the flow of the Section M evaluation criteria (if there are no other specific instructions in Section L). Read them together and see if there is a flow. Can you write transition paragraphs to tie them together? If not there may be a fundamental problem with one of the volumes. This gives you a good top level check-off list for the entire proposal. Report problems back to the book bosses before the Red Team.

Step 5 - Create an evaluation check-off matrix with a column for your company’s solutions and a column for features/benefits for each. Make it a stop light chart and lead the team through it at the morning status meetings.

Step 6 - Distill the introduction data into some striking new prose that hammer in and highlight your top level strategies and discriminators. This is a significant writing test. Next, design a win graphic that pulls all of this material together (the Elevator Drawing). Then summarize each of the other introductions and create tie-in graphics for them.

Step 7 - Write a summary for the conclusion (tell them what you’ve told them).

If you can complete this seven step executive summary build kit, you are well on your way to having a review copy in advance of the Red Team.

Frank says: Have your best writer do the exec summary draft. Don’t just ask for a volunteer. Use someone who has graphics conceptualization capability. Tell the writer that everyone will have inputs to his or her effort once they have created the basic document. Once the program manager and chief engineer see the first draft they will be able to embellish it with the facts and figures needed to substantiate your claims.

Tips & Tricks

• Take a snapshot (picture or flow diagram) of your product or service and balloon out each of the discriminators for a quick “Elevator Drawing” to use at the front of the exec.
• Comb your volumes for all strong thematic lead-in sentences and ensure they play somewhere in the exec.
• Always talk to the evaluator. They will recognize your use of Section M as an outline since this is their evaluation guideline.
• Avoid using numbered paragraphs in the Executive Summary.

EXECUTIVE GRAPHICS

There are many schools that say to use all graphics in the executive summary. I don’t like this approach. I believe that you never force graphics or text for the sake of format. You want to lead the evaluator through carefully mapped out summary that relates to their instructions. The first diagram that they see should be your “elevator drawing.” It should combine the best of your approaches from all of your volumes or sections (technical, management, quality, logistics, etc.). From there you should include enough summary charts and tables to clearly state your case that you have met or exceeded all of the requirements in their RFP.

SUMMARY

Keep them asking for more. If they like your summary, they’ll want to read the rest of your proposal. If you can relate the material in your volumes to the Section M Evaluation Criteria you’ve given the evaluator a leg up on being able to give your team the highest score.

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CONSULTANT’S CORNER

On the last day as Frank and I walk out of the war room and say good by to all of our new friends we always feel both elated over the job we accomplished and sad to leave everyone. It is, however, nice to be going home and I must admit that after a few months and midway into a new assignment we will find it hard to remember most of their names. They will have all been displaced in the brain’s ROM for a whole new set of names and faces. This is just the nature of the work. But the one thing that stays consistent through each of these endeavors is the discipline explained in this book. The same approach wins aircraft contracts, insurance contracts, high performance computing contracts, system engineering service contracts and so on. It’s not the product or service, it’s the capability to understand the problem and the ability to devise approaches to winning those contracts that counts. Now you have the secret to fire. But don’t forget to bring in an experienced fire eater to augment your team.

INTRODUCTION – A FEW GUIDELINES FOR THE CONSULTANT TEAM

A Proposal Team needs a great deal of talent including leadership, volume leaders, subject area experts, editors and production personnel.  It also needs a common sense proposal development process like the one that I created for Datawrite, Inc and have thumb nailed in this blog.

As a company entering into a large scale proposal effort you will need to assemble a team of these talented folks who can respond to all of the requirements in the request for proposal (RFP). Using consultants will often help to ramp up quickly for these efforts and will allow you to augment your team with the types of specialized individuals you may not want to hire on a full time basis at a later date.

As with every team building effort the job starts with a strong, experienced leader. Once the leader is in-place, he or she can start building the rest of the team. Without clear leadership nothing will happen.

THE TRAVELING LIFE

Once you have signed your contract and have agreed to your rate, it’s time to travel to the client’s site to begin work. That’s right, travel. Life for a proposal consultant is spent on the road. Forget about all of that telecommuting business you hear about. You’ll be working with highly proprietary material, sometimes classified material and your client won’t take kindly to a consultant who doesn’t want to work shoulder-to-shoulder with their team on-site regardless of the price of gas.

CONSULTANT RULES

Here are a few points of etiquette when it comes to dealing with a client. Especially if you want repeat work:

• Show up a half an hour before the client and prepare for the daily status meeting
• Take lunch and dinner when the client does
• Never leave the premises without letting someone responsible know that you’re leaving and when you’ll be back.
• Be the last one to leave in the evening.
• If it is a classified job ensure that the safe’s are all locked and that there are no classified documents left out on anyone’s desk.

CONSULTANT EVALUATION LIST

Here are some of the ways you can tell if you’re NOT being well-served by your proposal consultants:

• On day one, more than three consultants are dropped on your doorstep. Most consultants don’t become productive until the basic ground work has been accomplished.
• You are sold a complicated process that requires a three inch binder
• The process the consultants use requires redundant paperwork which forces engineers to rewrite their inputs many time over in slightly different ways
• The consultant’s review process require days of additional paperwork that results in material that the authors cannot use.
• Consultants are arrogant and have a “you must do it my way” mind set.

Here are some of the ways you can tell if you ARE being served well by your current proposal development consultants:

• On day one a proposal lead and a staff analyst arrive. While the lead works with your staff, the analyst quickly accomplishes a requirements matrix and volume outlines
• A close to paperless trail is kept active with an online process and wall hangings
• Simple storyboard sheets, once signed off, act as the approved roadmap for the first draft. All approved material is used.
• The review process ends with writers quickly receiving original approved comments for direct incorporation into text and graphics.
• You’ll never need an all-nighter because the proposal lead sticks to a milestone oriented schedule.
• Consultants are master diplomats and act as investigative reporters to help get the best data out of your staff.

THE SUBJECT OF WIN RATE

Many proposal development companies talk about their high win rates (85% and above). How real is it to say that you as a consultant or direct employee in charge of proposal development have directly affected the win rate? Not very much unless you are directly responsible for coming up with the final cost.

I’ve long said that we have a 100% success ratio, because as I see it, it’s our job to make sure that the proposal makes the technical cut and gets to BAFO. That means that it is 100% responsive to the requirements of the RFP and the cost is auditable throughout all volumes. We at Datawrite have never not made the technical cut. That is something anyone can be proud of, and as a proposal manager it is your most important goal.

Make the technical cut, ensure that your cost is in the competitive range and have winning strategies are woven throughout your proposal. You will be a winner!

SUMMARY

This is the end of our journey through proposal development using the Datawrite Proposal Response Organizational System (PROS). Although much of the material has been touched on lightly as in a primer, the Datawrite staff of proposal experts is available for hire under contract to bring your company more fully into the system. Once established, the process becomes a routine that will allow you to rapidly address incoming RFPs with a consistent, winning approach.

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Virtual Reviews enable teams with remote groups to have a single, cohesive review while saving travel and schedule costs. With a part of the core review team present in the war room, the remote sections of that core team use a tool like NetMeeting and speaker-phones to follow the flow of the review. In this way the entire review team can converse and agree or disagree on what comments are captured on the wall.

Process

A Facilitator will ensure that both on site and off site reviewers can address the boards as the Facilitator moves them through the following disciplined process:

1- All Storyboards are hung in the war room by volume and section at eye level. Each section and volume is in large bold lettering on a placard above the storyboards so that reviewers instantly know where they are in the Proposal Outline. Storyboards can be multiple pages (one below the other with graphics attached below them).

2-