Shipley Insights

…to prepare a written, action-oriented capture plan for each major opportunity A formal capture plan helps an organisation achieve a more realistic understanding of the opportunity, leading to: • Improved bid decisions • Improved solutions and capture strategies • Greater consensus and information transfer • Saved time, reduced capture cost and improved win rates

  You need to make sure the most advantageous partners, and the best talent are available. But be sure to develop your selection criteria based upon customer requirements and issues, not just counterbalancing strengths and weaknesses of the teaming organisations. Customers require time to understand and accept your positioning of your team – so plan

  A strong business development process focuses on quality of outputs, not procedure When organisations decide they need to formalise their business development process they usually start with governance – that is, the approvals framework they use to make decisions about what they bid for, how they price it and how they manage the risks

  Create Stronger Win Strategy & Proposals: Identify your discriminators by understanding your prospect, your competitors and yourself. A discriminator is a feature of your offer that differs from your competitor’s offer and is acknowledged by your prospect as important to them. Consider two key issues to determine your most effective discriminators: 1.Ensure you have

  Kick-off to inspire (Part 3) To prevent serious misdirection of your proposal team, conduct the Kick-off meeting after preparing the material below: Proposal Project Summary Company Profile (clients) Proposal Strategy Proposal Operations Proposal Schedule Proposal Outline Writers packages Bid Request

  Kick-off meetings are critical milestones that require careful core team planning followed by professional execution. Industry leading organisations: Allocate approximately 15 percent of available preparation time to planning prior to kick-off meeting Invite the right people Prepare a complete but concise agenda Prepare a comprehensive kick-off package in advance Review operational guidelines for proposal

Kick-off meetings should be motivational, informative and directive and should contain the necessary information and plan for responding to the tender. They should: Initiate contributors’ proposal efforts Answer questions about the opportunity Set writing assignments and coordination of activities Create cohesiveness across the team They should not contain proposal planning discussions such as: Client requirements,

Proposal Management Plans (PMP) document the roles, responsibilities, tasks and deadlines before writers start developing proposal sections, volumes and ultimately the complete proposal. PMP is a proven best practice that leads to improved win-rates and higher quality proposals, produced with less friction and cost.

Make sure evaluators get their answers as quickly as possible. State your most important point first. Proposal evaluators read until satisfied, score the question, then look for the answer to the next question. Writers’ styles are influenced by the documents they read. So proposal writers with a technical background often model their writing on the