Three Important Tasks Not to Forget When Writing Proposals

Jun 29, 11 • proposal writing • No Comments • Read More »

Sorry about not writing for awhile. I was working on this proposal, and now I’m gearing to work on a few others. Clients always come first.

Time management and scheduling are huge when you are writing a proposal. You want to ensure that you have plenty of time to hold reviews, have rewrites, and deal with any minor obstacles that might come your way.In a perfect world, you wouldn’t need to do anything but write the proposal and submit it. However, we all know this is not a perfect world.

Here are ways to have a smooth process so that you develop the best proposal and win the contract. Note: This is after you have made gone through the entire bid/no bid decision, and have decided to bid on the piece of work.

Create a Schedule

Before you do anything, create a schedule. There are plenty of ways that you can do that. If you are lucky enough to have MS Project, then use that. You can plan the milestones, dependencies, resources, and time for each task. If you want to use something similar but can’t afford to get MS Project, then use OpenProj. It’s very similar but open source. The best part is that you can take the templates from the Microsoft and use them. If you are more of a calendar-type of person, then use Google Calendar or Microsoft Outlook. I recommend that you go the project way though. However, you have to decide what works for your team. You need to have a central area that everyone can collaborate and see the schedule.

Plan Your Reviews

If you haven’t seen my video of the different types of proposal reviews, then watch it now. At a minimum, you should have a Pink Team review and a Red Team review. You can have the Subject-Matter Experts there, and they can “yay” and “nay” what you’ve written. Companies need to understand that they have to be involved at least in the reviews if they want to win. A Proposal Writer can help, but you are the ones who understands your business. You have to be available at all times. Plan time to go through each part of the proposal and ensure that it complies with the Request for Proposal. You should have created a compliance matrix at the beginning that will make it easier for you to do this.

Plan for Rewriting and Editing

You can be the best writer, but you need to be a better editor. You write and write, but you need to have someone edit your work. If you can’t, then put it down and come back to it later. You can’t do it all in one sitting, so plan to do edits. If your client tries to cut the deadline, then you might want to consider charging extra because editing is a must before you submit any proposal.