A recent trend in the past few New Years has been to throw resolutions out the window. People claim they come with too much pressure, and most aren’t met by the year’s end anyway. Starting up a new proposal could prompt similar stress for proposal managers, especially if a recent proposal started with a good kickoff and went downhill from there.

I am sure many of you have heard that a good Technical Volume response gets you “in the door” during a source selection, but the Cost Volume turns that response into a winner. During the creation of the Technical Volume, we as offerors, try to ensure the customer understands how that technical response brings value (value propositions) to them. We do that by stressing how we bring benefits through lower cost, improved schedule, better quality, lower risk, and enhanced performance: things they value. However, in many cases when we get to the Cost Volume, we focus only on spreadsheets and numbers and not how that “bottom line” brings value to them. We must ensure that the Cost Volume reflects what the value(s) are tied back to that Technical Volume.