Supporting the Proposal

Supporting the proposal while continuing your capture activities is essential to ensuring capture and proposal strategies are aligned and implemented in the proposal.Ideally, you can win an award without submitting a competitive proposal. The reality is that few customers are permitted to award a contract—or want to award a contract—without soliciting competitive bids, even when they have a preferred vendor. Government regulations or corporate purchasing guidelines often require competitive proposals, usually from three or more bidders.Capture activity continues in parallel with proposal planning, preparation, and review. Customers might limit contact with bidders, but the rules vary by country, market, purchasing environment, customer, and opportunity.Capture management and proposal management require different skills, and few individuals have both skill sets. Most capture and sales professionals welcome professional proposal support. Capture managers and proposal managers can most effectively engage proposal support by following these guidelines:

• Seek proposal manager input when preparing the detailed proposal budget.
• Extend the capture strategy into the proposal strategy.
• Integrate the extended capture team in key pre-proposal activities.
• Draft the executive summary.
• Influence the selection of the best core proposal team members.
• Support the proposal kickoff meeting.
• Define and manage customer contacts.
• Participate in but do not facilitate color team reviews.
• Help analyze the final bid request and lead Bid Validation Decision gate review.
• Lead, guide, or contribute to post-bid submittal interactions with the customer.

Want to learn more? Read more about supporting the proposal in the new updated Shipley Capture Guide.