Notes from 51st International STC Conference
Baltimore, Maryland, May 9-12, 2004

How NOT to Prepare a Proposal

Session Description: This session pointed out some of the pitfalls, obstacles, or omissions that affect proposal development, along with best practices for establishing an effective, efficient, and enforceable process.

What NOT to Do

Christine Sheppard
DuPont Safety Resources

Christine is a client communications consultant who develops and implements customized communications plans for safety consulting clients, some of whom include the U.S. Army and the Architect of the Capitol.

• Do not make the proposal a symposium for your company and products. Focus on the customer and the customer's needs and priorities.
• Do not just parrot back the RFP.
• Don't refer to the company in the third person: use 1st person and speak directly to the customer and the evaluator's.
• Do not use boilerplate resumes; tailor them to the proposal.

Lessons Learned

Judith M. Herr
Well-Chosen Words

Judith brings 20+ years of accumulated expertise in managing, contributing, and providing consultative support to occupational/public health; medical, biological and environmental sciences; adult education; fund-raising for non-profit organizations; and community development.

• Come prepared to spend the night
• Opportunities for disaster abound
   
• Forming core proposal teams ... avoid SMEs with nothing to do
• Anticipating an RFP: work the customer early, while you still can, to influence requirements
• Developing/implementing proposal plan; requirements-driven outline; schedule: early organization and compliance planning is critical
• Organizing "cast of 1,000s" kickoff: including senior corporate people who outrank you by 75 salary grades but have no clue what is going on
• Planning/facilitating peer and editorial reviews – all the colors (gold, blue, green, red). Recovery time is often very limited.
   
• Gold = corporate strategizing and comment on outline, plus bid decision.
• Blue = internal technical review by proposal team
• Green = financial review
• Red = adversarial (what we call Black Hat/White Hat). Be sure there’s a real senior person who controls resources on this team, to help you recover.
• Flow of proposal process:
   
• Pre-RFP activities
• Draft RFP
• Proposal initiation and planning
• Working draft
• Red Team draft
• Final draft
• Production and delivery
• Post-proposal
• Key don'ts:
   
• Don't wait until the RFP comes out to start organizing.
• Don't add staff to the core proposal team just because they have no billable work.
• Don't tell SMEs writing technical sessions to put in everything they know.
• Top 10 lessons learned:
   
1. Follow all RFP instructions exactly; continuously update compliance matrix.
2. Keep proposal team happy – well fed; access to tools; effective communication; reward and publicly recognize contributors.
3. Collect 24x7 contact information for all involved or potentially needed – including senior managers.
4. Match key positions with potential proposed personnel early in the process.
5. Early in the process, draft cover letter, graphic design, cover, tabs, spine, CD labels, etc.
6. Keep technical experts/managers focused on content.
7. Edit continuously; accept substantial changes graciously or at least tactfully
8. Know when to give up perfection for "good enough"
9. When preparing the schedule, inflate time required for production/delivery – you'll be glad you did.
10. Invite a very senior manager to lead the Red Team Review.
• What you need is someone to...
   
• Analyze project requirements
• Multi-task
• Interview SMEs
• Conduct reviews
• Coordinate documentation projects
• Design information to satisfy requirements
• Write, edit, read copy, and arrange for production
• Retain a sense of humor
• In short ... a technical communicator!

Compliance Matrix

Bill Collins
DuPont Safety Resources

Bill has 25 years of writing, editing, and training experience with the DuPont Company.

• A major don't is to fail to address all the requirements of the RFP.
• Compliance matrix tracks that you have met all the requirements.
• It is a good idea to include a compliance matrix even if it isn't specifically asked for in the RFP.
• Many RFPs are not well written and organized; they contain redundancies and inconsistencies. However, you still need to be careful to slave to the RFP ... if possible, resolve any problems via Q&A's that lead to amendments correcting the problems. Don't just ignore the RFP!
• If you write your proposal in a well-organized fashion that does not match the RFP, you will lose out because the evaluators will not be able to easily follow the response. Even if the RFP is "broke," don’t fix it!
• Compliance assignments need to be exhaustive and rigorously tracked.
• Page-limited volumes require page budgeting from the outline stage on.
• Dr. Tom Sands: "An evaluator who works for the U.S. Postal Service said he tosses out all proposals that don't have a compliance matrix and reviews the others."

Power Storyboarding

W.C. Wiese
Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control

W.C. has 32 years' experience in aerospace, including technical writing/editing, proposal writing, marketing communication, media communication, and management/supervision.

• Process management and synchronization of a large, diverse team are important parts of proposal preparation.
• If what proposal management wants is not what authors write, extensive revisions ensue that can threaten schedule, erode quality, and blow budgets.
• Power storyboarding forces early management ownership of the proposal content. It brings everyone who counts in a room for two days to validate technical approach and marketing strategy early.
• 3 objectives
   
• Get proposal manager to take ownership of writing process
• Make sure authors in different sections write to the same sheet of music
• Gain insight from key reviewers... e.g., involve key Red Team members at the power storyboarding stage

The Legal Eagle ... Contract Standard Terms and Conditions

Christopher Juillet
Attorney and Counselor at Law

Christopher is a self-employed technical writer, consultant, and attorney.  In addition to his consulting practice, he practices business, computer, and intellectual property law.

• With government and large companies, you have to conform to what they want. Small companies have more latitude.
• Contracts are mechanism to provide "trust" among the "trustworthy." They’re really only as enforceable as the integrity of the agency involved.
• Common standard terms
   
• Conditions of payment
• Working conditions
• Content responsibility
• Provisional copyright and ownership
• Merger, severability, modifications
• Indemnification and hold-harmless
• Warranties and disclaimers
• Non-waiver
• Assignment and delegation
• Governing law and venue
• Independent contractors: do not offer the same project to multiple people simultaneously if you cannot deliver. Make it an "invitation to contract" subject to your approval.
• Handout provides detailed contract terminology. See conference web site (Session WE 2G, under Juillet).