The fire drill is a terrible proposal strategy
We proposal hacks often mention the fire drill, or putting out fires, or fighting a fire. What we usually mean by these terms is the mad rush that comes when an RFP comes in the door with a short fuse, or when we’ve been overloaded with too many proposals and one or two of them get put off until there’s nothing left to do but sling them together. When you and your team work on one of these, it can feel just like you’re the middleman in a bucket brigade. As you grab the bucket handed to you, water sloshes out, soaking you and bringing the thought to mind that there won’t be much water left at the end of the line to put on the fire.
And like fighting a real fire, a last-minute proposal leaves you spent. Even if you prevail and deliver the proposal in the nick of time, you won’t feel good about its chances. Like the smoking shell of a house soaked by fire hoses, it isn’t anything you’d be proud to show off.
Sometimes the only positive thing you can say after one of these is that no one died.
Producing proposals in this way is the main reason everyone hates doing them. You may think that’s just the way it goes when an RFP comes in the door. Pull the fire alarm! There’s an RFP in the house!
There is a better way. Let’s look at the modern fire fighter and see what we can learn.
Real fires are no longer fought with the bucket brigade. In fact, there aren’t as many fires as there once were and there are fewer casualties from fires. This is partly due to better firefighting methods, but it is mainly due to the fact that fire fighters spend a lot of time ensuring buildings are being built to code so they are less likely to catch on fire. They also test sprinklers, inspect fire extinguishers, and educate people on preventing fires and on getting out of a building quickly and safely when there’s a fire.
Now compare that to what happens when an RFP lands on your desk. Are you pulling the fire alarm and going into a panic? Does it feel hopeless as you search frantically for content and cram boilerplate writeups from old proposals into the document? If that’s your typical proposal process, you’re not a professional proposal manager. You’re running a volunteer bucket brigade.
A better alternative is to set up systems and processes to prevent RFP fire alarms. An organized, professional proposal process will prevent most fires. And even when a short-fuse RFP shows up, you’ll be better prepared to fight the fire and prevent casualties.
Here are a few practical ways you can be more systematic and organized in your response to RFPs. These will lead to more wins and introduce some sanity into the proposal response process.
Work on your proposal process is when there’s not a fire. That's when you have time to think and plan. You might have to stop the proposal insanity long enough to catch your breath, which means putting a moratorium on proposal responses until you can implement some good practices. If you’re not winning them anyway, what would that hurt?
Implement a go/no-go process. These are easy to set up. Just look at the RFPs you’ve won and decide what common factors were present among them. Usually you’ll find things like prior relationships and intelligence about the opportunity before the RFP came out, an incumbent whose performance is known to be lacking, and alignment of the work with your company’s sweet spot. Set up a scoring system and let it be known that anything that doesn’t score a certain level will not be pursued. It works and it can actually make the sales team work better. They will begin to ask better questions about future RFPs when you start demanding better intelligence.
Don’t chase short-fuse RFPs unless there is overwhelming evidence that you will win the work. I have worn myself out chasing the “sure thing” that turned into a loser. I once almost lost a weekend because a branch manager for a Tennessee firm wanted to go after a contract in the Polynesian Islands even though between us and Hawaii were a thousand firms that could do the same work easier and cheaper (cooler heads talked him out of it).
Manage your content. One of the worst ways to write a proposal is to get an old proposal and borrow content. If you have a good content management system, or even if you are judicious with your Word documents, you can create a new proposal using the right pieces that fit the opportunity. Then for the key sections such as the Executive Summary, you can write the content from scratch.
Use the in-between-proposals time to organize, brainstorm, and get ready for the next one.
Don’t use “volunteers.” By that I mean don’t use people for proposals who have other jobs in your organization. They will hate it. And they probably won’t be that effective since they are going to put it off...and then you’ll all go into firefighting mode again. Hire a proposal consultant who actually likes responding to RFPs. You can take a well-deserved rest from fighting fires.
If responding to RFPs wipes you out physically and emotionally, and you lose more often than you win, it’s time to adjust your process. Responding to proposals doesn't have to be painful or hectic. Put an end to the bucket brigade and start planning ahead!
