Winning Proposals

Winning proposals are not created by heroes at the 11th hour, and it doesn’t have to be this way.  Winning requires targeted investment, long term capture planning and detailed, precise tightly managed response preparation.

Proposal teams always want to start writing immediately. This is a mistake.

We propose a phased approach of: Design, Write, Polish, Publish and a detailed plan with reviews and off-ramps. This significantly reduces rewrites and risk, and allows you to develop a truly high quality response.

Proposals in this environment are frequently much larger than generally appreciated. Page counts frequently exceed 1,000 double sided sheets.  This holds true for small and large programs, but is much more evident when the opportunity is complex programmatically, technically, commercially and competitively. There is very little room for error.

“If you are a foreign bidder, attempting to win work in Canada, you have multiple challenges associated with culture, distance, domestic partners, industrial regional benefits (offsets) and the current somewhat unique approach  to competitive tenders called smart procurement.”

If you are biding to the Canadian Government (including DND), you will encounter “Smart Procurement”.  It may be smart for Canada, but you will likely form a less positive impression as the bidder.  Proposals to the Canadian Government are often very complex and massive documents that must respond in detail to highly proscriptive RFPs.  Do not underestimate the effort associated with bids of this type. Be aware that You can be found “non-compliant“ or non-responsive” because of the most trivial of errors or oversights.

We can help focus your team and identify cost effective approaches that allow you to concentrate your resources where they will have maximum benefit. Synappsys will also help your team clarify core value propositions and develop program planning and pricing strategies that reduce risk without overdoing it. We can also develop tailored “price to win” and price gaming strategies and meaningful risk analyses that truly highlight real financial, technical and programmatic risks and help develop actionable risk mitigation strategies.

“We understand so called Smart Procurement.  It generally doesn’t  feel all that smart from the perspective of the bidder.  In fact, it is a mine field that requires very careful navigation.”

We have worked on, and led, a lot of proposals.  These range form small targeted niche captures to a number of recent highly competitive bids worth in excess of one billion dollars. We know what works and what doesn’t. We understand how human nature often makes this a truly painful experience.  Our affiliates and partners provide us with deep knowledge in the area of proposal development and procurement processes and practices, effective communications at all levels of government and procurement agencies, and detailed understanding of the byzantine rules in the ITB (previously IRB) offset program.

For more background, please read our article: Proposal Best Practices