Winning bids and proposals
Winning bids and proposals
Time planning for bid and proposal development
A bid and proposal development plan is very much like a project plan. Just as you would in a project, you need a plan to develop a proposal in response to an ITT/RFP. Knowing the times that some of the activities are likely to take during proposal development will help make the planning process much easier.
This podcast and fact sheet look at some hints and tips to help you with time planning so that you can create winning bids and proposals!
Download the full fact sheet for the episode here.
Let me know what other areas you would like me to cover by contacting me at www.willsconsultants.co.uk
Hello, my name is Jack Wills and welcome to another edition of creating winning bids and proposals, a podcast series where you can use my close to 40 years experience in writing bids and proposals to give you hints and tips, so that you can apply them to your own proposals to win more business. In this episode, we're going to be looking at time planning for bid and proposal development. Some of you listening to this might think this is not the most riveting subject to be involved in. But, have to tell you from experience, that if you don't get your time planning, right, during the process of actually putting together the bid and proposal document or the sections that you're going to load onto a customer portal, you will find yourself in big trouble. If I had 10 pounds for every time I've been invited into an organisation, maybe I'm cheating myself a bit on 10 pounds. But if I had, say 50 pounds, for every time, I'd been asked into an organisation to sort out an issue right at the last moment, I think I might actually be quite a rich man by now. Because where people are actually running out of time, I would say to you that the vast majority of the times I do that, the whole process could have been made a lot better, if someone had taken the trouble to put together a time plan for the bid and proposal development. You've heard me talk about Bid Nirvana already, that mythical place, which doesn't exist, of course, where the ITT or the RFP documentation arrives, you're in charge of the bid and proposal development plan. You tell everybody what they're supposed to do and when they're supposed to deliver it to you. It all arrives on time. You put it together, and then the proposal is finally reviewed. Everybody loves what you've done, and it's delivered to the customer on time. It's never going to happen. But, if somebody had taken the time to do a proper time plan, well, maybe they would be well on the way to reaching Bid Nirvana. So, this episode is going to give you some hints and tips about time planning during the bid and proposal development process. And, in particular, we're going to give you some outline ideas about how long individual components of that bid and proposal development plan take. We're going to be looking at why we actually need to think about time planning during the bid and proposal development process. Secondly, we'll go on to look at the sort of activities that will have taken place before the ITT or the RFP has been released. Then, we'll take a look at what's the first thing you need to do when the ITT/RFP arrives. Rather than just panic, of course! Then, we'll go on to see how we can use the deadline given for proposal delivery to work out a proposal development plan. And finally, we'll look at the key activities that need to be planned for and give you some idea of how long each of those might take to help you in your planning. As always, there is a factsheet accompanying this podcast, and you can get it from your podcast provider. And if you can't get it from there, go to www.willsconsultants.co.uk and you can download it from there. Why do we need to think about time planning during the bid and proposal development? Well, a bid and proposal development plan is very much like a project plan. Just as you would in a project you need to plan to develop a proposal in response to an ITT or an RFP. The proposal development plan needs to consider the delivery date of the proposal, and then you need to work up a plan to meet that delivery date. Now, those of you who've had any experience in project management will find that proposal development planning is very similar, with a list of activities being completed along a timeline. Of course, you need to know what those activities are, and we'll come on to that later in the podcast. Those of you without any type of experience will find the process very straightforward. Once you've worked out the basic timeline, and you've created a list of activities to complete along the way. Remember, of course, that many activities can be completed concurrently. So, knowing the times that some of these activities are likely to take will help make the planning process a whole lot easier. Before you get it, what sort of activities will have taken place before the ITT or the RFP is released. Okay, because you've already had excellent customer engagement, you should have already looked at areas like the competition, and whether you're likely to bid or not in some detail. This will be briefly mentioned in the fact sheet that I've produced for this podcast. But, some planning time considerations obviously will need to take place to meet those activities. In fact, we've already discussed the area of earlier customer engagement in another podcast, and I really would recommend you have a look at that Early Customer Engagement, part one and part two. If you've had early customer engagement, these two activities of competitor analysis and bid/no bid should be relatively easy to complete. Always assuming, of course, that you had the right people on hand to help. And by that I mean, people from the business development team who have had lots of contact with the customer, anyone else in the organisation who's had contact with the customer. You can sit down and you can work out whether this bid is strategically viable for your own organisation. And, by looking at your overall strategy you can work out if you're likely to win. So, what's the first thing you need to do when the ITT RFP arrives? Besides panicking, of course. Well, once an ITT or an RFP has been issued, you will need to work out the timeline for the actual proposal development in a lot more detail. But, before you do that, you'll need to carry out a search of the documentation you've been sent to work out what you need to produce for the customer. And by when. You'll often hear this process being referred to as stripping the bid. It's quite a common term that you'll hear. When an ITT arrives in the door, the first thing that people do, is strip the bid. What do we mean by that? Well, when you strip the bid, you're going through the documentation carefully by looking for key words like must, must not, will, will not, shall, shall not... that sort of thing. It gives you an idea what the customer wants you to produce what you must produce; what you must not do, what you must do, and so on. If the documentation is digital, then this word searching - stripping - is really quite straightforward. But, sometimes you may find yourself using more traditional methods, like using a highlighter or underlining the key words if the documentation is in hardcopy format. Now, the main output from this activity is establishing exactly what the customer wants by following their instructions to the letter. And by so doing, being compliant with their instructions and requirements. You'll often hear that term'being compliant'. And what we're talking about here, is really understanding what the customer really wants from you and making sure that you produce that. Some bid teams develop a table from this activity, a compliance matrix, to make sure that nothing is overlooked during the proposal development, I have to say that's something I do. Sometimes, of course, when you receive an ITT or an RFP, there will be a series of compliance matrices included. But sometimes there might not be a compliance table there. And I always find by doing this stripping the bid process and producing my own table, my own compliance matrix, I don't miss anything. Other key outputs, of course, include information like the time that the proposal needs to be delivered. It may also highlight other bits of key information such as how the proposal is to be organised. Things like what fonts and size of fonts are to be used, and any other production constraints; things like word counts, positioning of extra information in appendices, where to load it onto a portal, and by what time and so on. Once you know what the deadline is for delivering the proposal, or loading it up onto a portal, you can work out a proposal development plan. Once you have that deadline for delivery, you can work backwards from the proposal deadline date(sometimes we call that in the trade, the drop dead date) and work backwards along a timeline to shedule the key activities that need to be completed. And I'm talking about things here like the kickoff meeting, where the proposal production team is briefed, authoring tasks are given out, graphics are starting to be produced and so on. We'll come back to that shortly. Again, remember that these tasks and activities can be sheduled. In parallel; they can be done concurrently. They don't have to be completed in series. Concurrent activity is very much a key principle in the proposal development planning process. And by using concurrent activity, you will make best use of everyone's time. What are the key activities that need to be planned for? And how long does each one of them take? Well, obviously, in this podcast, I can't be completely definitive, but what I can do is give you some hints and tips for the sort of things that you need to plan for along that timeline when you're putting together your proposal. Obviously, you'll have other activities in your own organisation that need to be planned for. But, in this podcast, I'm just going to give you some basic hints and tips to help you with that planning process. Don't forget, there is a fact sheet attached to this podcast. And if you haven't already done so, I would highly recommend that you download it. Because, not only have I included a list of all the activities that I'm about to talk about in there, but more importantly, I've included a table on the back of the fact sheet, which gives you some details of the actual times that some of these activities might take. I've also included in the fact sheet, a very simple example of a proposal development time plan, just to allow those of you who have never seen one of these things before to get an idea of what we're talking about here. You'll see in this simple table, there's a list of activities on the left hand side of the table. And then there's a Gantt chart, which actually gives you some idea of how these things are planned along the timeline. So, here we go with some of the activities that I've been talking about. Well, first of all, we've already mentioned stripping the bid. Remember stripping the bid is all about determining what you must do to meet the customer's instructions and address general compliance issues. As to how long that takes, well, it depends on the size of the documentation. If the ITT/RFP is in hardcopy, you really should allow some 50 pages per person per da, to scrutinise it completely. Obviously, it's quicker if the ITT or RFP is in digital format, because then you can do a word search for these active words that we were looking at before; the wills, will not, the must, must not, and so on. However, if it's in hardcopy, you're going to have to highlight it and do it manually. Now, let's have a look at startup planning before the kickoff meeting. Remember that kickoff meeting is where you start to brief the team internally. But, we need to have a little bit of startup planning time before that actually occurs. And I would say to you that you would probably need to leave about 10 to 20% of the total timeline, as a guide figure. Now, it can take longer if you need, or you want to involve several third parties. People like partners in the supply chain, people like the legal people and so on. But, it is roughly about 10 to 20% of the time. Now turning to the kickoff meeting, I would say you would allow an average time of about half a day for a decent kickoff meeting. Of course, if it's a complex opportunity, a large contract, you're going to have to allow more time. Who should be at the kickoff meeting? Well, that really is down to your own organisation. But, from my point of view, I think you must involve senior management to set the tone. By having senior management there, you will make the point that this is an important and valuable opportunity for the whole of the organisation. So, having their buy in right from the word go is important. As to who else comes along well, you'll probably want someone from the business development team, you'll want people who are solution experts, you'll want people who estimate perhaps, you'll maybe want reviewers, partner companies, and so on. There's no real guideline as to who should be there. But, what you are trying to do of course, is you are setting the scene and, in particular, you're giving everybody, such as your authors, a good idea of what's expected from them. So, as a minimum, you need to come prepared to show contributors the overall proposal strategy, what's expected from everyone and with the timings to complete things; hence producing this timeline in the first place We'll be looking at kickoff meetings in more detail in other podcasts. But, that's the sort of thing you're doing. Remember, it's the whole business of kicking off the process of your proposal development. So, you're going to have to allow a reasonable amount of time to get everybody up to speed on what's going on. The next thing, of course, is having told everybody what they've got to do, one of the main things you'll be expecting from the contributors to the proposal along this timeline, is producing new text. Now, there's a lot of debate about how long it takes to produce new text. But my gut feeling is that we are looking at somewhere around about six to eight pages per day. You will find that experienced authors may get up to 10 pages per day. But, of course, inexperienced authors can take a lot longer, and they will need some help along the way. So, I would plan on at this stage about six to eight pages per author for producing new text. What about producing graphics with action captions. Remember, we've already discussed this in another, earlier podcast. Simple graphics are going to take about one to two hours for each to be produced along with their associated action caption. Never underestimate how long graphics will take. So, what I would say here is, plan these early in the process, you will have heard that in the earlier podcast on graphics. Ensure that they are completely relevant, and that the correct type of graphic is being used for the point that you're trying to make in the proposal. But, if you allow one to two hours for the production of each graphic, you won't go far wrong. Of course, it's a different story, when you're producing complex graphics with action captions. I would say here, you're probably looking at two to six hours for each graphic. Never underestimate how long these will take to produce. And make sure that if you are handing it over to someone else to produce, that you brief them properly. Reviewing new material, including graphics and photographs with captions, that's going to take you about 40 pages per person per day. So, once you've produced this material, once you've produced some new stuff for inclusion in the proposal, someone's going to have to review it and that is going to take about 40 pages per person per day. More experienced reviewers may get up to 50 pages per day, but I would say to you, if someone comes back to you and says that they can do 60 to 70 pages per day, I don't believe they can do that. You will have heard me talk about boilerplate in earlier podcasts. Remember, boilerplate is material that has been previously put together in other proposals. Now, there's nothing wrong with you using boilerplate material, stuff that you've produced before. But, it does need to be looked at for relevance. Don't just shove in any old piece of boilerplate into your proposal. It's going to take you about 20 to 40 pages per person per day, to make sure that that boilerplate material is suitable for this particular proposal. Ensure that it's completely relevant. Check the content very carefully. And remember I talked about me including a previous customers name before, that's the sort of thing you've got to avoid when you're looking at adapting boilerplate. It all takes time. Then of course, once you've put your proposal together, there's going to have to be a final review; some form of amendment process and then the proposal production. I would say that you're going to be looking at 10 to 20% of the total timeline as an overall guide figure. Plan on about 40 pages per day per person for this final document review. One last point about the final document review is you must plan for it early. Put the date in the diary and get across to people that this is actually set in concrete. Because, of course the final document review is very much based on when you are about to deliver the proposal or you're about to load it up on to the portal. There are other reviews of course along the way. And in the fact sheet, I have dealt with things like bid strategy review, sometimes called the blue review, the competitive strategy review, sometimes called a black review. I've also included the content planning reviews, often called pink reviews or storyboard reviews. Finally, I've included the lessons learnt review, sometimes called the white review. Now, I've not gone into any great detail in this podcast about reviews, and we will be doing another podcast on reviewing to win later in the series. But I just wanted to make the point here that, of course, all of these do need to be planned into the timeline when you are planning your proposal production. And, in fact sheet, there are some details about how long each of these might take. Two other areas that do need to be included in the timeline, aside from the areas that we've looked at already, are printing, binding, or uploading to a customer portal. And finally, contingency. Printing, binding and uploading, of course, rely very much on the instructions that you have been given by the customer, you must follow these to the letter obviously. If the customer wants it bound in pink paper, with wire binding, and they want 17 copies delivered, that's what you have to do. Of course, you will often find these days that you will be uploading to a customer portal. So, when the proposal is all finished, or indeed you are able to load sections of it onto the portal, then that's what you will need to do. Of course, each of these things will take time to achieve and you must plan for that. One thing I would say about loading onto a customer portal is don't leave it till the last minute. I have been in many situations where literally two minutes to go before the deadline passes for submission, we're still trying to load it onto the customer portal. Plan early for this make sure that you get it uploaded on time. Lastly, then to contingency. People often forget contingency and I would say that a good figure for allowing for contingency timing on the timeline is about 10% of the total timeline. Don't fall into the trap, though, of using contingency as a matter of course. You'll often find that some bid managers will plan in contingency, not expecting to use it and will then use it for areas that they forgotten about. In principle, of course, there's nothing wrong with that, because that is a form of contingency. But the point I'm making here is, don't rely on contingency to cover up the mistakes that you've made during your planning process. Use contingency for genuine contingency things; like author's not producing things on time for you, changes that result from a final document review, that sort of thing. Think carefully about the activities that need to be done along the timeline and make sure that contingency is used literally for contingency and nothing else. And here I will say that a lot of the times I find contingency being used for the whole business of actually putting the proposal together and printing it. That's not contingency; that should have been allowed for in the timeline. As we said right at the start, making a bid and proposal development plan is very much like developing a project plan. Just as you would in a project, you need to plan to develop a proposal in response to the ITT/RFP. Getting this right and making sure that you include every activity along the way is really going to save you a lot of time. And who knows, you might even get to the first stage of Bid Nirana!. I'm Jack Wills. And thank you very much for listening. Don't forget to subscribe if you don't want to miss future episodes of this podcast. Remember, there are some notes attached to this podcast, as well as a fact sheet that you can download. You can always get back to me via www.willsconsultants.co.uk, or you can leave any comments in the usual way. You can also reach me on LinkedIn at any time and I'd be happy to get back to you. Thanks again for listening and I do hope you'll join me for the next episode of creating winning bids and proposals.