An Overview of the Proposal Development Process 197 Lay a Solid Foundation Winning proposals have their roots in good sales and marketing. I have never believed that a proposal by itself was likely to win business if there was no prior relationship, no effective positioning or branding, no infor- mation gathering to provide insight into the opportunity. As a result, there are numerous pre-proposal activities that must be carried out long before you begin to work on the proposal. These include sales and mar- keting efforts to generate leads and qualify opportunities, branding and promotional activities to position your firm properly, and information gathering so that you understand the customer and their issues, your probable competitors, and the solution that is most likely to be successful. If there is no prior relationship, if the buyer doesn't recognize you, if your sales team has no knowledge or insight about the opportunity, your chances of writing a winning proposal are roughly the same as win- ning the Super Lotto. It happens. It just isn't going to happen to you. Suppose you have to write the proposal anyway. In that case, you need to scramble as quickly as you can to acquire any information and insight you can grab. We discussed methods for uncovering information and insight from a prospect's Web site and from analyzing comparable clients in Chapter 6. What are you looking for? Insight into the issues facing the firm or agency, their financial status, their objectives, the pri- mary customer base they serve, who their chief competitors are, what kinds of values they revere in their corporate culture, the major initia- tives they have launched during the past year or so, their basic organiza- tional structure, and recent events or developments among their competitors. That will do for a start. Review the RFP Document or Opportunity If you are responding to a formal RFP, you should immediately analyze what the RFP says and what you are being asked to do. (If there is no formal RFP document, as in the case of a proactive opportunity, it's still a very good idea to figure out what the client expects you to deliver.) As soon as you receive the RFP--or even a draft copy of the RFP--begin the analysis by reading carefully, separating out its requirements, and asking the seven questions to keep you client focused that we covered in Chap- ter 6. It will be helpful to you if you break the process of analyzing the RFP into several steps: American Management Association www.amanet.org