Lessons Learned from a Proposal Disaster Business Articles | August 9
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, 2010
We have had a wonderful winning streak in the past year and a half winning literally every proposal we ran, but all of a sudden, our fortunes turned. A new client engaged us to help them prepare a pro...
We have had a wonderful winning streak in the past year and a half winning literally every proposal we ran, but all of a sudden, our fortunes turned. A new client engaged us to help them prepare a proposal. They agreed to provide to us some key inputs such as subject matter expertise, raw past performance data
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, resumes, and a compliant price volume that they decided to prepare themselves. We went through our regular steps in educating them about the proposal process, held a kickoff, developed a schedule with plenty of contingency time and a goal to deliver the proposal a day early, provided guidance and templates, and prompted and waited for the promised information.
The deadlines kept slipping
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, as the client was busy with other priorities. We did what any good proposal people would do in the situation: increased the frequency of contact, added status meetings (that the client neglected), asked if the client would please allow us to interview them so that we could write everything ourselves (in vain), and made general pests of ourselves. As the deadline was nearing with no inputs from the client, we requested and got the extension from the government. We summoned the elusive client to our offices to pry the information out of them, but the client showed up to the daylong working meeting without a computer. Every time we confronted the client
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, he would absolutely, eagerly promise to get us the information "tonight, no problem." It never came.
Within 48 hours of the due date, as we were finishing the technical volume, we saw the cost volume for the first time. It had serious compliance issues that required obtaining a formal quote, wrong labor categories
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, and discrepancies with the technical volume that effectively changed the solution. We proceeded to burn the midnight oil to correct multiple places in text and graphics in order to line up the solution with the price volume.
We got the first past performance reference within 24 hours prior to the due date. It missed some key information, including the actual narrative. The second promised past performance reference failed to materialize. It wasn't looking good, and it wasn't getting any better.
After a second sleepless night in a row dealing with the last minute inputs, the day of the electronic delivery arrived, with a 2 pm deadline. True to form, the client wasn't there. They sent their teammate to sign everything and deliver the proposal. In the 4-hour period before the deadline
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, the teammate spent time on the phone making a valiant effort to obtain the missing quote for the cost volume, get a replacement past performance reference, and gather other missing bits of information to bring the proposal into compliance. The clock was ticking mercilessly.
Finally, various inputs arrived between 90 and 27 minutes prior to the deadline: unformatted information for the new past performance write-up, a new cost volume still missing an introduction and needing a review, and a quote in need of a rewrite. Fingers typed feverishly
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, and a mad rush of transferring multiple large files ensued. The technical volume that we wrote made it in with 15 minutes to spare, but the teammate was still trying to make changes to the cost and past performance volumes. The information made it to the government a few minutes past the deadline.
A week later, we got a letter disqualifying us from the competition on the grounds of being late. The client, in response, decided not to pay our final bill and even had the nerve to demand the money he had paid us to date, blaming us for not delivering on time.
I wanted to share a few lessons learned with you from this proposal disaster
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, so that you never have to encounter a similar situation.
One lesson learned is to educate AD NAUSEAM your clients, bosses, and colleagues, on just how much goes into a timely proposal delivery. Many fail to appreciate the tail end of the work. There is a REASON why we, proposal professionals, plan for extra time for delivery. Everyone who has been around the proposal block a few times knows just how much there is to do while you are getting ready to deliver
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, and that Murphy's Law reigns supreme.
You have to plan to: go over the compliance checklist to ensure everything is ready for submission; test the upload function ahead of time; remove hidden metadata; make sure that graphics look the same once they have been PDF'ed and compressed; take extra time to play with the document because files may not compress enough for electronic delivery; combine or split documents; triple-check all the files and CDs to see if they can open on different systems; allow time for correcting last-minute errors in obvious places that everyone overlooked; make sure all the forms are signed and scanned correctly; ensure document titles, versions, and sequence of submittal are correct; give plenty of time for the files to transfer and for you to get a read receipt; if you are delivering hard copies, set up a contingency plan for printers breaking, allow time for book check, and print an extra set for an alternative delivery plan; and on
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, and on.
Another important lesson learned is to be able to push back on some projects and clients, regardless of whether you are a full-time employee or a consultant. Proposal professionals have a natural tendency for being heroes and thriving on deadlines. Some of it is good because of customer focus and wanting to win no matter what. But you can't count on rescuing everyone from themselves, especi
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