Outline

What’s in Insights Volume 4:

Doing the Groundwork: Pipeline Development and Capture Management

• 5 tips for improving your business pipeline and bottom line
• Now is the perfect time to do an opportunity pipeline review
• Bids with no capture
• Winning “must-win” deals

Strength-Based Solutioning®

• The great proposal: a true story
• Strategic differentiation with a customer focus
• A recipe for best value at the lowest price
• Seven keys to successful solutioning
• Doing more with less is all about strengths
• Highlight your strengths
• 50 words and phrases that call attention to your benefits, strengths, and discriminators
• The rationale for eliminating win themes in proposals
• Resumes for the win
• Lessons learned in Strength-Based Winning® from GAO’s Protest Docket – Part 1
• Lessons learned in Strength-Based Winning® from GAO’s Protest Docket – Part 2
• Meritorious strength

Writing and Reviewing

• Your proposal is not a story
• 4 tips for effective proposal writing in the digital age
• Six tips for better content reuse
• No metrics? No proposal win!
• The root causes and solutions to “100 words that kill your proposal”
• Do you understand how to show you understand? – Part 1
• Do you understand how to show you understand? – Part 2
• A sufficiently detailed approach – common GAO complaints
• 7 ways a technical volume lead can improve the business volume
• 50 words and phrases to ghost competitors
• 50 words and phrases to use in resumes
• Help evaluators see ghosts
• How readable is your proposal?
• An intro to editing for non-editors – Part 1 (content editing)
• An intro to editing for non-editors – Part 2 (copy editing)
• Avoid nominalizations in your proposals
• A way to help project managers and SMEs write better proposals
• Five tips for describing complexity
• Are personalities ruling your color team reviews?
• Are your proposal review teams derailing the win?
• How to review your proposal to move beyond Acceptable
• Beware the dangers of groupthink

Upgrading Processes

• Past performance—the wealth of a company
• Five tips to improve past performance ratings
• Is your proposal’s executive summary worth the bother?
• Applying an Agile tool to make your proposal processes better
• Using mind maps for proposal management activities
• Advanced scheduling
• Creating a unified corporate focus on
• winning new business through knowledge management (KM)
• Turn that losing streak around now (or avoid one in the first place!)
• How strong is your business ecosystem?
• How to improve your company’s internal bid awareness
• Pop quiz – How likely are you to win your recompete?
• Best practices for a task order proposal factory
• 20 tips for conducting smooth client demos and oral presentations
• Run your next proposal review like the government
• Nudging toward change

Hacking the Federal Market

• Section L versus M—where do I start?
• Checklist for moving your proposal score from Green to Blue
• How does the government evaluate a proposal PWS?
• Here’s what you need to know when the customer asks you to write the PWS
• Can proposal managers and contracting officers find common ground?
• Preparing Section 508-compliant proposal documents using MS Word
• How to win with risk
• Give the evaluators what they want…and nothing more
• Five tips to help evaluators find keywords (and winning content)
• Increase your confidence rating score
• A winning proposal isn’t always the best
• The proposal of the future