Proposal Management

How to Win Proposals Now After Crying in the Bathroom

By Brenda Crist, May 4, 2026

Nobody puts “cried in the bathroom during a Red Team” on their resume, but most proposal managers have done it. Systems crash before production. Capture managers hand over nothing. SMEs vanish the moment the RFP drops. These proposal war stories are not anomalies; they are part of the profession. Lohfeld Consulting ranked 15 of the most notorious proposal challenges by severity—check how many you have survived, then read on for strategies to push through them next time.