All executives want to increase their win rate. If you could raise your company’s overall win rate by 20%, the payoff in additional revenue, earnings, and shareholder value could be huge. Company revenues would increase, earnings would increase by the marginal profit rate on the new revenue, and shareholder value would increase proportionally to your increase in earnings.

But, knowing which investments to make and predicting the payoff is the challenge. Here’s how to choose your investments and predict the resulting increase in win rates.

Dear Proposal Doctor,

The company I work for is bidding on a large government contract, and the proposal is a huge undertaking. My team consists of more than 50 people, and my MS Project schedule has hundreds of lines. It’s a challenge, which is to be expected. I was excited and optimistic when we started, but now I have a boatload of senior executives breathing down my neck. All the time!

The Association of Proposal Management Professionals (APMP®), the worldwide authority for professionals dedicated to the process of winning business through proposals, bids, tenders, and presentations, today announced its new 2012 Board of Directors from its recently concluded 2011 elections.

As budgets shrink, there will be fewer new contracts in the government market. With fewer deals, firms that compete for federal business will need to write sharper proposals to win their share of work. It is imperative that our proposals tell a clear story that resonates with the buyer. In particular, we must be able to present a fact-based approach that demonstrates a clear, tangible value to the potential customer. To achieve this, we need three critical elements…

In a GovCon Business Development Weekly webinar hosted by Deltek’s Michael Hackmer, I discussed four fundamentals for creating a winning proposal. The first three fundamentals comprise creating a compliant, responsive, and compelling proposal. We polled the 150 webinar participants from a cross-section of small to large government contractors and asked them to rate how well their proposals did in achieving those three objectives.

Failure to follow the RFP can get you thrown out of the running for being non-compliant. Establish a standard process for evaluating your RFPs and developing your compliant—and compelling—proposal outlines and compliance matrices. This will keep you on a solid path towards proposal success.

Dear Proposal Doctor,

I work for a small business, and all our engineers work on a customer site while our BD/Proposal staff work at our office (which is in another state). This makes writing the technical volume really difficult because we can’t get our engineers on site to write. We end up having to travel a lot, which disrupts the proposal and takes people away from their families for weeks at a time. How could we write technical volumes more efficiently?

Check to see if a competitor has gotten language inserted that shows the procurement is wired to them!

One SME has the bulk of the info needed for the technical proposal – all in his head. We’re a week into writing, and he has produced nothing. He is inaccessible all day and doesn’t answer his cell phone in the evening. Panic is setting in. What’s a proposal manager to do…

See Bob Lohfeld’s tips for developing compliant, compelling, and responsive proposals with feature-rich solutions