Customer engagement is the cornerstone of capture, and yet many government contractors miss out on building customer intimacy and all of its perks. They either start too late in the game, or are in touch with only one or two people who may not be the decision makers or who won’t talk to them, or wait until the industry day to find out who the customer is—when it’s way too late to influence acquisition strategy and other important facets of a procurement. Luckily, there are numerous professional tools out there to help capture managers figure out who the customer is early, and navigate customer organizations like a pro. Read the rest of this entry »
Picasso’s famous quote, “Good artists copy; great artists steal,” might as well have been about proposal art. Great proposal graphics can be born in various ways, but “stealing” a concept and making it something that is your own, something completely different from its original version and uniquely applicable to the current bid, is the fastest way to create them. 
There is no better way to convince a potential customer that yours is the right company for the job than to demonstrate a true understanding of the risks the program will be up against and to come up with plans to mitigate those risks upfront. But in many proposals, the risk management section ends up as a missed opportunity to shine at best and a setback at worst. Rather than showcasing a real knowledge and understanding of the program and proposed solutions, the risk section falls flat or actually does harm. 
You might start as one person who is responsible for winning government contracts. This is not a problem—you can join the ranks of many who have started at one point or another and are still the only one writing proposals, even as their company has grown to a nice size and they have the capital to afford professionals. I once met the CEO of a 1,200-person business who still was the company’s best proposal writer—he had a 99 percent win rate. (He’d lock himself in a hotel room for a week at a time with a few six packs.) It was possible because the company was focused on a single set of offerings and wrote for the same set of customers. 
The U.S. government is all about transparency: it posts bids publicly. Yet, just because most opportunities are posted for the world to see, that doesn’t mean a level playing field.
