Two Meetings that Really Matter
Every successful proposal should have a kickoff meeting and scheduled stand-up meetings. Each of these meetings serves a different purpose. While they will vary in length depending on the size of your proposal and your “lift,” try and keep them as short as possible. The common thread to these meetings is to have all attendees come prepared and with a winning mindset regardless of their role in the proposal.
Kickoff Meeting
Schedule a kickoff meeting as soon as you have completed your Go/No-Go Review and have determined this is a GO. Invite everyone who will tough this proposal at any time, from content creation to final reviewers, to be in the room or on the call.
Go through everyone’s role and everyone’s schedule. Everyone must understand their role, deadlines, and how it relates to each other. The completed proposal’s success is everyone’s responsibility, not just one person or department. Have everybody pull out their phone and put deadline dates on their calendars. Ensure they are blocking time before the deadline to complete the work. Blocking deadlines and proposal work time will keep other meetings from being scheduled.
Send out an agenda and the RFP/RFP so that everyone that is going to be at that kickoff meeting should have already read the RFP or RFQ and have any questions they may have ready to discuss.
Stand-up Meetings
That final week is crazy, right? You’re working until two in the morning, and everybody’s trying to get things, but you need to have these stand-up meetings every morning to determine what needs to be done. The stand-up meetings only need to be 15 minutes. These need to be on everyone’s calendar.
Section leads should report on where they are in their sections. Are they at 90%? Are they still only at 50%? What is needed to get to that 90% mark? Ensure that the design person is on the call so that any graphic design needs are addressed.
Leadership or the person responsible for final pricing should report where they stand and what is still needed. Do they have all the subcontractor pricing? If not, who will contact them to get that pricing?
The proposal manager should capture this information and assign additional tasks as needed while updating the compliance matrix. The meeting should take 15 minutes, and everybody should return to work. The next day, you repeat the process until the proposal is submitted.
The reason why?
These meetings may sound like wasted time that could be used to work on the proposal. So why are they so important? Imagine getting to the morning of submission day and calling everyone for the information that was assigned to them.
* You need to get the proposal across the finish line. You realize that only one or two people have completed their section.
* You assumed everyone was working toward the same deadline, but now as Proposal Manager, you are attempting to complete multiple sections by the deadline.
* You may finish it, but it will not be the best work.
A team of one
Not all companies have a proposal team or an outsourced proposal contractor. The entire proposal may be the responsibility of one person. The stand-up meetings still play a vital role in a compliant and responsive winning submission. Take the first 15 minutes of your day to review what has and has not been done, and block time on your calendar to complete the next sections.
How can B2G Victory Assist?
The B2G Victory team is your outsourced proposal department. We can assist you in managing the proposal from start to finish, including scheduling and running the kick-off and stand-up meetings. Our Certified Proposal Manager has created a system that ensures that proposals are completed on time, compliant and responsive.
Already have a proposal team, B2G Victory can provide training to improve the process, or we can do a proposal audit for compliance and responsiveness.
Schedule a booking with our team to discuss how we can assist your company.