FEDERAL SECTOR REPORT

IN THIS ISSUE

 

The Changing the Rules for Proposal Layout and Writing

Proposal rules keep changing, which is probably good news for those of us who plan, manage, and write them. Change keeps our consulting services in demand ... just as surely as javabeans, Visual C, and the reincarnation of COBOL in Y2K renovations have been good for software programmers.

Audience behavior is changing because of the World Wide Web, television, and multimedia presentations. For proposal competitions, the crucial audiences are the reviewers responsible for making award decisions. Like other contemporary audiences, they have little patience for reading 300- or 900-page textbooks. Instead, they want it quick, they want it to the point, and they want instant answers to their specific questions. Lengthy and detailed responses should be in the proposal document, but the reader should be able to bypass them if they so choose ... just like they might do when surfing the web or flipping between channels on TV.

We will take a quick look at some of the changes ... and then discuss what to do about it.

PURPOSE-DRIVEN AUDIENCES. Today's audiences are less likely to take a linear approach to reading--beginning with the first page and continuing to the last page. Most agencies use "scoring sheets," where reviewers move through a proposal in search of information that matches specific evaluation criteria. In R&D and best-value competitions, the readers will tend to be very curious about the reputation of the key personnel (i.e., proposed program manager or principal investigator), as well as proposed solutions and technical methodologies. In compliance-type competitions, where the offeror responds to a 1,000 detailed specifications (as is the case in many IT, construction, and environmental remediation projects), some of the reviewers will likely want to verify the compliance of each item.

MENU-DEPENDENT READERS. Audiences want to select their own route through your document. They already do that using Frames on the Web and flipping to the TV channel guide on television. The reader wants to be able to jump around to specific information. Your proposal needs plenty of "pointing devices" to accommodate the reader, because they will want to be able to locate specific information quickly.

HETEROGENEOUS ELEMENTS. Audiences today expect carefully packaged information. Just like Web sites, proposals today require a spectrum of elements: text, graphics, tables, detailed reference material, etc. Given the emergence of online proposals, they may even include sound or multimedia elements. These must be organized into a coherent presentation ... not merely dumped onto pages.

SUMMARIES. Audiences have grown accustomed to television news that presents the world's most profound issues in three minutes or less. Readers today want to understand the gist of what your proposal is saying in a minute or two. Yes, you need to back that up with easy-to-locate details, but don't force them to eat the whole hog to determine whether you're offering pork.

OK, there you have it. This is the readership of early 21st century proposals. So what do we do about it?

PROVIDE ROAD MAPS. The historic tools continue to be useful. A Table of Contents should be detailed--usually down to the third or fourth level of headers, and with today's word processing software, that is an automatic chore. A Compliance Matrix is actually a form of cross index, a means for organizing the segments of the contents by the requirements of the Request for Proposals ... such as on the basis of the evaluation criteria (and the Statement of Work and other sections of the RFP). But there are some newer tricks as well:

    * When your proposal refers to other information in the document, include the page number of that reference ... an automatic function with today's word processing capabilities.
    * Consider a Roadmap at the beginning of each section of the proposal. I haven't tried it yet, but this might be a Frames-like directory in a narrow left-hand column. Or a box at the bottom of the first page of the section.
    * If your proposal is quite large, consider presenting hard-hitting summary responses at the beginning of each section, with clear cross references to the details, which would be the large, concluding segment of the section.

PUT THE DETAILS IN TABLES. Readers have become accustomed to looking up details in text tables. This makes data quick to find. Additionally, a table is also a "flag" to readers, indicating that they can skip over it if they are not interested in those details.

SUMMARIZE EACH SECTION. Since readers may be less attentive to some elements (graphics, tables, detailed text), you need to summarize the key points at the beginning of each section. In addition, you will also need brief narrative explanations of all your proposal elements. Text that summarizes sections and key competitive points must be clear and well written.

COMMUNICATE IN SEVERAL MODES WITHOUT BECOMING LABORIOUS. Different readers favor various styles of information gathering. Some are visual, while others focus on text. Some achieve gratification from well-organized tables that provide a sense of organization, detail, and structure. Some are linear thinkers; some aren't. You need to put your proposal together so that readers can experience your proposal differently ... in the way that best suits each of them.

THINK "BUSINESS WEB SITE." Today's proposal is beginning to have the "look and feel" of a first-class business web site. Prospective customers look at it, expect a well-designed layout, form an impression about the business based on the experience, seek out information that they want, pursue details based on their own agenda, and have freedom to decide how they navigate through the information. A well-presented proposal will have these same qualities. Remember that a good business site on the Web "looks easy and is simple to use," but it probably has had careful information engineering. Design isn't a matter of dumb luck.

GET READY FOR ONLINE PROPOSALS. It's already happening, as some of you know: The government has started asking for electronic proposals that they can review using diskettes or CD-ROMs that you submit. Yesterday, I finished the draft proposal for one stating, “Technical, business management, and pricing proposals are to be submitted as computer files in Word 97, WordPerfect x, and/or Excel.” This is giving me a chance to add hyperlinks so that readers can "jump" between segments of information scattered throughout the documents. I can also provide additional summaries as sound "wave" files, creating a document that "talks" to the reader. Given that most online reviewers today use color monitors, I will use color diagrams, flow charts, and major headings. There will also be several conservative (low-key, non-gaudy) uses of animation.
 
Figuring a Proposal Consultant's Value on $10 Billion

Sometimes my proposal development colleagues amuse me, particularly when they brag about the zillions of dollars their proposals have won. It's as if they descended Mt. Olympus like Mercury, threw some thunderbolts, and achieved victory all by themselves.

I have been reflecting on the value of a proposal consultant's time and cost because I was recently part of a proposal team that won a competition for the NASA ODIN information technology procurement. The potential value of the many-year contract is over $10 billion. Some of my colleagues would instantly add $10 billion to the value of the contracts that they have won, but I have attempted some real-world figuring. Here are my calculations:

First, I was only responsible for 20% of the evaluation points; so we reduce the $10 billion to $2 billion. Since this is an Indefinite Delivery Indefinite Quality (IDIQ) contract, some very energetic marketing and sales people will need to spend nearly a decade generating orders. So give them 90% of the credit for actual revenues, reducing the value of my effort to $200 million. Consider the fact that I was supporting a very solid company with good capabilities and past performance; so let's give that half of the remaining value--cutting my subtotal to $100 million. We had excellent teaming partners; so if we give the partners half the value, my value is down to $50 million. In my role as a proposal writer, I supported a very sharp proposal manager and business capture manager. Giving them half of the remaining credit, that would put the value of my work at $25 million.

I devoted roughly 250 hours to that assignment. If you will buy my value-analysis scheme, then every hour of my time had a value of $100,000 in gross revenues.

Of course, manipulating numbers is a dicey game. Many of the proposals on which I work have potential revenues of $1 to $30 million for contracts ... and $100,000 to $5 million for grants. True, I often develop these as "turnkey" proposals and am responsible for 100% of the evaluation points, and therefore don't have to split the value with other writers or a separate proposal manager. And, particularly for grants, the "money is in the bag," funded, and doesn't need further marketing or sales (other than pursuing add-on revenues). So there are also jobs where the value of my hour may only be $1,000 to $8,000 of gross revenue.

If you really want to get tough, you could also consider the fact that every proposal I develop doesn't win. (No, Virginia, there isn't a Santa Claus at the end of every proposal.) My win rate varies: About 68% for large corporations, universities, and prestigious nonprofits. About 33% for small businesses where there is often a scarcity of past performance history, personnel that meet the evaluation criteria, market intelligence, technical capabilities, and capital. A few clients fall in the middle, between these two extremes.

Anyway, thanks to FDC Technologies and Assistech for precipitating an opportunity to participate in a $10 billion award.

Enjoying the Green Grass of Other Pastures

The year 1998 has been wonderfully gratifying, because my writing itch has been satisfied with great delight. I have had some wonderful assignments, all thanks to organizations like the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, the National Association for the Education of Young Children, and the Center for Community Change. Topics have been as diverse as U.S. demographics in 2010, democracy, community empowerment, the mass media, and children. What's more, I have had the "time budget" to concentrate on quality, rather than simply pump words onto paper.

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We provide enterprise-level management consulting services for federal agencies and the contractors who support them. Our areas of specialization are Capital Planning and Investment Control, Enterprise Architecture, strategic planning, performance evaluation, and acquisition support including work statements. Our consulting specialty includes experience in many related areas such as CIO program support, earned value management, risk management, the C&A process for security, and customer satisfaction surveys.

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