Chief Factors In High Proposal Preparation Costs
By Dan Safford

Regardless of the type of proposal or its size or whether you're the prime or the sub, proposal costs rise when the following conditions are in force:

No page limit specified in the solicitation. Without an artificial limitation, you will tend to crank out more, not fewer, words. You will want to tell the complete story, and that can take a lot of space.

Solution: If you are not page limited by the client, impose a limit of your own.

No page limit given to the writers. When technical professionals have an unlimited amount of space to write about their specialties, they will often generate long sections that must be trimmed and re-written.

Solution: Give the writers specific directions about what they should cover in each section they are writing. Include page limits.

Management deeply involved in the writing process. Managers cost more than anyone else in the firm and should not be involved in the writing.

Solution: Get managers involved in the proposal strategy planning and reviewing processes. They can help rewrite sections when needed.

No clearly defined project approach before the solicitation arrives. Don't wait until the solicitation arrives to figure out how to structure your project. The more effort you have to put into this activity the less time you will have to devote to the other proposal activities, which will squeeze them at the end of the process. This drives up costs and decreases quality.

Solution: You should at least have a baseline approach before the solicitation hits your office. Of course, this really means that you should have had at least some contact with the client beforehand.

No project team assembled before the solicitation arrives. If you haven't lined up a tentative project team before the solicitation arrives, you will have to scramble to do so afterwards. (see above).

Solution: Contact potential project team members as soon as you hear of the impending release of the solicitation.

Lack of a proposal development schedule. No project without a schedule will come in anywhere near budget. Proposal projects are no different.

Solution: Treat the proposal effort as you would any project. Schedule the activities and assign deadlines for each.

Note: Make sure you clearly define-and enforce-deadlines for proposal drafts. This will allow time for reviews that let you monitor quality as you go, rather than at the end, when you will only be able to make cosmetic changes.

Sitting on the solicitation for too long. The longer you wait to make a go/no-go decision, the more resources you will need to complete the proposal in a shorter period of time. You will watch your costs soar.

Solution: Make a go/no-go decision within 24 hours of receiving the solicitation. Force yourself to address the issues head on.

No pre-defined limits for which graphics to be used where. Graphics development can be a budget nightmare if not planned and monitored carefully.

Solution: Identify the graphics early, including the cover. Don't let people spend hours noodling around on the computer creating the "perfect" graphic that ends up being discarded.

Remember, you can keep costs down by planning, planning, planning.