This document provides guidance on improving the success rate of proposals. It outlines key steps in the proposal process, from analyzing requests to finalizing and submitting proposals. Mistakes like lack of visibility, late submissions, and no dedicated resources are said to result in low success rates of less than 5%, while following steps like planning activities, evaluating risks, and conducting lessons learned can increase success rates to over 35%. The document provides tips for each stage including analyzing requests, deciding whether to bid, developing technical and pricing components, and presenting proposals.

1. Do you want to increase the
success rate of your
proposals ?
If Yes! then this
presentation is for you!
By JP Perin
Founder of IT-OPSLINK
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2. Why do you get less than 5% of success for your proposals?
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 The sales managers have no visibility,
 The customer is not waiting for your proposal
 You receive the proposal at the last minute and the delivery date is too
short
You must bid for all proposals without strategic priorities
 You have no allocated resources for the bid
 No bid process has been put in place
 No knowledge database and documentation support exist

3. Why can you get more than 35% of success for your proposals?
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 The sales managers have fulfilled correctly and on time their sales funnel
 The customer knows your services and is expecting your proposal
 Your bid activities is planned and you have a dedicated bid core team
 The bid process is known and followed by the business , practice,
technical managers
 The strategic bid priorities are defined by the senior management
 A knowledge database and documentation support exist

4. Proposal Life Cycle : the main steps
Customer request
or tender
publication
Tender analysis
GO NOGO
Commercial, technical,
Juridical, selection criteria
Proposal elaboration
Scope of work, workload, risks
Bid No Bid
Commercial , risks
evaluation
Proposal finalization
Executive Summary
Proposal
presentation
Contract signature
or tender evaluation
Lesson learned
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5. The tender : what do you need to check at the first reading?
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 Information of the contract : check the payment clauses, the
requested guarantees, the personal data and intellectual property rights
 Information of the tender procedure : check more particularly the
modality of submission of the tender, the period of validity (sometimes
can be the cause of a tender rejection), the structure of the tender
 Examine the exclusion criteria and draft a checklist
 Be aware about the selection criteria : economic and financial capacity
as well as the technical and professional capacity to perform the
requested tasks.
 If the publication of the tender is online (website) , check every day if
the versions of the documents have been updated ( several examples of
wrong estimations due to the fact that the technical team didn’t get the
last version)
 Draft a compliancy matrix for all points mentioned in the tender

6. The GO NOGO : Sales, technical and managing director must take the
decision to submit or not a proposal
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SalesVisibility
Tender Selection
Allocation of all
bid resources
• Use your CRM, to check if this tender has been
identified in advance and that the customer has
been met several times concerning it
• Evaluate the competitive environment and your
positive differentiation points
• Check and evaluate your technical risks
• Focus on the selection criteria to build a bid
strategy
• Take care about the delivery date and the
current workload of your bid team
• Appoint the bid manager
• Appoint the technical leader
• Manage the bid team

7. Bid tasks : Plan your activities and use a secure place to store, organize, share,
and access information
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Administration
CVs and
references
Technical part
• Gather all requested documents . Be
aware about the delivery delay of
specific registration forms
• Select and format all documents according to
the customer’s templates. Don’t underestimate
the workload associated at these tasks
• Apply the methodology RIMORW as first step of your
technical writing and as inputs for your workload
estimation
Requirements – Inputs – Methodology – Outputs – Risks – Workload

8. BID NO BID : risks evaluation and pricing strategy . All the stakeholders present at
the GO NO GO session must take the decision to submit or not the offer.
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Production costs
Pricing strategy
Negotiation
margin
• From the project workload and all its associated risks,
evaluate the costs of production
• Add the other extra costs : subcontracting costs, products
costs , travel expenses etc…
• Apply your operational margin on the top of production costs but
if your final budget exceed the customer ‘s budget , you can try
to review the repartition of seniority in your resources allocation
but never decrease the estimated workload without the
consensus of the project team to match with the targeted
budget. A NO BID is better than a high hazardous project
• If it is possible, add an extra buyer negotiation x % on the total
of the budget

9. Finalization and submission of the proposal
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Executive
summary
Quality review
Packaging and
delivery
• Your understanding of the challenges and your mastery of the
solution
• Your competitive advantage
• Your know-how and your proposed project team
• The promise of quality and delivery
• The best value offer
• From your check list, verify all items requested in the tender
procedure
• Take care about the end-to-end quality and coherency of the
document
• Respect the format concerning the format and package of the
proposal. Sometimes, administration, exclusion criteria and
financial parts must be submitted in one specific envelop and
the technical part in one different specific envelop.The non
respect of the tender procedures are often the cause of
elimination of the competition

10. Proposal presentation and tender evaluation
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 If requested, just after submission of the proposal, prepare the oral
presentation
 Focus on the points highlighted in your executive summary and
demonstrate why your are the best applicant
 The main error consists to be too much technical.The customer’s panel
will be composed mainly by the buyer (often non technical), the project
stakeholder ( business view) and the project manager
 In any case, achieve a tender evaluation and lesson learned for the
proposal which has been sent.

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Please, provide us with your comments about this presentation to improve
the quality . Are you satisfied by the level of provided details or do you need
more?
For free and on request, we
can provide you with such
high level analysis for all
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Don’t hesitate to call or to
send an email to JP Perin
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feedback.
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