Chapter 8

PROPOSAL MANAGEMENT

The Art of Containing Chaos

GOLDEN RULE:

A proposal is a custom-designed product in its own right, one that you will hand to a customer as tangible evidence of your ability to meet requirements, manage a project, and produce quality deliverables on time.

Any proposal manager (or outside consultant, for that matter) who claims to know how to run a major proposal effort free of chaos should be quietly and briskly escorted to the door. Chaos is in the DNA of the proposal beast. The manager who accepts this fact also knows that although the chaos of proposal work cannot be eliminated, it must be controlled, or it will eat alive the manager, the proposal team, and the proposal itself.

Ironically, proposal managers ...

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