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Proposal coordinator, then proposal writer, then proposal manager

I was recently asked a question which seemed to imply that managing proposals came before writing them. My first thought was that this was a case of "the chicken and the egg." Upon further thought, I decided it was really a case of "the chicken, the egg and the omelet."

Here's my thought process.

First you learn to coordinate the components of a proposal.

You take your instructions and your input from a number of sources, including the proposal manager, the principal in charge, the technical champion, other technical contributors and, probably, other recent proposals.

You learn how an organization chart is related to the overall staffing discussion and the resumes that are included.

You learn how the technical requirements enumerated in the RFP and discussed in your experience section inform the selection of projects to present, as well as how the descriptions of those projects must be tailored to respond to the RFP.

You learn how even the firm introduction and administrative information (i.e. D/M/WBE firm utilization, awards, quality assurance/quality control [QA/QC] processes) are related to the client's goals for the project as stated in the RFP.

If the project requires subconsultants, you learn how to coordinate with marketing and technical staff from subconsultant firms, including confirming their firms' project roles, discussing information needs, providing templates and formatting instructions, and establishing deadlines for delivery of their information.

And you learn a very important lesson about sticking to the document organization shown in the RFP to prevent "the fool with the checklist" from eliminating your submittal as being "non-responsive."

Then you learn how to write sections of the proposal.

Assuming that you read all the text you handled as a proposal coordinator in the earlier stages of your A/E/C marketing career, you should now have enough of an idea of what makes a good proposal to write some of the administrative and/or connecting sections of the proposal. These would generally include:

• Firm introduction
• Services
• Awards
• QA/QC processes
• Staffing (including tailoring of resumes)
• Firm experience (including tailoring of project descriptions)

The technical sections will be created by the technical champion and other technical staff s/he pulls into that effort. These sections would include:

• Project understanding
• Project approach
• Detailed work plan (if requested)
• Schedule
• Cost proposal (if appropriate)

Sometimes the proposal coordinator is asked to draft the project understanding. The information needed to write this section will generally be found early in the RFP, in a section discussing project need/justification/history. Once drafted, this section needs to go to the principal or Business Development person with the primary responsibility for that client relationship. That person, hopefully, will know more detail about why the project is needed, why it is being undertaken now, and what factors (schedule, cost, etc.) are most important to the client.

Then you manage a proposal.

Once you have demonstrated competencies in assembling the pieces provided by others and writing the proposal sections within the marketer's knowledge, you will be asked to manage your first proposal.

The two biggest differences between this task and everything you've done before are:

YOU now set the proposal development and production schedule; and

YOU now have to motivate proposal staff to deliver their assignments on time, meeting the requirements of the RFP and the expectations of superior thought and writing.

If you want information on any of these items, email me at [email protected] and ask for my eBook called "Proposing: what I've learned in 30 years of proposal writing." Make sure your complete contact information is in your email.

Finding time to be strategic

In my 30-day blog challenge in late December, I asked colleagues to suggest topics. Barbara Shuck, Wilson & Company, Inc., Omaha, provided 10 suggestions, including:

How to find time to be strategic when we're in the tactical trenches.

I think this is a great topic. Many of us get so bogged down in the day-to-day implementation tactics for our strategies and goals that we can't find the time to revisit/refine those strategies and tactics, much less develop new strategies and tactics, or get rid of the ones that no longer seem to make sense.

My answer is: you don't FIND the time—you MAKE the time!

That's where the expression, to "make time for something," comes from.

And you "make time" by scheduling it, putting it on your calendar, and selecting the option that shows you as "unavailable" during that time period. That way, nobody else can schedule a conflicting "appointment" for you.

Call that "appointment" something vague, but that a person looking at your schedule will think is important. If you need to, set that "appointment" for a location other than your office (but don't specify where) and schedule enough time that you have at least an hour to think in addition to your travel time. Then leave the building— for your favorite coffee shop, park, or anyplace else where you can think.

Or leave a message for someone on your staff that you'll be coming in late that morning.

In fact, everyone in marketing should be thinking strategically at one time or another, but in most cases, only the manager, director and chief marketing officer actually have "strategic thinking" in their job descriptions. If you carry one of those three titles, you probably have at least one marketing staff person who answers to you.

I know, you're thinking, "but what if an emergency comes up?" Frankly, that's what you have staff for. They can deal with an emergency at least until you get back to the office in an hour or two. And you give them instructions that they are not to call you unless there's a real emergency. Then you ignore phone calls during your "think time," even if your phone says it's the CEO calling.

There's an old saying that goes, "If you need to get something done, ask someone who's already busy!" There's a lot of truth to that. Often, overcoming inertia can take more time than actually getting the task done!

We all know the adage that says, "give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him forever."

Your production (tactical) activities are the equivalent of giving a man a fish. Your strategic activities are the equivalent of teaching a man to fish. The former has benefits—perhaps great benefits—today, but the latter has great benefits lasting far into the future.

Finally, much of this strategic thinking will happen in collaboration with others, in meetings. And every manager, director and CMO I know thinks they spend too much time in meetings. But the next you look at your calendar and think "I waste too much time in meetings," just remember that, at your senior level, meetings are your job. Not production.

Strategic activities, not tactical ones.

Going out on your own

Earlier this week, I presented a session at the SMPS 2015 Pacific Regional Conference in Seattle. I had a wonderful time, and got to catch up in person with many friends I generally interact with on the phone or online.

One evening, I spent some time with a friend I've known for around 10 years, and discovered that she was setting up her own consulting business to provide marketing-related services to A/E/C firms. I spent a half-hour or so answering her questions about a variety of new business issues.

In case you are considering the same thing, the following are my answers to some of her questions, as well as some additional information I thought of as I was writing this post.

Getting Started

First of all, form a legal entity—whether a corporation, an LLC or some other type—to keep your personal assets separate from those of the firm. Pay for a one-hour consultation with a lawyer or accountant to determine the kind of entity that best suits your intended business and personal needs.

Have a lawyer help you establish the business. If you do it yourself online, remember that these services are not lawyers. They can help you fill in the forms, but they cannot answer questions, offer advice or warn you of potential pitfalls.

The chances are that you will need to have both a Federal Employer Identification Number (EIN) and a taxpayer/file number from your state. You will need such numbers to open bank accounts and establish credit in the firm's name.

Find out if your city requires that you have a license to do business, and if they will allow a home business in your neighborhood—in other words, are you zoned properly.

Then you can legally transact business while protecting your personal assets.

Setting Rates

When I established my business at the end of 2003, I had been working in the A/E/C industry for 25 years. I knew how billing rates were established and about the two multipliers that led to those rates—that is, a 1.5 multiplier for benefits plus a 2.0 multiplier for expenses and profits—resulting in an overall multiplier of 3.0. So I took my hourly rate with my last full-time employer, multiplied it by 3.0 and rounded it up to the nearest $5 increment.

My first rate increase came a year later at the suggestion of a client, who told me what she thought my hourly rate should be based on the quality the felt she received from my activities.

To Prime or Not to Prime

I asked my friend if she thought she would ever pursue an RFQ or RFP for writing and/or editing work, as a prime consultant. She said she had no plans to do so.

Despite that conviction, I did suggest that she keep a good resume handy in case a client ever wanted to include her on a team because of her writing and editing skills.

DBE/MBE/WBE or Not?

My friend asked if I thought it was worth obtaining WBE certification. We talked about the specific services she intended to provide. Since she had decided not to pursue public agency work in a prime role, we both felt it was not worth obtaining WBE certification, but that it was good to have considered it.

Conclusion

Obviously, there are many more issues you need to consider, and some of your decisions will be very different from mine or my friend's. I can only wish you luck as you chart your new course, and remind you that, as the A/E/C industry is one of experts providing knowledge, you should never be afraid to seek out the knowledge of other experts who can help you.

GOOD LUCK!

Jack of all trades or master of one?

In his column in the January 2011 CE News (now Civil + Structural Engineer), publisher Mark Zweig wrote:

"Specialization is so much more than technical. It is about understanding the thought process—and the resulting priorities—of the organizations that own the projects. What is important to them is not the same as what is important to everyone else.

We have all heard the phrase, "Jack of all trades, master of none." The fact is that people make many choices in their lives and careers, and one of those career choices has to do with whether they want to be a "generalist" (Jack of all trades) or a "specialist" (master of ONE)— whether they want to specialize in a certain type of building (say, K-12 schools as opposed to residential towers) or infrastructure component (say, large, complex bridges and interchanges rather than water and wastewater pipelines).

Either option is a legitimate choice for the architect or engineer, and the selection depends in large part on the type of firm for which the person wants to work. If they want to end up in a big firm, then specialization may be a great answer for them. But if they want to stay in a small firm, then specialization may not be the correct answer at all.

Large firms can afford to employ many specialists in a number of disciplines because of the sheer number of professional and technical staff they employ. However, small firms often need to have people who can work on and lead a variety of projects because they can't support a large staff of specialists.

Sometimes, specialization ultimately requires a larger measure of collaboration with others because your technical knowledge, while deep, may not be particularly broad. If you are not a person who is collaborative by nature, then specialization may not be the right choice for you. If you are a great team player, but only when you are leading the team, specialization may not be the right choice for you.

On the other hand, if you want to bury yourself in the technical details and not have to deal with others, then specialization might be a great choice! However, if this is your desire, you should probably not aspire to the role of project manager because project managers have to "put down the pencil" and stop designing in favor of managing—managing the staff, managing the budget, managing the schedule and, most important, managing the client relationship.

I like to use the phrase, "put your butt-print in the client's guest chair," to indicate the need for spending one-on-one time with your client, regardless of the meeting location. These meetings need to happen while projects are underway and when there is no current project. The client needs to know you care about him/her and are looking after their firm's best interests even between project assignments.

If you don't want to do this, you need to remain in a technical role—design or QA/QC. In the end, project management is as much a specialization choice as choosing to practice urban planning, space planning, K-12 education design, structural engineering, or environmental engineering. So be very careful and thoughtful about the desire to specialize. Such a decision may be limiting in ways you don't want.

Proposals — Marketing or Business Development?

I have been a marketer in the A/E/C industry for more than 30 years, and for much of that time there didn't seem to be any clear definition of what constituted marketing and what constituted business development.

For a long time, many in the industry said that everything up to the proposal was marketing, and everything from the proposal on was business development. But others said exactly the opposite.

Today, we seem to be in agreement on the definition that everything we produce for communication to the general marketplace is marketing, and everything we produce for communication to a specific client, especially if it is related to a specific project, is business development.

This distinction feels right to me. I am comfortable with it. For as long as I was aware, the business development folks were concerned with pursuing the specific project, closing the sale and taking care of the client.

However, there is a monkey wrench that is thrown into the works on a consistent basis, which is exemplified by the following questions:

If pursuit of a specific client and/or a specific project are the province of business development, why is the RFQ or RFP for an individual project or ID/IQ-type contract automatically handed to the marketing staff? Even when a business developer brings the RFQ or RFP into the office, marketing staff still get the assignment.

In some instances, the business development folks give an RFQ or RFP to the marketing folks and then disappear. In most cases, they will at least tell the marketing folks what they think the client is looking for, what the client wants (or doesn't want) to see in the proposal, and what the client's "hot buttons" are for that project.

Then they go away until the Red Team Review meeting, unless the marketing folks have specific questions for them.

Sometimes, they go away until the SOQ or proposal is finished, printed, assembled, bound and packaged for delivery. Then, if the client is local, a business development person might make the delivery.

Even in larger A/E/C firms with specifically committed staff in both marketing and business development, this is the usual behavior. And after many years of wondering, and many discussions with A/E/C firm leaders and human resources folks, I believe I have finally figured out why this is so. More specifically, what I have heard over and over again is the following:

A/E/C firms don't hire business development folks for their writing skills. These folks are hired basically for their "gift of gab," their ability to schmooze the client, and their track record of coming back to the office with a contract, or at least an opportunity to propose.

But nobody expects business developers to write SOQs and proposals because written communication skills were not thought to be a necessary part of their tool kits.

In a way, this hardly seems fair, because marketing staff are very often asked to work the firm's booth at a trade show, speaking with clients, prospects and curious visitors to the booth. I see a lot of marketing folks doing business development, but way fewer business development folks doing marketing.

Marketing folks generally don't complain about this because we love the opportunity to get out of the office. And that's just the way the industry is—take it as it is, or leave it for something you consider more sane.