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This is the third in a series of articles on the advantages of starting early in the procurement process. In June, I showed the advantages of starting early in procurement cycle to maximize the probability of a win for your company.

Here is a set of principals that can help guide the design of a successful proposal process. They provide a set of standards that you can assess your proposal against. After all, if you don't know your goals, it's difficult to achieve them.

Must Win opportunities are important. A Must Win opportunity demands an even more heroic effort than all the other pursuits that people pour their hearts and souls into trying to win. Nobody really knows what the extra "something" should be, but if it's a Must Win opportunity, it's got to have it.

Last month, I wrote on the advantages of starting early in procurement cycle to maximize the probability of a win for your company. I promised to discuss, in a later paper, the seven important steps in the procurement process, and how your company can legally and ethically influence the selection process.

Most companies just try to do "the best job they can" at collecting intelligence and preparing for an RFP release. If they have any structure to their process at all, usually it emphasizes collecting intelligence to justify a bid decision.

Business development may be more of an art than a science, and we don't know how to measure art. However, bidders still need a means to validate readiness to pursue a bid and their progress toward being ready to submit a winning proposal response.

Often lose out when they should win, achieve little when they should achieve a lot or leave the negotiating table with a feeling of defeat rather than a glow of triumph. Here are four classic negotiating traps they fall into... and ways they can overcome them.

It was a tremendous step in the evolution of proposals when people began to recognize that every proposal should have a formal review by people other than those who wrote it. This review is almost universally called a "Red Team" review.

In my practice as an independent proposal consultant, I’ve been amazed and dismayed at the performance of many of my customers when it comes to the constructive use of post-award debriefs. Generally, the Government is required to give a meaningful de-brief to the bidders in a competition.

A wise old proposal writer, Tom Amrhein, once told me, “The best way to improve your win ratio is to stop bidding on stuff you can’t win.”