During the days when I had time to actively assist in proposal writing, I was often elected to prepare the management plan. During the past 30 years, I have probably prepared at least 150. I will never forget the first management plans I wrote. I was a Vice President at Computer Dynamics, a rapidly growing small business in Virginia Beach. The year was 1983; and this was my first experience writing a management plan. If I had had an MBA degree, the work would have been fairly straightforward. However, my degrees were in English, History, and Education.

As independent proposal consultants, we are often asked by customers to evaluate their own processes against those of other companies in their industry. We prefer to call these "best practices." Most often, this request is accompanied by showing, or offering to show, a specific proposal the company has recently submitted.