A skilled proposal manager is invaluable to their organization. They are as persuasive as the best salespeople. They are as precise as anyone in legal or finance. They nearly match their CEOs in company knowledge. They can wrangle stakeholders with techniques that rival horse herders — sans lassos. And they can turn a phrase as elegantly as Shakespeare.
That last one might be a slight exaggeration, but the ability to craft a compelling story is vital to a proposal professional’s skill set. It’s not an exaggeration to say that proposal managers are exceptionally hardworking. In fact, APMP reports that the more experienced they are, the more hours they find themselves at their office, remote or not.
Where does that leave a proposal professional who also has (or wants) a life? How does an insanely busy proposal professional reclaim work-life balance?
How the work world is out of balance
- According to a recent McKinsey study, most people spend 20 percent of their time searching for content. Proposal teams and SMEs likely spend even more.
- Many proposal teams still use manual processes and cannot reuse content.
- Organizations cut costs in a down economy by freezing or reducing headcount.
- All the while, proposal requests are more frequent and complex.
What the work world looks like when it’s in balance
- Employees work normal hours
- There’s more time to ensure quality, including doing QA, thoroughly checking responsiveness, discriminators, and so on, before submitting proposals.
- There’s time to collaborate and work across organizations to ensure we’re putting our best foot forward.
- We have time to use escalation matrices and responsibility matrices to keep everyone accountable and on track.
- We’re able to gain recognition, both from the deals we win and internally from our business partners.
- More significantly, we’re building our careers because we have time to be great at our jobs.
How to reclaim your work-life balance
External forces, such as the economy and a faster flow of more complex proposal requests, are generally out of your control. However, efficient and repeatable processes can help you free the time to manage an increased workload without working weekends.
Content management
I am passionate about content management because I believe gold-standard content makes every part of the proposal process successful. Without that, you are just running in circles.
Incorporate these four steps into your content management process to prevent having to spend more than 20 percent of your time searching for information, and instead repurposing that time to write compelling responses — and perhaps log off at 5 p.m.
- Designate a champion – A champion is a decision-maker, typically an executive or proposal manager.
- Clean out ROT –ROT refers to content that’s redundant (duplicate or similar content), outdated (expired or sunsetted) or trivial (deal- or client-specific). Content library software helps ensure your library of answers is ROT-free.
- Respect SMEs’ time – Subject matter experts are in demand, and there’s nothing that will make them more reluctant to work with you than having to repeat themselves time and time again. An up-to-date content library lets them simply review their previous answers.
- Automate processes – When you automate lower-value processes, it frees humans to be more productive and create more winning responses.
Pro tip: Style your content from the very beginning using Microsoft Word. When you’re ready to use that content, it will seamlessly export to the brandable, customizable response template of your choice, as long as the style has the same naming convention. The result is an elegant document that demonstrates polish and professionalism.
If you keep your naming conventions consistent throughout your organization, any department can import content to their preferred templates.
Content analytics
Sophisticated, customizable reporting capabilities with digestible charts and graphs provide the insights needed to improve work processes, demonstrate value, even when you regularly sign off at 5 p.m., and help craft a path for an impressive ROI.
- Identify/prioritize gold-standard content – Use data to holistically audit your library of content to ensure accuracy, timeliness and relevance.
- Measure time – Are team members using the library? Are they spending too much time searching for content?
- Demonstrate value – Gain executive and SME buy-in by producing data that shows less time spent on crafting and recrafting faster, risk-averse responses.
- Craft ROI path – Analyze trends to see how your current project compares to others and compares manual responses to those using stored answers that can be automated.
Building a business case for content reviews
Reclaiming work-life balance is all about prioritizing high-value activities, delegating to the right people, creating processes that work and proving that you don’t have to work 50+ hours a week to accomplish your KPIs.
However, in austere times, organizations expect more productivity using fewer, or at least value-proven, resources. That means that their own time considerations might make SMEs deprioritize regular content audits and RFX responses, especially since response management is not their full-time job.
Gain executive and SME buy-in, and create champions to advocate for you, through your content review processes.
- Choose a review cycle cadence – Work with SMEs to determine whether to review your content monthly, quarterly or annually. It usually depends on the type of content. Corporate content changes quickly, so you might schedule quarterly reviews. Review product content every 6-12 months or when there’s a new product release. Review evergreen content every 12-24 months, because even it can change.
- Implicate risk – Communicate and implicate the risk of outdated content through content reviews. For example, using content that was customized with another customer’s name shows a lack of professionalism. Outdated or incorrect content may even present a litigation risk.
- Run POC with a single team/group – Rather than lobby for an organization-wide content review, start with a single team or group.
- Demonstrate potential value – Demonstrate to SMEs that their work matters by showing how often and successfully you rely on their content.
- AI Assistant – SMEs wear a lot of hats but they are generally not writers. Capabilities like the RFPIO AI Assistant help polish and perfect responses by:
- Offering suggestions to help break through writer’s block
- Elaborating on existing content as needed
- Creating more concise responses
- Optimizing content readability
- Changing verbs from passive to active
- Writing in plain language
- Organizing content under headings
Note that AI Assistant trains on your content library and your information will remain private within your organization.
Collaboration and process
A rising tide lifts all ships. By bringing your team in, including SMEs, some of your salespeople, and so on, you’re building a community to successfully work within the RFPIO platform.
- Unify and automate – Your content library is a single source of truth, and as it continues to evolve, you build more trust from SMEs and other stakeholders. It’s a foundation for responses of all sorts throughout the organization.
- Breakdown silos – Having a repository like the RFPIO Content Library is a company asset and valuable in every department.
- Achieve partnership goals – Lean into relationships and the opportunities created by those relationships.
- Share the proposal content (by definition, your best content) love – Keep content creators happy by letting them know that their content was a key component of a response — preferably one you’ve won.
Conclusion
When usable content is not available to those who might need it, you erode trust and risk that content that hasn’t passed an audit process may be sent to prospects or others within your organization.
With a platform like RFPIO, clean, accurate proposals presented on time and in a professional, branded format build trust and demonstrate competency. A well-curated RFPIO Content Library lets you forge and maintain relationships inside and outside of your organization. It proves your value to SMEs, executives and anyone who might need to access company information.
And more on point, AI Assistant and a well-curated content library will help you fulfill executives’ goal of accomplishing more with less, without sacrificing your work-life balance.
Your RFPIO Content Library is about so much more than just a resource of Q&As. It helps maintain compliance, optimize productivity, generate revenue, and gives time back to you. We invite you to request a customized demo to see how.
