In the fast-paced world of proposal management, the odds are often stacked against small teams. Yet, despite limited resources and increasing expectations, these teams continue to rise to the challenge — not just surviving, but thriving.
What’s their secret? Small teams that succeed deliver high-quality, strategic proposals under increasingly mounting pressure, which positions them as vital revenue generators within their organizations. They master the art of maximizing every tool, technology, and moment of their day to streamline processes and generate impactful proposals.
In the recent “Small but mighty: Scaling success with limited headcount” session from the Responsive Summit24, Brian Astman, Director of Business Development at ACRT Services, and DeAnne Powers, Senior Manager of Operations Services and Support for Invicti Security, shared how they leveraged their unique strengths as “small but mighty” proposal teams to achieve measurable success.
Whether you’re part of a small team or managing a larger operation, the lessons DeeAnn and Brian shared will inspire new ways to approach proposal management in any environment.
Note: The following session transcript was edited for brevity and clarity.
One person can step up to create change in an organization
Proposal teams have seen a large uptick in buyer expectations and appetite for more information, evident in the number of RFPs teams are expected to handle per year.
The 2024 State of Strategic Response Management (SRM) Report shows that 77% of business professionals have seen an increase in the volume of work associated with RFPs and other strategic responses from 2023. More than one in four said that amount of work has increased by more than 50%.
Response management is a complex and collaborative process where many stakeholders are tasked with providing prospects with accurate information.
It takes multiple people to win, but as we’ll discover from DeeAnn and Brian, it can take just one person to cause significant changes in the process, or even create a process, to turn things around and create measurable growth and impact organization-wide.
DeeAnn Powers
When I joined Invicti, we only had one resource guy overseas managing everything in a single, giant Google Sheet. That’s not a very scalable solution, and when he needed to take time off, everything came to a screeching halt.
Not only that, but your accuracy and excellence starts to suffer because everything is managed through basic copy and pasting into that one sheet. This approach caused us issues with not being able to get all of the RFPs. We had some salespeople that just were like, “Okay, well, we’re just gonna do it ourselves.”
It’s a scary model because you don’t really know what’s being said, if it’s correct, and who is telling what to whom. That’s what our operation was like when I started. I was charged with establishing a formal process, finding a tool, setting up a process, and making it repeatable and scalable.
Brian Astman
At ACRT, when I walked in, we didn’t have anything. There wasn’t even a Google Sheet.
We would get massive 300-page long RFPs that would require everyone’s input, interrupting their daily tasks, and we had to email everyone in the C-suite as well for every new RFP. There was no absolutely zero plan in place.
We’re so much further down the road now from when I started almost three years ago. If you’re sitting in that spot I was in three years ago, Responsive can help get you to a spot of comfort with a plan in place.
How has implementing Responsive made things more manageable?
Getting input from multiple SMEs can be a difficult task. As uncovered in the 2024 State of SRM Report, nearly half (48%) of respondents agreed.
We also covered this topic previously in a two-part “Pro tips from proposal experts” blog series in which Responsive experts covered how teams can effectively engage with SMEs and build quality content with them, and how bid and proposal teams can demonstrate and expand their impact with leadership.
Let’s take a look at how DeeAnn and Brian addressed this challenge head-on to create a more efficient collaborative process.
DeeAnn Powers
Responsive helped us address our SME problem first. If you can get the information you need in the most expeditious manner, then it’s easier to meet a timeline.
We wanted to make it easy for SMEs to give us what we needed. Responsive has some incredible integrations with Salesforce and with Slack that we used to keep our SMEs working in the tools that they’re comfortable working in.
Once that was solved, we found it was so easier to meet our timelines, and we didn’t need 10 or more people working on the same project because we had a pretty efficient process in place.
Next, we took a look at the repeatable things. What information doesn’t change? How can I make that self-service so people don’t need to wait for others?
We made it easy for people to find information themselves so they didn’t have to Slack me individually. Together, these two fixes really helped us do more with less.
Brian Astman
Our problem was too few resources for the volume of requests. We didn’t have dedicated resources for responding to RFPs or RFQs, so we had to make the best of everybody’s time on tight deadlines.
A RFP or RFQ with a 24-hour deadline simply would not have been possible before we had Responsive in place. Having that content at your fingertips and being able to pull everybody in to collaborate in one spot at the time was a real game changer.
Getting feedback and information from our SMEs was another huge benefit. That’s why you need a tool like Responsive to make your job a little bit easier.
How can smaller teams increase their leadership’s awareness of their impact across their organization?
Bid and proposal teams – even teams of just one – often feel undervalued in their organizations, something that 65% of respondents agreed with in the 2024 State of SRM Report.
We highlighted five pro tips for growth among undervalued teams in the report. Step three was driving executive and cross-functional alignment. In short, this means ensuring that there is two-way communication between senior leaders and strategic response teams.
Involve the C-suite directly in key opportunities, and regularly share both topline impact and insights — providing actionable, databacked recommendations to improve commercial success and product strategy.
By proactively educating and deepening relationships with executives, SMEs, and business partners, small teams can increase visibility so all stakeholders know exactly what these teams do and their impact on key metrics, like revenue generation.
DeeAnn Powers
My best advice is to do the math using Responsive’s great reporting tools.
How many RFPs did you get? How long did they take? What was the result? It doesn’t have to be any more complicated than that, but answering these questions helps you accomplish a few important things.
The first is that you demonstrate you know what comes in and goes out of your organization. You also demonstrate that you know how to handle the volume of incoming requests. The third is demonstrating the results of handling these requests.
I have a higher win rate than a lot of our sales staff. It took me a long time to get there, but I wouldn’t know that if I didn’t do the math. I wouldn’t be able to put together a QBR every quarter that says how many RFPs we got, how long they took, and the results.
Using reporting tools, I can forecast, within about 5 to 10 RFPs, what we’re going to get in any given quarter. Based on that, I can accurately guess our completion time per RFP and how much help I’ll need if we go over.
Whether you decide to report monthly or quarterly, stick with that cadence, and you’ll see if you’ve demonstrated your value to who you report to and your C-suite.
Brian Astman
I’m one of those leaders that doesn’t get into the minutiae of RFPs. My job is to get RFPs, and it’s a massive win if we get one because that means we have an opportunity for a big win. RFPs for us are rare, but when we do get them, it’s all hands on deck.
Our biggest impact is that the executives don’t even see RFPs anymore. It’s a win because we’re only going to the four or five SMEs that we need. We’ve created this funnel that is so tight that everyone else in the organization can be completely hands-off.
What is your team’s north star, something especially important for smaller teams?
DeeAnn Powers
We have two guiding principles. The first one is to make saying “Yes” to our customers easy. When we return a response to customers, I want that response to be so fully answered that they know we’ve gone above and beyond to provide them with the information that they need to know.
We want them to know that they’ve been heard, and that their problem will be solved. We’re in a space where there’s a huge risk of your website being broken into, and there’s lots of security concerns around that.
For companies that have had a breach, they want us to tell them how we are going to be different. They want to know how we are going to solve their specific problem.
We want our responses to their questions to be so complete that they can safely sign on the dotted line knowing they’ve been heard.
That also applies to Sales and our CS organization. We want to make sure that we’re being accurate and providing excellent work to make it easy for them. We don’t want them to spend time doing things that aren’t directly related to relationship building or quote generating for the customer.
The second guiding principle for us is to get out of the way. Our Sales team moves so fast, we have loads of customers, and we’re growing by leaps and bounds. The last thing I want to do is be an impediment to sales. I never want to cost a sale because our Sales team is stuck in an RFP or someone is waiting on a security questionnaire.
Brian Astman
Our mission is to dominate markets that we’re in and be the trusted adviser. Fulfilling RFPs in a timely manner allows people to trust us. That’s step number one.
Did you respond to my request? Did you do it quickly? If so, our customers can trust us. It all goes into that. Those are the two big ones for ACRT.
Key takeaways in thriving against the odds
Small proposal teams exemplify what it means to be “small but mighty,” proving that limited resources don’t equate to limited success.
By leveraging smart workflows, adopting the right technologies, and fostering a strategic focus, small teams can consistently turn challenges into opportunities, positioning themselves as indispensable revenue generators within their organizations.
DeeAnn and Brian are certainly proof of finding great success with limited means. Their ability to innovate, adapt, and deliver results under pressure, coming into their position with little to no processes established, is nothing short of an incredible accomplishment.
Whether you’re part of a small team or a larger operation, the lessons DeeAnn and Brian shared are universal.
Get inspired by more Responsive customers celebrating career-defining wins. Check out all of the sessions from Responsive Summit24, now available on-demand.
