Marina Goren is the President/CEO of Smart BD Consulting – a successful MD/DC/NVA area Capture and Proposal Development firm. Over the past 8 years she has successfully grown her company to over 180 consultants serving over 60 Federal Government contracting clients winning over $15 Billion. She teaches numerous Proposal Development and Capture courses and was an APMP speaker since 2014.
Solutioning Magic – No Fluff, Only BLUF (Bottom Line Up Front)
Suggest you have few generic examples (without naming the details) of a fluff proposal and good solution based proposal that you can talk through
Why Are Solutions Important?
What is a solution ? why its not the the response document?
What is bottom line profit?
Why some proposals sound like “fluff”
Lets talk about Government proposals first -
Why do you think only the benefits are evident ?
Is solutioning part of capture or proposal process or both?
The Government doesn’t know what they are buying – How true is this statement?
What? Who? When? How? Why? – Government has more questions than answers, lets talk about this
Assume we answered all the above questions, whats next?
then provide tangible benefits, then tell them where you have done it successfully = Strength/Significant Strength
Can you give some examples how this could be done?
How can we apply solutioning for a quick turnaround and commercial proposals?
Lets talk about Why Solutions So Hard? What are the 3 main issues? Lets pick one at a time and talk about it.
1.Lack of Subject Matter Expertise (SME)
Result: Fluffy proposals – Losing bids
Fix: get experts or no bid!
2.Lack of Solutioneers/Facilitators (Capture Managers, Solution Architects, etc.)
Result: nuts and bolts described with no big picture or benefits to the customer (what are they buying?)
Fix: Hire professional help (or no bid if no sufficient budget)
Result: Incomplete solutioning leads to lack of solutions
Fix: Be patient – it takes time….or if the timeline is very limited – no bid – it’s likely wired
In summary, what is the solution magic and how can solutions improve bottom line profit?
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