“In 525,600 minutes. How do you measure a year in a life?” is the wonderful question posed in the song “Seasons of Love” from Jonathan Larson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning revolutionary rock opera, Rent. We all have the same amount of time—no less, no more. Let’s be honest, the demands on today’s business leaders are staggering, and there is only one of you. You are asked to do and produce more but are given fewer resources to accomplish the requirements. Therefore, you must be as efficient and effective as possible. 

Does this Sound Familiar?

How often have you had the opportunity to shape or capture an opportunity? You want to set your firm up for success, but shaping or capturing opportunities slipped through your grasp because client delivery and billable requirements took priority. Or, your staff are reluctant to participate because they didn’t “sign-up” for business development responsibilities and only want to focus on client delivery. How often has the lack of experience and expertise among your business development and proposal teams jeopardized a well-shaped procurement or compliant proposal response? This, in turn, leaves you thinking, “How did this happen? I thought we had addressed and planned for everything? There’s got to be a better way.”

Life Happens, and it’s not always obliging

We’ve all experienced the feeling that everything seems to happen all at once. A staff member leaves the firm, gets ill, or goes on vacation. A challenging client demands your immediate attention, a critical deliverable is due, or the “must win” procurement hits the street. Life happens despite your best intentions, best efforts, and excruciating attention to detail. 

Leaders must make difficult decisions in this highly-competitive, cost-conscious business environment. A reasonable approach would be to:

• Find an available leader to lead the capture process or proposal effort regardless of their experience
• Make critical client-facing staff part of the technical volume team 
• Require your “second team” to step up and continue delivering the same exceptional client support 
• Believe that you’ll have reduced costs by taking these reasonable steps

A Contrarian Point of View

The challenge is that each of these "reasonable" steps may not seem so reasonable when you weigh the impact on client delivery and proposal team performance.

You can develop an internal battle rhythm to help overcome known and potential challenges. Or you can reach out to Trident Proposal Management for our efficient and effective solutions.  

Athletes and dancers talk about the importance of muscle memory—the ability to repeat a specific muscular movement with improved efficiency and accuracy acquired through practice and repetition. At Trident Proposal Management, we build this muscle memory by supporting clients through their challenges daily. Our team of trained and experienced staff can handle your shape, capture, and proposal needs from Day One. We are focused on the mission’s successful accomplishment, so we assign team members who will stay with you throughout the proposal process. We do not have to contend with client requirements—you are the client. 

Our team has worked on proposals ranging from thousands to billions of dollars. Our experience allows us to anticipate and overcome proposal challenges saving you dollars and providing you with a greater chance to win. 

• No business development or proposal training required
• Immediately available
• Accommodate your calendar and timeline
• Avoid business development and proposal pitfalls
• Staff can remain on client site and do what they do best—delivery

At Trident Proposal Management, our staff remains efficient and effective by regularly flexing our proposal management muscle. Whether it’s our capture management, tech editing, graphic design, proposal management, or oral board coaching, our team gathers its strength from within. Reach out to us today to see how we can help you move beyond “why did this happen today?!” to “I know just the right people to help with this.”

Written by Matt Hardy
Matt is a capture and proposal expert at Trident. Bringing experience as a U.S. Army officer coupled with his expert capture management skills (shaping, call plans, competitor / teammate research, win theme development, and more) he is a jack-of-all trades. Based in Seattle, he supports clients around the world as part of our globally dispersed team.