You're at your desk and a new email pops up: "We're going after this." You open the RFP and see it was posted two weeks ago. It's due in a week and a half. It was sitting on someone's desk the entire time.
Proposal managers typically aren't the ones making these decisions, but they live with the results. This was one of the top frustrations in my research, and it's an often-misunderstood problem.
Proposal competitions are a game with real money
Imagine you start a football team. Each win pays $300,000, and every game costs $20,000 to enter. You choose when, where, and who you play. If you don't play, you can't pay your players. If you play and lose, you're out $20,000. So you weigh your chances. You wouldn't put your new team up against the Green Bay Packers. You'd pick games you can win.
Here's the catch. The more you win, the more players you need to pay, and the more you have to keep winning. That creates a huge temptation to play games you can't win.
What a losing pursuit really costs
Let's relate this to proposals. A reasonable fee in our industry is about 10%, so a $300,000 contract brings in $30,000. Look at this hypothetical four-month period.
| Month | Spent on proposals | Won | Fee earned |
|---|---|---|---|
| January | $20,000 | $300,000 | $30,000 |
| February | $20,000 | $300,000 | $30,000 |
| March | $20,000 | $0 | $0 |
| April | $20,000 | $0 | $0 |
| Total | $80,000 | $600,000 | $60,000 |
You won $600,000 in work and you're still $20,000 in the hole. To break even, you need to win two more $300,000 contracts. Or you could have skipped just one of those losing pursuits, spent $60,000, and broken even.
Not losing one is just as good as winning two.
Why firms still skip the Go/No Go form
- They have to keep winning. With three RFPs in front of you and a payroll to meet, it's hard to say no.
- The cost is hidden. Some firms don't track what each proposal costs, so decision makers see the wins and not the losses.
- Proposals feel tangible. An RFP is an opportunity you can hold in your hand. Submitting one feels easier than capture planning or client development.
- People like making their own decisions. They don't want a form making business decisions for them.
How to get better, quicker Go/No Go decisions
Bring real data
Give each proposal a number and track all time and expenses to it. After a while, run a "what if" analysis. What if we had used a Go/No Go form? How much less would we have spent? What would it have done to profits? Real numbers are more convincing than your opinion.
Do the thinking for them
Get each RFP in front of the decision makers with a form you've already filled out, based on what you know, and include a recommendation. Now all they have to do is agree or disagree. That should make the decision quicker.
The course includes The Go/No Go Game, Go/No Go form examples, and a master class with Laura Ricci on implementing Go/No Go processes.
See the whole course
I've submitted over 1,000 proposals and created Proposal Management Mastery. The American Institute of Architects included my relevancy formula for proposals in The Architect's Handbook of Professional Practice.