Proposal Management

Proposal preparation often feels like a race against the clock, made harder by the usual suspects: late contributors, disorganized planning sessions, missed details, and chaotic final edits. This article outlines the most common delays in technical proposal preparation and connects each one to relevant Twennie learning tools. If you're new to Twennie, this article points you in the direction of some excellent resources on this topic. This article helps you identify the bottlenecks and the Twennie units to fix them.

A good win theme facilitates a decision-making process in the client’s mind. That decision might be to entrust you with a project that could define someone’s career. It might involve working side-by-side with your project manager for two years, or inviting your team into their office space for six months. Whatever the case, the client is making a high-stakes choice—and your job is to help them feel confident in it. This 10 step process helps you do it comprehensively and persuasively.

A good win theme facilitates a decision-making process in the client’s mind. That decision might be to entrust you with a project that could define their career. It might involve working side-by-side with your project manager for two years or inviting your team into their office space for six months. Whatever the case, the client is making a high-stakes choice and your job is to help them feel confident in it. This 10 step process helps you do it comprehensively and persuasively.

Rapid Fire Methodology Storyboarding brings proposal contributors together for a focused session in which, in just 2 to 3 hours, you’ll generate all the content needed to build a strong work plan — content that normally takes days or weeks to collect. You can also extend this exercise to storyboard your entire proposal. This video focuses on the work plan portion and uses recognized best practices for proposal strategy, while throwing in some helpful hints for running an effective storyboarding session. Look for related units on this exercise under the topic, Proposal Management.

In a detailed conversation, John Velick shares how he uses ChatGPT to streamline proposal development. By creating dedicated project spaces, training the AI on the company and work, and uploading documents like CVs, RFPs, and technical reports, John is able to generate strong first drafts for everything from project understanding sections to risk management frameworks. AI also helps with rewriting, email drafting, summarizing massive background reports, and spotting gaps in compliance with RFP requirements.

The methodology section is one of the hardest parts of a proposal to write well. This prompt set helps you break it down into four essential elements: key issues, tasks, deliverables, and value-added items. You'll practice identifying and writing each one using real-world examples from RFPs and proposals. By the end, you'll know how to build a clear, client-focused methodology that sets your team apart.

A good win theme facilitates a decision-making process in the client’s mind. That decision might be to entrust you with a project that could define their career. It might involve working side-by-side with your project manager for two years or inviting your team into their office space for six months. Whatever the case, the client is making a high-stakes choice and your job is to help them feel confident in it. This 10 step process helps you do it comprehensively and persuasively.

Rapid Fire Methodology Storyboarding brings proposal contributors together for a focused session in which, in less than 2 hours, you’ll generate all the content needed to build a strong work plan — content that normally takes days or weeks to collect. If you want, you can also extend this exercise to storyboard your entire proposal.

Mural is a visual collaboration platform designed for quick idea capture. You can add sticky notes and comments, but Mural does not offer a way to export all your text automatically. To save your input outside the board, you will need to manually copy and paste. We recommend using Mural for brainstorming, and relying on Twennie's downloadable templates when you need structured, exportable files.

A storyboard is a medium for outlining and planning a proposal. During a collaborative online or in-person exercise, proposal writers review a list of scope items on the storyboard. To each item they add key issues, tasks, and deliverables until all scope items are addressed. The Pink Team is a group of professionals in your organization who were not present during the exercise. They review this storyboard for its competitive potential before the document is written. Their input can provide valuable insight before a lot of work is done, and can be managed using this form.

This template supports the Red Team Review exercise, a structured session that helps technical and consulting teams perform a focused, impartial evaluation of a near-final proposal. The reviewers—called the Red Team—are individuals who did not contribute to the proposal and can assess it from the client’s perspective. The exercise includes six clear steps: recruiting reviewers, choosing a collaboration platform, distributing materials, preparing the proposal team, leading the review, and implementing the feedback.