Proposal Team Management: How to Get the Information You Need for Your Proposal

One of the top complaints I hear from marketers lamenting the proposal process, and one of the top challenges I struggled with as an in-house marketer, was proposal team management. More specifically, marketers often feel like they’re forced to drag content out of their team, constantly begging for narratives, project information, or resume updates that are critical to proposal development but appear to be of little consequence to those outside of the marketing department.

Creating a culture of marketing buy-in takes work. As a marketer, you have to make tough choices, deciding when to push and when to concede, which may make you feel like you’re compromising on the quality of your job. With no buy-in from outside staff like project managers, principals, or other team members, you risk developing a toxic work environment where your proposal team perceives you as a nuisance, continually trying to add to their already full workloads.

It’s an ugly truth that many of us learn the hard way – marketing is not always perceived as an essential service, as crucial to the business’ success as the delivery of architectural or engineering services.

You may not have a toxic work environment (I hope not!), but you may still struggle to communicate the importance of updating marketing materials to your team. If you ever feel like a tooth extraction would be easier than extracting information from your team, then read on. These are my top tips for creating a culture of marketing buy-in and improving your proposal team management efforts.

Make it easy, go to them

Improving our proposal team management starts by understanding our proposal team. That means recognizing that project managers, principals, architects, engineers, drafters, and anyone outside of marketing have their own responsibilities and priorities. We might need a project update right now, but they might have a client deadline right now. In a perfect world, marketing would be a part of everyone’s day-to-day responsibilities. Project managers would update project information in your database without being asked, staff would send you photography from the field as a building is constructed, and your life would be infinitely easier.

We don’t quite live in a perfect world, though. Our first instinct as marketers is to fire off an email asking a team member to please fill in this project information, provide this reference information, write this narrative, or whatever else we need, and then expect a reply. In reality, that email probably gets lost or knocked down on the priority list and possibly forgotten. It’s not malicious, it’s just reality.

That’s where making it easy and going to them comes in. Instead of firing off that email, schedule a quick meeting, and invite a team member to have a conversation. Offer to take notes, draft the content you need yourself, and then have them review and edit it. This will save them time, which they’ll appreciate. Plus, for team members that aren’t confident in their writing skills – you’ve just provided them an out, removing a potential roadblock and paving the way for easier communication.

Making it easy is about asking the right questions

Instead of asking your team member to write a project narrative, for example, lead them toward the content you want by asking specific questions.

Create opportunities for your team to brag by asking if there’s a particular aspect of the project they’re proud of, or what their favorite part of working on the project was.

Dig into the challenges of the project by letting them vent about difficulties. Ask if anything didn’t go as planned, if there was any part of the project that was worrisome or required creative thinking. Then gently prompt them to discuss how any issues were resolved.

Using targeted, specific questions like these will help your team members open up. Once they’ve started, you might find that they’re quite willing to continue talking, so give them an opportunity to add things they find important. Ask ‘is there anything else I should know?’ before moving on.

Remember to keep these conversations as brief and painless as possible. You may need to spread multiple requests out over several days so that you don’t compromise your team members’ other responsibilities.

Need help with creative questions to get your team members talking about their projects? Head to the free resource library to grab the project description questionnaire with 30 questions that will spur conversation.

Proposal team management starts with creating a culture of buy-in from the top

We already know that our other team members have their own responsibilities, and often feel like marketing tasks aren’t part of their job description. They may actively resist helping you out, complain that it isn’t their job to do marketing, or bump your requests so far down their task list that they get buried under piles of specs.

Going to them and making it easy for your team members to give you the information you need is one way to build good will with them. Another is to stress the importance of marketing to them. If you have hard evidence, like a proposal with great team involvement that resulted in a win and another with minimal team involvement that resulted in a loss, use that to show them how important they are to the process. Make them feel like a valued part of the marketing team.

Make sure leadership is on board with your marketing efforts. They need to understand the important role marketing plays in business operations and be involved in crucial marketing and proposal decisions. Leadership also has the authority to encourage the integration of marketing tasks into team member responsibilities. They can also lead by example – if leadership is invested in marketing and approaches it with enthusiasm rather than begrudgingly, other team members are more likely to buy-in.

Agree on a strategy, and stick to it

Having a clearly defined proposal strategy can help immensely with proposal team management. Invite key team members to proposal strategy sessions so that they can be involved in the strategy development. This is when you’ll identify your proposal win themes, which give your entire team a clear direction for the messaging that you will develop in your proposal. When a team member buys-in to a set strategy, they’re more likely to be invested in the proposal outcome and development.

Make them feel like part of the team. Encourage involvement, use your win themes to hype up your team, and remind them that you’re all working toward the same goal: winning new work.

A few other notes on proposal team management

• Provide a direct reason for requesting information. You’re more likely to receive help if you request specific information for a project sheet for a proposal due on XX day than if you reach out and request information just to update your files.
• Be proactive about storing your information. If you receive anything new from your team members during the proposal process, make sure you file it away and update the appropriate files as part of your proposal closeout process.
• Don’t be adversarial. It’s easy to get upset and frustrated with team members who don’t understand the importance of what you’re asking for, or who aren’t responsive to your requests. That just means you need to find a different way to communicate the importance to them.

Proposal team management takes work. With the right team members and the right approach – which will vary depending on how you and your team work – you can create a positive marketing environment.