#Kickoff vs kick off professional#

Talk about the competitors and the challenges your team will face. If you make it sound like your team is guaranteed to win the bid, people are going to slack off. With all proposals, you also need to convey a tone of urgency. Your first impressions will go a long way later when there are disagreements on the team.

You, the Proposal Manager, will be relied on and looked to when decisions need to be made.

#Kickoff vs kick off professional#

Set a professional tone at the kickoff meeting and present yourself as a capable leader. Your team takes its cues from you, from the material you present to the clothes you wear. Make sure that everyone has the contact list and keep a hard copy for yourself. When we rely on you for your portion, your contribution needs to be good. We need to explicitly state that winning is a team effort and that everybody is in the room for a reason. You need the support of management to help solve issues later, if and when they arise. We want managers for all subcontractors - the people who have the responsibility and the authority to assign company resources - at the meeting to make the introductions. Participation should be mandatory for everyone who will participate in the proposal, which includes management. If a virtual event is necessary, have everyone attend virtually to keep everyone on equal footing. Seeing each other face to face helps build relationships and camaraderie, which can go a long way to smoothing bumps along the way to submitting the proposal. If possible, it’s best to bring your proposal team together in person at the start of a proposal effort. Provide refreshments if you’re doing the kickoff in person because it shows your team that you’re considerate of their time and efforts. There’s a lot to cover, including strategy, schedule, and writing assignments. Note: if your team has done capture or the RFP is intricate, then the kickoff meeting might take four to eight hours. The Proposal Manager creates an annotated outline, builds a schedule, assigns the sections, assembles all of the background materials from capture and incorporates them into the kickoff slide deck, and creates a compliance matrix that also serves as the assignment matrix for the daily status calls.Īt OST, we recommend that Proposal Managers accomplish the following nine goals to set themselves up for a successful kickoff and a winning bid. Once the Request for Proposal (RFP) drops, the Proposal Manager normally takes the next 2 to 4 days (on a 30-day submission) to thoroughly develop the plan for submitting the proposal, which includes preparing the kick-off meeting slide deck and agenda. The kickoff is your opportunity as the Proposal Manager to communicate to the team that you have the ability, skills, and the leadership to carry them to a winning proposal.

Team members need to leave a kickoff meeting knowing exactly what to do and ready to work on assigned tasks right away. If the deadline is tight and the proposal is complex, you may not recover from this first stumble, and you’ll end up rushing to finish a subpar bid. Those few days are a tremendous loss of momentum at the exact time when your team needs to be fully engaged and working together to develop the proposal. If you botch the kickoff, your team will leave the meeting without a clear plan, and they’ll likely wait to start work on the proposal. It can set a Proposal Manager and his team up for success or failure on a bid. A proposal kickoff meeting is arguably the single most important event of the entire proposal schedule.