As you can see in Example B, whatever the weighted go/no go percentage reached or type of proposal (letter or full), it’s guessing at whether the profitability percentage would be reached by the effort. If pursuit teams are not working in tandem with an informed marketing department, they are not working with all the information. Even with a higher perceived chance of winning, or a streamlined proposal development process that results in less time and cost per proposal, the project may still need to be carefully managed to extract a profit, if any can be reasonably expected. Marketing leadership must be working side-by-side with whoever is making the go/no go decisions within your firm, to keep average proposal effort costs in line. An informed, analytical marketing team can grade proposals by response effort and project a range for costs associated to respond. Given the correct tools and support from leadership, an experienced marketing manager can essentially function as the project manager of the pursuit process to align, measure, and control costs in a pursuit, rather than hand off the pursuit to a PM team with higher overhead… meaning the pursuit stands a better chance at higher profitability.
Often, all it takes is education to get everyone looking at the numbers and passionate about how they can make their work more profitable, efficient, and effective.
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