Here's a proposal health service announcement for proposal professionals!

Beware of the following 10 "illnesses" that may infect you or your proposal team colleagues. These maladies (and others) are identified in an article that I wrote for the APMP Journal: "from A to Z, the Very 'Unofficial' APMP Glossary" -- see the Defining Moments feature on the ProposalCafe.com Home page. Eventually in The ProposalCafe Blog, I'll address all of the illnesses listed in the article.

Please note that the illness symptoms are described, but not the treatments. However, the information will at least allow you diagnose your illness -- and determine if your medical insurance provides coverage for the treatment.

1. Bait and Switch-itis: An ailment marked by offering key personnel in your proposal, especially program/project managers, with the intent of changing these key personnel after you get the contract because they really will not be available for the job. (See also program/project manager.)

2. Chasing the FedEx Truck-itis: An ailment marked by the desperate, last-minute dash to get your proposal to a shipping service before it closes; if untreated can become a more virulent strain called chasing the flight reservation-itis.

3. Clutched Hand-itis: An ailment marked by the stubborn reluctance of proposal writers to release their section draft for a review or final production.

4. Copier Attitude-itis: An ailment marked by the breakdown or paper jam of a vindictive copier when it senses your anxiety to get proposal copies with a looming proposal deadline; related to a strain that inflicts printers called printer attitude-itis.

5. Diminishing Return-itis: An ailment marked by the point late in the proposal development process in which additional work is not justified by the resulting proposal improvement; afflicts perfectionists who try to develop the perfect proposal when there is no such thing as a perfect proposal.

 6. Drinking Your Own Bathwater-itis: An ailment of overconfidence in your ability to produce a winning proposal, marked by the belief that the contract is yours to win because the prospective customer really wants you to win and there is no way your competitors can win; has a related strain called eating your own dog food-itis that affects overconfident canine lovers.

 7. Feel Your Pain-itis: The ailment marked by telling the prospective customer that you understand the importance of providing the product/service with little or no explanation of your approach for doing so or the benefit of that approach.

 8. News-itis: An ailment marked by good news that you won the proposal, and the bad news that you won the proposal and now have to provide what you promised in the proposal.

9. Incumbent-itis: An ailment marked by incumbents letting their over-confidence in a re-compete procurement lead them to put less effort in their proposal than they should.

10. Intro Typo-itis: An ailment marked by the appearance of a typo, grammatical error, or misspelled word within the first two pages of a proposal introduction/summary (or executive summary) no matter how many times the section is reviewed, proofed, and spell-checked.

Written by :

Chuck Keller