Hypothetical Scenarios

Question 1

What do you do if someone important is unavailable for a review that was previously planned?

Answer 1

Go ahead with scheduled review, but conduct a separate review at a time when the absentee reviewer’s inputs can be taken down

Question 2

What do you do if a teaming partner doesn’t do things your way?

Answer 2

Explain it to the proposal manager of the teaming partner and get them on board to follow your processes

Question 3

Its an important bid and you need to report to senior management at various stages. How do you plan it out?

Answer 3

Include senior management reviews as part of the overall proposal schedule

Question 4

How much time do you hold as a reserve for contingencies?

Answer 4

10%

Question 5

When do you hold the kickoff meeting?

Answer 5

After sufficient planning and full reading of the RFP document. 10% of the schedule is allotted to preparation before kickoff

Question 6

You have 10 weeks to submit a proposal. How many days do you hold in reserve for contingencies?

Answer 6

10 weeks=50 working days. 10% contingency=5 working days. (Note: Scheduling is based on working days, not weeks)

Question 7

You have 10 weeks to submit a proposal. How long do you take to plan?

Answer 7

10 weeks=50 working days. 10%-20% time for planning. 5-10 days can be used for planning, scheduling, allotting responsibilities and preparing for kickoff

Question 8

When you plan a proposal where 2 members have knowledge of a subject, how do you allocate responsibility and accountability?

Answer 8

Only one person should be accountable and own the task. The other person can be a contributor to the effort, but should not be given equal accountability

Question 9

As a proposal manager, you want your proposal to be reviewed. Who leads the review?

Answer 9

Anyone knowledgeable, but you. It helps you get an independent, external opinion

Question 10

You are working on a teaming project. Do you invite them to all reviews?

Answer 10

Wherever appropriate, include teaming partners in the review. It helps get an external opinion and can increase win rate

Question 11

The collaboration platform is not working great. Should everyone be asked to save a local file to ensure that no content is lost?

Answer 11

No. The proposal team alone focusses on version controls and version management.

Question 12

Your proposal management plan has been created and got a sign off from approving teams. Suddenly someone says they cannot commit to it. What do you do?

Answer 12

Nothing. Unless the customer has changes in deadlines, once the proposal management plan is approved, everyone has to work towards following it.

Question 13

You’re asked to draw a budget of how much it will cost to build a proposal. What items do you consider and what do you leave?

Answer 13

You leave nothing. Everything that goes into a proposal must be budgeted, including labor, administration costs, cost of managers’ time, software, tools, meals, communication costs, etc.

Question 14

You budget 10% time for risk of contingencies in the proposal development process as part of your risk management process. Is that right?

Answer 14

No. That is not a risk management strategy.

Question 15

To avoid loss of proposal data files what must you do?

Answer 15

Figure out ways to backup data. APMP recommends doing this on an hourly basis

Question 16

You have a teaming partner to work along with while working on a proposal. What’s the most common problem you are likely to face?

Answer 16

A difference in work culture

Question 17

Someone missed attending a daily meeting. Who’s responsibility is it to inform them regarding what was discussed?

Answer 17

No one. APMP recommends that the person who misses a meeting must refer to meeting notes, or speak to the team during another time to find out what was discussed

Question 18

As proposal manager, you are used to sending emails to get work done. The rest of the team is used to having calls. Which method of communication takes precedence?

Answer 18

Theirs. If you want to get work done, communicate in a way that is easy and relatable for the majority of the team

Question 19

Various team members use different versions of MS Word. Different versions cause formatting issues. As proposal manager, what do you do?

Answer 19

Ask and see who is using which version. Use the version that is the lowest common denominator. Not the one that is the most advanced.

This is because documents made on lower versions of MS Word open on advanced versions of MS Word. The opposite does not work

Question 20

You are working on a teaming project. What are the most important challenges to address first?

Answer 20

Version control and document sharing

Question 21

During the meeting, someone says, “I will discuss it with X and Y and get back to you”. As proposal manager, what must you do?

Answer 21

If the discussion is not confidential, set up a one-to-one meeting. Also inform the team ahead of time what calls they can expect to have

Question 22

You need to have a kick off meeting. What material should you have ready before the call and discuss during the call?

Answer 22

Draft executive summary, proposal outline, bid schedule, requirements checklist, competitor analysis, win themes

Question 23

You have a teaming partner. They have different reviews from yours. Which review must be followed?

Answer 23

Yours if you are the leading team with the majority stake

Question 24

A content plan is provided to contributors by you, the
proposal manager. It contains a detailed list of strategies to be followed for writing content in different sections. Is it good enough?

Answer 24

No. Its missing the questions in the RFP.

The content plan should also contain a list of questions asked by customers. Contributors should not have to oscillate between response documents and the RFP

Question 25

You are tasked to develop a proposal’s strategy. What do you do?

Answer 25

Use help from the Opportunity Strategy/ Opportunity Assessment and Planning phases. Plan and articulate ways to : emphasize on strengths, mitigate weaknesses, downplay competitor strengths and highlight competitor weakness

Question 26

How do you make sure contributors use the proposal strategy?

Answer 26

Include it in the content plan

Question 27

You are tasked to develop a proposal’s content plan. What goes into it?

Answer 27

Proposal Strategy and detailed RFP requirements split into sections, along with names of contributors for each section/ query of the customer

Question 28

How do you make the proposal strategy persuasive?

Answer 28

Add tangible, quantifiable proof

Question 29

A teaming partner wants to submit a separate bid of their own to the same customer for the same opportunity. What do you?

Answer 29

Consider it as a real risk and figure out how to mitigate it

Question 30

You previously executed a project that failed. The customer knows about it. What do you do?

Answer 30

Address it in your proposal and write about what measures have been taken to prevent it from happening again.

Question 31

You see glaring risks in the project that you are proposing, which the customer may be able to identify. What do you do?

Answer 31

Disclose the risks associated to this project and mention how they will be mitigated if they arise.

Question 32

There are internal risks like someone leaving the company. Must this be addressed?

Answer 32

Not if it does not directly impact the project performance. If it might impact the project performance, information must be given on how negative impact will be mitigated

Question 33

Someone says something to you regarding risks. How do you decide if it is a proposal risk?

Answer 33

A proposal risk is associated with the project approach (technical and managerial) that is being presented to the customer in the proposal. If the risk does not impact the project, it is not a proposal risk.

Question 34

You have to develop proposal plan. What is your starting point?

Answer 34

Use the opportunity plan as the foundation and build your proposal plan as an extension of the opportunity plan.

Question 35

When must you share the RFP package with the team?

Answer 35

Before the kickoff meeting

Question 36

Should you provide a more detailed plan after the kickoff?

Answer 36

No. The goal of the kickoff meeting is to provide a full and complete plan. IF there are elements that are discussed which go beyond the proposal management plan, they may be shared as part of a revised proposal management plan

Question 37

Someone needs to print and hand-deliver the proposal. When do you identify who and when that will be done?

Answer 37

In the beginning as part of the overall schedule, and as part of the overall proposal management plan. This is not something to be discussed one day before it must go to the customer. Names and timelines must be figured out while initially scheduling

Question 38

The proposal manager is backing up the proposal once a day in their personal hard-drive/ laptop. Is this a good practice?

Answer 38

No. It ideally needs to be done every hour. Also laptops and hard drives are prone to failure. Cloud tools are ideal.

Question 39

As a proposal manager, you want to ensure that the highest quality of work is submitted to the customer for a specific strategic deal. You want everyone’s work to be top class. What do you do?

Answer 39

Get leadership involved and involve them in status reporting. This ensures the team is committed and provides their best work

Question 40

You are reading through a proposal’s executive summary. How do you know if it has a good value proposition?

Answer 40

Is there a clear statement that addresses how it would positively impact a customer’s business? Bonus points for tangibility and quantifiable statements.

Question 41

You are asked to build a bidder comparison matrix. When you score yourself and other bidders, what perspective do you use?

Answer 41

The Bidder Comparison Matrix should be completed from the customer’s perspective, an estimate of the customer’s perception of each competitor’s ability to satisfy that issue

Question 42

You are tasked with ensuring that your proposal is responsive. What do you do?

Answer 42

In addition to being compliant with the customer’s requests, you assess their underlying needs and address it in your RFP response.

Question 43

You are tasked with building a Bidder Comparison Matrix. How do you score it?

Answer 43

If you dont have enough time, weigh customer issues using ratings like High, Medium and Low. If you have sufficient time weigh customer issues on a score of 100.

Question 44

You are tasked with building a Bidder Comparison Matrix. What goes into it?

Answer 44

Customer issues and hot buttons

Question 45

Senior management called. You are asked to list down your customer’s hot buttons. What are they?

Answer 45

The most important stuff. They are singularly important issues or set of issues that are likely to drive buying decisions.

Question 46

You are scouting the internet to find information regarding your competitor’s likely solution and weaknesses. Is that ethical?

Answer 46

Yes. Using publicly available, verified information is completely ethical even if it puts your competitor in a tight spot.

Question 47

Can you name your competitor in your proposal for the purpose of showing that you are better than them?

Answer 47

Yes, as long as it is from a report provided by an independent third party, an industrial publication or verified content from social media. (like Gartner or Forrester)

Question 48

You were unable to get a hold of the competitor’s business plan/ proposal tactics. What must you do?

Answer 48

Rely on experience, available data and make assumptions.

Question 49

You receive a draft of the executive summary. It contains information on benefits to the customer, motivating elements, and a summary of the proposed solution. What do you think about it?

Answer 49

Not good enough. It is going into too much detail.

It ideally should not have content on the proposed solution. It must focus on benefits to the customer, not the underlying solution, products or services.

Question 50

The customer’s template for RFP response does not include an executive summary. What do you do?

Answer 50

Include an executive summary through other means. E.g. via a supporting document, or a cover letter, or the email you send while sending the RFP response package.

Question 51

You need to make sure that your proposal’s theme statement stays in the memory of the evaluator. How would you do that?

Answer 51

Repeat it verbatim or through minor modifications multiple times throughout the proposal.

Question 52

You need graphics team to start working. When should they start working

Answer 52

Counterintuitively, graphic designers should craft their work before content is written.

Question 53

What must you do before designing a graphic?

Answer 53

Write the action caption. The action caption should guide the design of the graphic

Question 54

A contributor needs to go on pre-planned leave during a critical phase of the proposal development. As proposal manager, what do you do?

Answer 54

Reassign workloads so that the contributor can leave during the pre-planned leave days.

Question 55

A large, strategic RFP is anticipated to be released soon. For the purpose of this RFP, your organization intends to team up with a partner to be fully compliant. How do you ensure that the proposal management between you and the partnering team is seamless?

Answer 55

Get the teaming partner to work with you on a sample proposal, or an existing opportunity. That way you understand culture and conflict ahead of the strategic RFP that will be released in the future. This will also allow partnering teams to work knowing key expectations from each other. It also allows you to leverage on each other’s strengths.