Training Day XIII
Competitive Intelligence for Fun and Profit: The Role of (Un)Social Media
Instagram. SnapChat. Twitter. Pinterest. Facebook. LinkedIn. Social media use is widespread in our personal and business lives – and from a competitive intelligence viewpoint, incredibly valuable. This session will walk through how to gather and analyze information your competitors post – and how to keep them from doing the same to you! It was true in World War II, and still true today: loose lips sink ships. And when it comes to social media, what you don’t say can’t hurt you.
Randy Richter
Randy Richter is President of Richter & Company, the industry leading competitive intelligence and price to win support firm, and a long-time supporter of APMP. His company has helped clients win billions of dollars in new business over the last 10 years by turning open source data into actionable intelligence—news clients can effectively use. (And if you missed his Ignite Rap in Boston, c’mon in; you might just see an encore!).Win Strategy: Actions We Take, Not Attributes We Have
Have you ever asked someone in business development how your company is going to win an important competition, and they reply, “Oh, the customer loves us”? That’s at most a dubious “why” we might win, rather than a “how” we will win. You need a formal Win Strategy, adopted by the proposal team, which defines a set of actions needed to win, in key areas such as your team organization, project management approach, pricing, etc. This presentation, a revision of an APMP SoCal webinar from 2006, describes how to formulate your Win Strategy, and how your Win Strategy flow into Win Themes in your proposal.
Dick Eassom, CF.APMP Fellow
Dick Eassom is a Vice President at SM&A, a certified APMP Fellow, past APMP Chief Executive Officer, recipient of the APMP Founders’ Award, and presenter at 14 APMP Annual International Conferences on using Microsoft Word for proposal development. Dick has authored over 40 articles for “Wordman’s Production Corner” in the APMP Perspective, and has 20 years’ experience developing and leading proposals of all shapes and sizes to a wide variety of market sectors in the USA, UK, Canada, Australia and Germany.Winning as the Underdog
Unless we have the enviable position of being the incumbent, we are all underdogs. What will it take to win the response? In winning a competitive proposal, it becomes critical that we understand the playing field. We must prepare far in advance and be prepared to respond the day the RFP is posted. We will need a strong game plan every time we compete. We must have great capture intelligence so that we understand our opponent’s strengths and weaknesses. Combine the four “Cs” of strong capture with an aggressive game plan and your chances of winning improve dramatically!
David Bol, CPP APMP Fellow
As Sr. Vice President of Business Winning Services of Shipley Associates, Mr. David Bol has nearly 25 years as a Senior Proposal Manager helping client’s win over $80 billion dollars of revenue. He has co- authored three books for APMP that still influence winning business development practices today. Mr. Bol is APMP certified at the Professional level, is an APMP Fellow and co-founded the Rocky Mountain APMP Chapter. He has held every international APMP Board position including being CEO of the Board of Directors in 2009. Mr. Bol has presented at numerous annual APMP conferences.Learning to use the Tools of our Trade
How can we make Adobe Acrobat and Word help us to create more winning responses to RFP’s, presentations and business development efforts? We will explore resources to improve your skills with Word, Acrobat, etc., have interactive time to discover online training options, and share about other free/inexpensive tools to make proposal development easier.
Heather Kirkpatrick, CF APMP
Heather Kirkpatrick, Business Development Coordinator at PRIDE Industries, currently supports the Business Development and Proposal teams with business and proposal development, competitive research, business intelligence, compliance, and best practices. She participates in the startup of new non-federal contracts for Integrated Facilities Services, including large counties, state agencies and airports. Heather has more than 20 years of experience in Business and Proposal Development, Proposal and Project Coordination, Productions and Management, Strategic Planning, Project Management, Desktop Publishing, Non-Profit Organizations and Community Outreach. She has been a speaker on Adobe Acrobat to the Sacramento Adobe Users Group and has trained on Adobe Acrobat, Document Management, Microsoft Office, and more! to make proposal development easier.Raising the White Flag and Not Getting Shot – How to determine and report on workload capacity
How many times have you or your team been close to burnout with no end in sight? In this session, I will provide easy tools to help you determine your or your team’s true capacity for new work while factoring in those pesky things like other duties, meetings, vacations, sick time, appointments, leaves, etc. I will also share with you how I’ve effectively shared our capacity with upper management and Sales to get them to agree when enough is enough.
Cynthia Mastro, CF APMP
Cynthia currently supervises a highly effective team of proposal managers at VSP Vision Care. She has 18 years’ experience working on every aspect of proposals. She has presented on the topics of proposals, branding, executive summaries, workload capacity, online proposals, online print vendors, and utilizing knowledge bases. She has been involved in APMP for 10 years. She served as Chapter Chair for NorCal APMP from 2008–2012, Vice President for California APMP from 2013–2014, and is currently the Chapter Chair of California APMP.Your Biggest Proposal Problems (Panel)
A proposal effort that doesn’t encounter problems is a very rare thing indeed. Most proposals suffer from problems with staffing, technology, and the solicitation itself. Please bring your problems and ask our panel of experienced proposal professionals for their opinions and solutions!
Anita Wright, CPP APMP (Moderator)
Northrop Grumman
Mitch Boretz, APMP Fellow
UC Riverside Bourns School of Engineering
Steve Koger, CPP APMP Fellow
Aerojet RocketdyneCynthia Mastro, CF APMP
VSP Vision Care