The Southern California chapter

of the Association of Proposal

Management Professionals

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Proposal Super Bowl: Getting There and Winning

Join us for the APMP-SOCAL annual Training Day, Friday, October 22

APMP-SOCAL's annual Training Day is getting bigger and better. First, we again present APMP Foundation-level accreditation coaching on Thursday, October 21. Members can register for the training only, or for the training and the exam, which will result in accreditation at the Foundation level. Accreditation is a great way to build your resume and develop your career. The training session prepares you for the examination and refreshes your knowledge of the basics of the proposal business.

On Friday, October 22, we present Training Day. For the first time, this event will offer two tracks: a series of traditional sessions and more intensive workshops on graphics and short-turnaround/small proposals. Our topics this year:

●  Coach's Corner: Success Alliances, presented by Jodi Walker and Sonja Nelson of Northrop Grumman.

●  Developing the Price-to-Win: Knowledge Link, presented by Michael O'Guin.

●  Improving Your Playbook through Benchmarking, presented by Howard Nutt.

●  This is No Fantasy League: Virtual Proposals Are Reality, presented by Mitch Boretz, UC Riverside.

The workshop program:

●  Go Garphics for the Win: Graphics Conceptualization, presented by Mike Parkinson, The 24 Hour Company

●  Secret Star Players: Tailoring teh 96-Step Playbook for Short-Turnaround and Small Proposals, presented by Shipley Associates

As always, your registration includes parking at the Disneyland Resort and lunch.

Sponsorship: APMP-SOCAL welcomes capture and proposal-related companies and consultants to sponsor certain events during the training day. Examples include sponsoring the Continental Breakfast, one of several breaks where we serve refreshments, or lunch. You or your company would provide an agreed-upon level of funding to sponsor the cost of the event, and SOCAL staff will advertise your sponsorship with a sign and advertising space at that event. This is an excellent opportunity to get your company name and product information in front of a large number of key Southern California proposal professionals. If you are interested in being a sponsor, please contact steven.koger@pwr.utc.com no later than October 1.

Color-coded effective proposal teams

Dr. Charles Pellerin, author of the book How NASA Builds Teams, gave an informative presentation to the chapter on June 24 describing how different personalities work -- and don't work -- on proposal efforts. Just as a person is right-handed or left-handed, an individual is predominantly either a green (one who cultivates people), a yellow (one who emphasizes inclusiveness on the team), a blue (a creative, outside-the-box thinker), or an orange (focused on process and control). The leadership of the proposal team, the composition of the team, and the personalities of the people responsible for making the procurement decision can predict the outcome. A strongly blue team certainly will have many creative ideas, but will it be able to convince a strongly orange procurement team that is most concerned with schedule and price? Probably not.

Most people exhibit some traits of all four colors, or dimensions, but Dr. Pellerin said it is usually easy to determine what "color" a person is. He also warned that we tend to see our coloredness in the people around us. If we are creative blues, for example, we might interpret signals from the procurement team that back up our notion that they want a blue solution, even if that isn't really the case. This is one way that proposal opportunities are lost. A copy of the presentation and a link to helpful resources, including a self-diagnostic tool for teams, are on our Library page.

We thank SM&A for providing the webcast connectivity, and we thank Northrop Grumman, United Technologies, Oracle, and ESRI for providing meeting venues.

Humor in the proposal workplace

Humor can motivate, build team spirit, and help us get through long, busy days of proposal preparation. Ruth Belanger shared many of her favorite comics and a few exercises in humor at our April 2010 webcast meeting. More than 40 APMP members and guests participated from five venues around Southern California.

So, what are some of Ruth's favorites, and what captions did APMP'ers send in for this photo of the dog? Download Ruth's presentation from our Library page to find out.

Getting your proposal to the top of the pile

Chris Carter of Xait Inc. shared tips for writing winning proposals and managing the work of multiple authors in our first webcast meeting of 2010. Please see our Library page for a copy of the presentation. Chris discussed effective approaches to establishing a relationship with the customer, writing and graphics tips, and organization and management. We thank Chris and Xait for presenting the talk and providing the webcast connectivity. We thank Northrop-Grumman, Oracle, Hewlett-Packard, and ESRI for providing venues. We anticipate better weather for our next meeting in March!

Last revised 09/01/2010