Managing Large, Complex Pursuits

By Mercedez L. Thompson, MA, CP APMP, Shipley BDC

Recently, I’ve managed some of the most complex pursuits I’ve come across in more than 13 years of professional marketing services. In some ways, I’d thought I’d seen everything, but I suppose that’s the beauty of our jobs. Our industries evolve, the ways our clients choose partners evolve. The way we win work evolves.

An integral part of our business development process and commitment to continuous improvement is making sure we debrief and apply lessons learned. So coming off a busy season with some of our most challenging pursuits, I met with several of my pursuit team members as well as our sales and client-facing account teams to discuss what we learned and what we could have done better.

Among our complaints and opportunities, all these pursuits seemed to culminate with one issue: we wasted a lot of time and effort that could have been better used with some well-coordinated planning and leadership to set clear expectations. Here’s what we came up with:

Pre-RFP work is important but can be wasteful.

Pre-RFP work is essential but can sometimes lead to inefficiencies. Our teams have seen significant returns by investing time in influencing the RFP and refining our win strategy. This includes highlighting key strengths and differentiators while addressing the customer’s needs effectively. It also involves analyzing the competition, identifying critical customer pain points, and crafting a compelling value proposition.

However, we have also wasted considerable time and effort making assumptions about the proposal format and the specific way clients would request information. In some cases, teams spent weeks creating infographics and slide decks that were ultimately unusable. That time could have been better spent documenting the client’s current state and developing resourcing and staffing plans.

Moving forward, a key best practice is to focus pre-RFP efforts on strategy—shaping the RFP, identifying differentiation opportunities, and aligning the team for execution. We should avoid spending excessive time on scope-specific deliverables, responses, or visuals that may not be needed. For example, one team spent eight weeks developing an 80-page PowerPoint deck in preparation for an RFP, only to find that the final submission required a 20-page Word document with no supplemental materials allowed. While the preparation helped shape our solution, it also resulted in hundreds of hours of wasted effort.

Lesson: By refining our pre-RFP approach, we can maximize impact while reducing inefficiencies, ensuring our time and resources are used effectively.

Once the RFP drops, drive solution first.

When an RFP is released, the first priority should be defining the solution based on the scope outlined by the client. How will we solve the client’s problem? What specific benefits will they gain?

These two questions are the foundation of every proposal. Moreover, the solution itself dictates all other key elements—schedule, organizational structure, staffing, teaming, subcontracting, and pricing.

A common challenge we’ve encountered is the significant rework required when we attempt to answer RFP questions before developing the solution. Why does the most critical information often come last? This misalignment leads to weeks of revisions as we retrofit responses to match the final solution.

This issue often arises from a tactical, well-intentioned approach. Leaders see a list of client questions and requirements and immediately assign team members to start drafting responses—understandably aiming to make immediate progress on a quick deadline. However, once the solution and schedule take shape, we find ourselves scrambling. We must revisit completed responses, reassign contributors, and rewrite content to align with the refined solution. This process is time-consuming and frustrating. Once responses are written, there’s a natural resistance to deleting or drastically revising them, leading to cluttered, unclear answers. Additionally, team members who initially worked on the responses feel frustrated—why was their work scrapped? Why weren’t expectations set earlier?

Lesson: While proposals will never run perfectly to plan, a key best practice is to drive the solution first and allow it to inform the rest of the proposal. This may mean delaying the start of some requirements or deliverables, but in the long run, it ensures responses are clear, concise, and aligned—ultimately saving time, reducing frustration, and improving proposal quality.

Leverage a small leadership review team

One of the most persistent challenges in our proposal process is the issue of too many decision-makers. As our pursuits become increasingly interdisciplinary, more specialists, principals, and partners get involved. While having expertise in every area is beneficial, having multiple final decision-makers working against one another is not.

The problems that arise from excessive leadership involvement are significant. Decisions become harder to make and even harder to communicate. Conflicting feedback leads to confusion, causing rework and inefficiency. Reviews turn into endless cycles of revision, with responses being approved by one leader only to be overhauled by another. Instead of thoughtful iteration, we end up in a loop of wasteful and contradictory edits, leaving nothing truly final. This lack of alignment hinders progress and frustrates teams.

While specialist input is essential—especially for complex, high-revenue opportunities—effective leadership requires a small, trusted committee of reviewers and decision-makers. This group should divide responsibilities logically, trust each other’s expertise, and ensure that reviews are efficient rather than redundant.

Lesson: Thorough content review is necessary… but so is moving forward. In my experience, proposals are always stronger when we align on a response, execute, review, approve, and finalize—rather than reworking content seven or eight times under the direction of as many people. When we don’t streamline our leadership structure, our responses often reflect that same lack of clarity.

Finish with a strong cover letter or executive summary

A cover letter or executive summary is a crucial component of any proposal. It provides a quick, compelling answer to the fundamental question: Why should we win this work? Designed for executives who won’t sift through every detail of your solution, this is your at-a-glance opportunity to imprint your differentiators in the evaluator’s mind. When done well, your cover letter or summary should be referenced by decision-makers as they justify awarding you the contract.

While it’s valuable to start brainstorming this section pre-RFP, it should be the final piece to come together. That’s because it must reflect your fully developed solution, pricing, and execution strategy—elements that evolve throughout the proposal process. However, a common mistake is drafting these documents early and failing to truly revamp them before submission.

To get this right, first define your solution. Get clarity on how you’ll deliver, what the client will achieve, and why your approach stands out. Then, review your cover letter and executive summary with fresh eyes:

• Does it clearly articulate what we are offering?
• Does it concisely explain how we will execute?
• Does it make the value to the client immediately apparent?

If not, you’ve failed at the most important part of the proposal.

These lessons learned and best practices are designed for complex proposals with multiple disciplines managed by sophisticated sales and marketing teams. If your team isn’t facing these exact challenges yet, that’s okay—every organization evolves at its own pace. However, as opportunities grow larger and more intricate, and RFPs reflect that increasing complexity, it becomes essential to learn from past mistakes and refine our approach. By proactively adopting smarter strategies, we can improve efficiency, enhance proposal quality, and ultimately increase our chances of winning in our ever-changing world.