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Blog

Responding to Government RFPs

Responding to government RFPs can be a huge task, depending upon the complexity of the work. Commodity proposals can be relatively easy. Service proposals, on the other hand, can require the efforts of multiple members of your staff. What’s the way to tackle a RFP response? What’s involved in the process? Strategies for responding to […]

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Finding Government Proposal Opportunities

Governmental contracts provide a significant source of income for businesses of all sizes. You can spend a lot of time finding government proposal opportunities.  For federal contract opportunities, there are a few websites you’ll want to familiarize yourself with.  You can use these websites free of charge, but you may have to register your company to submit proposals.  […]

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Proposal post mortems or why your proposal didn’t win

Proposal writing is full of ups and downs. Pulling together a proposal is a lot of work, but the truth is, it’s all speculation. Not every proposal is a winner, despite all of the time and effort you and your staff may have put into it. Proposal post mortem can help you learn why didn’t […]

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Creating a proposal response library

If a significant portion of your business cultivation strategy includes responding to RFPs, you may want to consider creating a proposal response library. A proposal response library can allow you to streamline the response process, as long as you use your library carefully. The concept of a proposal response library assumes that most issuers will […]

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Proposal writing: the cost of responding to a RFP

Putting together a response to a Request for Proposals (RFP) takes time. As the old adage says, “Time is money.” But what is the actual cost of responding to a RFP? How much weight should that carry in your decision to respond or not? What is the real cost of in-house proposal writing? In the […]

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Proposal writing: creating a realistic proposal calendar

There’s nothing worse than finding the ideal RFP for your business, only to find that the response is due in three days. Pulling together a winning proposal response takes time and effort. Unfortunately, the best proposal writing in the world can’t save a hastily prepared response. Managing the proposal writing calendar is one way to […]

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Finding work: identifying good proposal opportunities

In my observation, businesses take a funny approach to responding to government proposals. On one hand, delivering products and services to the government is a lot of work. Fulfillment includes not only delivering goods, but also completing a lot of paperwork before, during and after the sale. On the other hand, government contracts can be […]

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Writing web scripts

Video is very effective as a marketing tool, and can be incorporated easily into a website. Video is most effective at “showing” something, so demonstrations are a prime application for video. Discussions and interviews can also be engaging content, and can work well in a video marketing strategy. What kinds of video presentations need web […]

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Do articles still work in marketing?

Print and online magazines publish articles regularly as a way to draw in readers. In a traditional publication, the internal debate always rages about which is more important – the content or the advertising. The question has never been successfully answered because the content writers need the advertisers to pay for their work, and the […]

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Newsletters still work in marketing

Last week, I looked at email marketing. In some ways, email marketing now takes the place of traditional newsletters. Many companies, however, still create traditional newsletters for their customers. Let’s look at newsletters and how you can succeed with them. Content drives choice between newsletters and email Newsletters differ from email marketing in a couple […]

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