The proposal sprint

2 a.m., three days before a submission. Eight people are in a conference room, rebuilding the same resumes and past-performance write-ups they rebuilt last quarter. Two of them are the firm's best delivery leads, and their own projects are slipping. Nobody has looked at the win themes yet.

Picture a 150-person federal IT contractor. Opportunities were found by hand, often too late to shape. Bid decisions were gut feel in a meeting. Every proposal started from a blank page and took four weeks of nights. Compliance was checked by eye on the final night. The firm submitted 14 bids a year and won 22% of them. It passed on work it could have won because nobody had the bandwidth.

What SBK rebuilt

SBK mapped how the firm finds, qualifies and wins work. The bids it passed on cost the most. Each one was a chance at a contract worth about $4M. The rebuild surfaces matching opportunities daily, scored against the firm's own profile. Leaders decide to bid in an hour. Past performance, resumes and approaches live in a library that stays current. Drafts and compliance matrices assemble from it. Reviews run on a fixed rhythm. Recompete plans start in the first year of each contract.

What moved

The firm submitted 26 bids a year with the same team. The win rate rose from 22% to 30%. It won about eight contracts a year instead of three. Proposals took two weeks, not four. Bids pulled 900 billable hours a year instead of 3,000. Nobody pulled an all-nighter.