I've been telling an incredible story recently, and I feel like I just need to share it one more time. Maybe then this will finally feel real!
🗸 Three and a half years ago, SJ and I signed our first contract as Bid Boss.
🗸 Three years ago, we invited our first consultant to join our team.
🗸 Two years ago, our team had expanded to five consultants.
🗸 One year ago we dramatically reduced our time spent on client projects to focus on running the business.
Today, Bid Boss has six staff members and over fifty consultants on our roster of business development proposal and strategy experts.
With all of the amazing folks now working through Bid Boss, we're able to offer the kind of full circle support that we know BD teams need to win.
Because things have changed so rapidly, especially in the past year, we wanted to take a moment to share a few of our service areas that may not have been online the last time y'all worked with us! This is just a sample...
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In-country capture planning support, including leading design and facilitation of creative approaches to prospective partner identification, donor and partner visit support, technical design workshops, and management solutioning.
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Strategic planning facilitation, including assessing and analyzing business development strategies, team structures, success and growth metrics, and return on investment.
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Holistic cost and pricing support, drawing on experience in both contracts and co-ags, including bid support and helping teams start-up financial their first USAID prime awards.
On top of all of this, we're continuing to expand support in proposal writing and management, developmental and copy editing, and all aspects of technical design through both surge support and long-term retainer-based collaboration.
What makes for an effective organization ↔️ consultant relationship?
First, I love that y'all worry about that. It's v cute and we appreciate it.
Business development teams can come in lots of different shapes and sizes. They're all struggling with variations of the same challenges, often at varying levels of complexity and relative success. But there are a few factors that can help a relationship with a client go from middling to great:
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Clearly identified roles and responsibilities. This may seem like a no-brainer, but the more clarity we have about what you want and who is responsible for which components of which deliverables, the easier it is for your team to collaborate with our team!
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Funder and opportunity intel. Although a lot of our consultants are experienced with specific funders, we always appreciate when you are able to tell us tons of information about the specifics of the opportunity you're pursuing, details about the local context, and all the deets on competitors.
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Sufficient resources, both internal and external. While it is technically possible to hand off most of a bid to a consultant (which of course we're happy to take on), we find the best clients have the right people inside the organization on board to ensure we know about core approaches and institutional past performance.
No matter what our clients are looking for, we're happy to advise on how best to source the right people, training, and tools to get the job done. Just schedule a call to talk through your coming proposal season.
