Page 248 - Writing Winning Business Proposals

Paramount Consulting’s Proposal Opportunity at the ABC Company 239

The two of you leave the meeting feeling that you have a good preliminary
understanding of ABC’s capacity situation and that you have established a rea-
sonable rapport with the group. However, you recognize that you need to know
much more about ABC’s operation to scope the proposal properly. This, you both
feel, can be accomplished through Gilmore’s interviews. You also agree, however,
that a major objective of the interview process should be to better understand the
people on the selection team, including their interests and perceived study objec-
tives, and how the results of the study could affect them. That will enable you to
make the proposal responsive to the needs of each member of the team.

February 14: Individual Meetings with the Major Players

“I believe that your market forecasts will play a major role in the proposed study.”
Gilmore is talking to Collins. “So I would like to understand better how they
were developed.”
“Most of my data,” she says, “come from reports published regularly by the
industry trade group, the Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers, in
which ABC participates. These data were supplemented by others from Appliance
Design surveys, Standard & Poor’s industry surveys, and ABC’s own historical
data.” Because there is a good deal of consistency among the data from the dif-
ferent sources, Collins is confident that her conclusions on the overall industry
forecasts are valid.
“However,” she points out, “my development of optimistic and conservative
forecasts is based on my interpretation of ABC’s position in the market.”
She explains that the division’s steady increases in market share are due to its
ability to control costs, maintain quality, and provide a high level of service to its
customers:
“The optimistic forecast assumes that ABC will be successful in maintain-
ing those positions; the conservative forecast assumes some slippage in market
share.”
According to Collins, maintaining or increasing market share is important to
ABC’s success:
“Not only does it affect our operating results, it is also a performance measure
in our bonus plan. Furthermore, it affects the level of autonomy we enjoy as well
as the ease with which we can obtain capital funds from Consolidated.”
Gilmore asks Collins to assess the various possibilities for expanding capac-
ity that were discussed the previous week. Collins isn’t really knowledgeable
about manufacturing operations, she says, and has little sense of just how many
additional resources would be required. However, she is concerned about adding
capacity entirely at the existing site: