Why SMEs push back
I feel for our SMEs. They have full-time jobs building products, managing risk, advising clients, fixing problems or protecting the business. Some facilitate optimised stakeholder-aligned thought leadership. No idea what that is, but it sounds important!
They have got their own work to do, then they are pulled into a bid, handed urgent questions, and given deadlines that override their schedules. “Working on RFPs” probably is not in their job description. Is it any wonder their weary response is: “Can’t you just look at the last proposal?”
The bottleneck is a flow problem
They are not difficult. They are rational. Proposal teams are under pressure to respond quickly and accurately. That lands on SMEs too. 49% of us cite SME collaboration as a top challenge, 48% struggle with SME delays and 46% with finding content. The bottleneck is not usually willingness. It is how the work flows. To uncork it, we must understand our impact on SMEs, make their lives easier, and use their expertise better.
The hidden power of the knowledge base
We often see pre-written content as a way to help bid teams respond faster. A good bid library is not boilerplate. Instead, we need curated answer components from which we craft great proposal content. It saves time, protects core messaging, and keeps legal and compliance teams happy. The best knowledge bases are not dusty shelves of “stuff we once submitted”. They are governed, searchable, owned and maintained. And AI makes this even more important. We want better answers and we need people to trust them. Otherwise, it helps us make faster mistakes at scale. Efficiently wrong is still wrong!
Change the ask, change the relationship
The same knowledge base proposal teams use to find content can also help our SMEs. Instead of asking someone to create answers under deadline pressure, we ask them to validate answers we already have. It asks less of their time and more of their judgement. SMEs own accuracy. Proposal teams own usability.
I have seen this work in a large organisation where multiple commercial teams repeatedly asked specialists for the same answers. Those duplicate requests now flow through a centralised knowledge base. Specialists maintain the source content, while response teams reuse the latest approved version and only return when judgement or a genuine update is needed.
Start with repeated questions
Identify 20–30 questions, agree owners, set review cycles, and make the latest approved answer easy to reuse. You do not need to boil the ocean. Just stop boiling the same kettle every week.
A better bidding culture
For SMEs, the benefit is fewer repeated questions, less stress, and more time for their actual job. For the business, useful knowledge stops living in busy people’s heads.
A knowledge base says: “We value your time. We will only come to you when your judgement is needed.” That is how we uncork the bottleneck. Not by chasing harder, but by collaborating smarter.
Darrell Woodward
Darrell Woodward is an award-winning consultant helping organisations unleash the full power of proposal automation to win more business faster. As a Bid Geek and coffee lover, he believes technology in bidding is about combining the right blend of content beans – compelling narratives, tailored solutions, and persuasive arguments – and the expertise of bidding baristas to craft the perfect proposal brew.
