If I were Decision Maker for a Day, I’d do one thing above all: drag proposals out of the “cost centre” cellar and put them on the sales, growth and risk-management stage.
Most leaders treat proposals like unavoidable admin. Paper-pushing you tolerate until you can “sell directly”. I’ve seen that thinking drive two everyday bad decisions: under-resourcing the proposal team, and treating AI as a cheap replacement for experienced people. Both shrink win-rates. Both are avoidable in 24 hours of decisive action.
First move: change reporting and visibility. I’d make the Head of Proposals report to the CEO or Head of Sales, not ops. Then I’d host a 30-minute company huddle where I say three things out loud: “Proposals are growth”, “Proposals are the hardest version of sales”, and “We will resource them to match their value”. Public clarity to change behaviour fast.
Second: create a War Room for active bids (physical or online because remote async is OK!). Pull a cross-functional squad from sales, product, pricing, legal and marketing into a focused channel and a shared dashboard. For the day, I’d reassign two senior experts to every high-value opportunity and demand daily short-status updates. Momentum and accountability to beat light talk.
Third: change the metrics. Replace “cost of proposal” with “revenue influenced”, “win rate” and “risk reduced”. Tie one sales leader’s quarterly bonus to deals won via managed bids. Put the whole bidding team on win bonuses. Money matters and metrics are what sustain change.
Fourth: fix tooling and expectations. Declare a one-day rollout of an AI-assisted toolkit for proposal professionals (I’ve seen this happen). Not to replace humans but to amplify them: faster and better drafts, comprehensive compliance checks, consistent messaging, sales punch. Give the team a 90-minute hands-on session and a guaranteed escalation path. Make it clear that we’re equipping, not automating away.
Fifth: protect time and expertise. Ban last-minute sign-offs that force bidding pros and SMEs into unproductive firefights. Institute a strict intake gating: no RFP response without the proposal lead’s sign-off on resourcing and go/no-go. It’s time to stop throwing bodies at losing causes.
Finally: celebrate and communicate wins. Publish a short “why we won” note after every success. What the proposal did that sales couldn’t. Stories change minds as fast as memos.
If I only had 24 hours, I would act like a CEO who knows where revenue actually starts and rewire business sales around proposals so these stop being an expense line and start being a growth engine.
Javier Escartin
Javier is an aerospace engineer who has climbed the corporate ladder from engineering to business development. He is a full-time freelance Proposal Manager and has recently launched a business to make our work easier with artificial intelligence. He is the founder of DeepRFP.com, runs the proposals newsletter jescartin.com, and manages proposals for worldwide technology companies as a consultant.
