A tool "like ChatGPT" but for bidding & This proposals tip shouldn’t be free

This is a recap of the most valuable ideas we talked about in February 2023.

For the busy pros, it starts with:

• A highlight of what happened in proposals technology
• One key idea for doing better in our profession
• The most viewed short video

Then, for the geeky pros, I've included a compilation of the rest of the topics.

The Proposals Tech Highlight of the Month

I tested the "ChatGPT for proposal writing”, and it's as good as I wanted it to be: mind-blowing.

Look, I've been talking about this happening for a while; the possibility of training an AI Large Language Model specifically for proposal writing.

Peers, I even thought about funding an R&D project within DeepRFP, but the AI wave is coming so fast that decided to focus on RFP Analysis and Proposal Management—big enough of a field already 😅

Anyhow, that solution is already here. 

A tool as user-friendly as ChatGPT that, after learning from your corporate body of knowledge—past proposals, sales insights, RFPs, procedures, policies, SMEs, resumes, SOPs, etc.—works as follows:

• You input the question or SOW section you want to write about.
• It suggests you some ideas to address that, like an outline. You select the good ones.
• It drafts the response section based on those ideas and all your corporate knowledge.
• You edit a very advanced draft. How good are the drafts? Like a 7 out of 10, so you can focus your expertise and precious time on raising that to a winning response level.

This technology is already available and in use at the enterprise level.

I've seen it in action and partnered with them right away.

So, I have two tips for you:

⚡ If you want to check this out as a business, contact me and we'll arrange a demo.

⚡ If you want to know more as a professional, like what to do to be a better writer when this technology gets in your hands, check out jescartin.com

It's not even March 2023 and we already have these tools solving real business problems. Seriously, no one has "a few months" to think about this or the room to "look at this in Q4 for next year's investments". It's moving now or risk losing big.

The Proposals Tip of the Month

This shouldn't be free, but here it is.

I've been talking to many companies lately, doing demos and tech stuff.

There's one particular situation that got my attention.

It goes like this.

🏢 A large company with rather chaotic bidding—you know, every unit manages the process isolated, which makes it impossible to improve things across the organization—looking for an end-to-end solution that "forces" their process into a framework.

🦸 An expert proposal pro appointed to lead the effort—processes analysis, solutions research, etc.

💸 A set of quotes, usually in the +$100k/year range, for solutions that basically do the following:

• Provide a proposal management framework
• Channel communications and tasks management
• A time-neutral new way of filling out questionnaires (what you save in the filling with semiauto assistance, you spend in the content library building and management)

🧮 A proposal leader having a hard time trying to sell the investment internally.

If you can relate, keep reading.

My recommendation—which I've been sharing for free because my focus is elsewhere, but I could certainly charge for it—is:

• Design a proposal management framework that works for your company—you have unique insights; these tech vendors can only offer you a generic version of what you really need.
• Implement the framework and channel all management and communications in one of the many inexpensive project management apps: ClickUp, Notion, Coda, Asana, Basecamp, you name it!
• If it makes sense in your case, build and manage the content library as you'd do anyway, and put a search layer on top of it. Ask your IT people; whatever file system you have already will work.

Depending on your team size, we're talking about $5k-$10k / year, even less with some apps offering flat fees no matter how many users.

Likely something you can sell internally in no time.

And by doing so, you focus on improving your proposal management processes instead of fighting to get that silver bullet end-to-end solution that no one ends up using.

There you go, free advice from the trenches.

✌️ Javi

P.S. You know the demos I'm busy with are for DeepRFP, with which we follow a completely different approach: no end-to-end; instead, a set of tools that automate on-demand steps that you are already doing.

The Short Video of the Month

Before the rest of the recap, 15 seconds

As promised, below is the rest of the month's recap, but if you're reading this, you must be in proposals, so give me 15 seconds because being on this list interests you.

Every week, I send two emails to the pros on this list 👉 jescartin.com, one on how to do better at proposals and one about proposals technology.

The coolest thing on this list is the emails, yet the hundreds of proposals pros on it also get exclusive access to top proposals stuff for free.

Like what?

Like access to the Top Jobs in Proposals—a job board including only fully remote positions with salaries disclosed at companies with excellent ratings—or the GPT use cases for RFPs & Proposals compilation including the most practical AI uses that proposal pros and businesses can implement today.

One-click on, one-click off.

Easy, because we already have hard jobs.

Check it out! ⚡ jescartin.com ⚡

The rest of the recap, below:

• A hater tells me this. I mean...
• Data that shows you're in the top 0.5%
• I promise, this is (almost) not about AI
• This is what happens when you go to the core
• If you were one of those proposal professionals...
• The conversation no one is having (publicly)

A hater tells me this. I mean...

You know that I frequently post about two main topics: doing better at proposals and proposals tech.

In most posts, my objective is to challenge the status quo making colleagues think differently about things I see happening while remaining humble.

In other posts, I just try to sell stuff.

This one was one of the former, about some things we got right in mid-2022 when we integrated the GPT series into DeepRFP.

I got some social media hate; here's one highlight:

[...] Formal procurements are not an RFP. They are not document based. Formal procurements are sales transactions. They are based on interpersonal relationships between people. And your AI, no matter how great it is, cannot automate relationships. [...]

As you can guess, we weren't talking about automating relationships with AI 😂

Also, I don't know about your experience, but the contracts I help win by managing proposals are pretty document-based.

And the heat ended with this:

[...] People buy from people, and machines can never replace that. [...]

Then I tried to remember the last time I thought about the people behind my internet service provision...

Ok, so far, the social media story, now the lesson I got from this:

👉 Be humble and don't confuse things: machines can never replace people, but our jobs are not only about people. 

There's a bunch of other stuff going on in proposals, some of which can now be automated in a way that wasn't possible two years ago, and we shouldn't be fearful but happy.

It's all about freeing our time to focus on the critical things that require people.

Even if you're not excited about it as I am, staying in the "machines can never replace that" land it's risky.

Data that shows you're in the top 0.5%

I've just realized this email list is a list of winners.

Proposal professionals truly on the top.

Seriously, 🔝🔝🔝

I always guessed it, but last week I got some numbers.

Ben Klein, cofounder of PIE—one of the most exciting projects in the space; it was time for a true community and not a slack channel managed by a tool provider—asked:

How many of us are there? - Global Proposal Professional Count

So I got curious and did a preliminary search on LinkedIn Sales Navigator:

👉 There are 110K+ profiles globally with any of these words in their current job title: "bid", "proposal", "tender". 

And that's only part of it, because there are all the sales and bizdev pros whose job is still partially proposals but don't have it in the title. And then all those pros that are not on LinkedIn.

My estimate is that we must be around 200,000 globally.

Pretty niche if you compare it with a global workforce estimated to be 3.3B.

But let's refocus on what all this means.

It means you are part of the TOP professionals in proposals.

Why?

Because by being on this list, you are proving that you care about your profession and are willing to improve, stay up to date, discuss ideas and challenge the "we always have done it that way" satus quo.

In numbers, you're on the 0.5% top of proposal pros—at least measured against this metric 😅.

Be proud and keep it up!

I promise, this is (almost) not about AI

I feel the fatigue.

I mean, not personally—I'm kind of a geek and have a tech business in the space—but I feel our colleagues have had enough of the last hype.

So this email is not about AI or GPT, but about how this or other technology could change one particular step on proposals.

This way, you'll get your idea on proposals tech, but from a point of view that feels less tiring.

Imagine a world where the time required per proposal has decreased drastically.

Now think about the critical bid/no-bid step.

Nowadays, sales and senior leadership tend to be more on the "bid for everything" side than on the smarter "bidding isn't an arms race; there's no point in submitting a mediocre proposal".

Only courageous proposal teams keep this unlimited bidding appetite under control.

You've been there. You know what I mean 😅

Now, what if the cost per bid was much lower?

Would upper management keep the bid/no-bid criteria reasonably or push for more bidding?

This question opens two scenarios I think every pro should think about:

👉 A future with even more bids for non-suitable RFPs, more noise, where procurement teams are flooded with proposals. You have seen this already, many examples of automation leading to "do dumb things faster".

or

👉 A future where bid/no-bid criteria are more or less the same, so proposal teams are less overloaded because the opportunities volume is more manageable with technology.

(Yes, I get this is a rosy picture. We may see some % of the proposal teams laid off and the remaining ones as overloaded as today.)

In any case, there's one thing you can do to be in a better position, whatever happens.

Be at the forefront with technology.

This is what happens when you go to the core

Let's analyze two different things at a fundamental level without getting technical.

Our today's subjects are:

• Proposals function—to which you need no introductions.
• LLMs—a type of AI software (Large Language Models for the geeks)

Let's ask our subjects the following question: what are the three main things you do, fundamentally?

The proposals function would say:

• Understand RFPs
• Extract and convert information from RFPs to manage proposals
• Write proposals

An LLM would say:

• Understand complex text
• Parse information from complex text
• Write complex text

You're a smart pro—I can prove it because you're reading this—so you know what this means.

LLMs (again, just software, a tool) have the potential to do much of the heavy lifting in a proposals function.

And my educated guess is that they will.

Wait, Javi; you're missing a crucial part in proposals—strategy and decision-making.

You're right.

And that's why I think the future of our profession is one where we're all about sourcing relevant data, using the right tools, defining strategies, and making decisions.

To me, that looks brilliant.

And there's an opportunity window open for those willing to take it.

If you were one of those proposal professionals...

...that tried ChatGPT and thought of uses to find responses quickly like it was a search engine; keep reading.

Otherwise, you can skip it until the palm.

Seriously, the palm thought is worth your 20 seconds.

Using ChatGPT to answer questions has two main problems:

👉 It can hallucinate, presenting something false as it was entirely true.

By the way, this is not only the case for ChatGPT but the technology powering these tools—AI Large Language Models. When used rawly, these tend to hallucinate.

👉 You can't trace back to the source of information used to generate the response.

This is already being solved by some applications and one in particular for proposals.

But, hey!

Why would ChatGPT perform well doing this collateral use case when it was designed and optimized to be a chatbot that impresses people—and ended up being one of the best marketing moves ever?

It isn't and it shouldn't.

The good news is this AI wave is moving fast—seriously, very fast—and there are already tools specially designed for this. 

For example, the resource I wanted to share today:

❗ Use at your own risk.

❗ Do not enter personal information.

👉 Perplexity.ai

Now, the palm thought.

🌴 Being all this moving so fast that even the startups in the space struggle to keep up, how long until AI models power how we manage and write proposals at scale?

My take is 3 years max.

And whether it is for your career or your business, it's likely you should move now.

The conversation no one is having (publicly)

The last three months have been intense in the Proposals Tech space.

As much as I dislike all the misunderstandings arising from the massive use of ChatGPT, there is one thing we have to thank this marketing-focused toy for: making many pros think about AI more seriously.

Yet there are many points our profession is not discussing openly, so today, I want to touch on one of them.

There is one idea almost everyone agrees on: as much as AI improves, there will always be people using these tools and making decisions. You can't automate a proposal manager/writer position fully.

By the way, I also agree with this. 

AI won't replace 100% of our roles anytime soon, first because the technical challenges are not trivial, and second and more importantly, it's very unlikely organizations delegate key decision-making to computers which involves not only enormous technical challenges but ethical ones.

Based on this idea, many peers (maybe you too) are comfortably relaxed. The same goes for some "profession leaders".

But.

There is a big BUT.

We, as professionals with a long career still ahead, should start talking about what will happen in organizations when proposals are written in, say, half of the time.

• Will companies bid for more with the same team?
• Will companies bid the same but appoint the teams on improvement actions to win more?
• Will companies bid the same and lay off half of their team?

I'm seeing these conversations happening at the B2B level, when discussing business cases, in our DeepRFP deals and with the company I've recently partnered with (see email foot below for further info).

So, companies are already thinking about this in real monetary terms. You should as well because whatever happens, one thing is clear:

👉 The professionals that start learning this tech and the new type of tasks it creates will have a huge opportunity in the coming job market (and much lower risk).

Thanks!

And this is it for this edition of this newsletter.

I you don't want to wait a month to know what's going on in proposals and tech, join us on the hottest list in the space.

Let's talk proposals and tech! 👉 jescartin.com

Besides the valuable updates, tips and ideas, you'll get access to top proposals stuff such as the Top Jobs in Proposals—a job board including only fully remote positions with salaries disclosed at companies with excellent ratings—or the GPT use cases for RFPs & Proposals compilation including the most practical AI uses that proposal pros and businesses can implement today.