Under the best of circumstances, proposal communications can be challenging. Communication can be especially challenging when working remotely with a large and diverse team of writers, subject matter experts, managers, and business development professionals. For example, I was recently involved in a project where the client was based in a different time zone than our team of proposal consultants. In addition to being a new client, they had not yet decided who was in charge of the proposal, or who their teaming partners would be. Multiple decision-makers were making minute-by-minute changes.

I quickly took control by establishing brief daily – and sometimes twice daily – calls to adapt to the changing environment. After the calls, I sent emails to the entire team with the summary of the conversation. It was a simple solution, but it resolved the breakdown in communication for the client and helped them effectively make decisions under significant deadline pressure.