The art of the kickoff meeting: how to avoid KitchenSinkitis and other ailments.

• Author: Batio, Christopher

No matter how well you understand a request for proposal (RFP) from a potential client, no matter how good a writer you are--and even if you plan to manage the proposal process from start to finish by yourself--you must have a kickoff meeting. Here's why: The kickoff meeting brines together the proposal professional and the subject matter experts to further assess the RFP opportunity, discuss their understanding of the client's needs and develop a strategy that clearly demonstrates their ability to meet those needs. There are several steps you can take to ensure your kickoff meeting is a success.

Pre-Meeting Research

Research on your client or potential client is an essential precursor and follow-up task to the kickoff meeting. One of the easiest acid best resources for starting your research is to review the client's Web site.

Look through each page with a purpose related to answering questions you have front the RFP and developing information about the company's personality and decision makers. For example, even if your contact for the RFP is the director of purchasing, research the company's entire executive team and board of directors to find out if someone at your company has a direct or indirect relationship that can help you.

Another key research resource is the company's annual report. Consider these questions: Is the annual report spare and no-nonsense in its design? Does it emphasize only the most essential facts about the company and its financial situation' How are the executives dressed? What do their bios emphasize about their backgrounds?

What you notice can help you. For example, while researching a proposal for a major electric equipment manufacturer, a colleague noticed that while the executives wore jackets and ties in their bio pictures, they were seen wearing jeans, work boots and work shirts in every other photo. Their bios emphasized that even the CFO had a manufacturing background and all of the other executives were engineers with many years of field experience. This led my team to develop a proposal that stressed the technical skill and hands-on education and experience of our service team.

In addition, we dressed the team in business casual clothing for their bio pictures. It was a small gesture, but it helped differentiate us from the competition and the client cited our "no nonsense, get to work" attitude when asked why they chose our firm.

Who Should Attend the Meeting?

Once you've done your research, you need to consider who...