OST Global

Success Factors In Federal Business Development

How hard can it be to do federal business development? All you need is to be good with people and a willingness to talk to decision makers, right? If it were so easy, why for years has BD been given a bad name, and why have many companies struggled to hir... Read >

The Six Aspects of Capturing Government Contracts

With capture, many companies focus on the obvious: what are the company’s internal capabilities and the offering – and what can the company do in response to the customer needs. However, there are multiple other factors to take into account when capturing... Read >

If We Just Had Done a Few Things Differently… OR 3 Main Problems With Capture Management

When my phone rings for proposal consulting work, about 90% of the time the story is the same: we've got a Request for Proposal in and we need you to help us immediately. I say - great, would be happy to help you. By the way, have you done any capture? I ... Read >

Task Order Proposal Management Best Practices

As you may already know, I am now the president of the Association of Proposal Management Professionals (APMP) National Capital Area (NCA) chapter. The NCA chapter has nearly 1,000 members, and is the largest APMP chapter worldwide. At our last Dinner Ser... Read >

Successful Planning for Your BD Strategy. Interview With Business Development Expert

Some psychological studies assert that if someone writes down an idea and its implementation, there is close to 50% probability of it becoming a reality. If the implementation is broken down into steps that are captured in writing, the probability of bein... Read >

Proposal Lessons from an Aerial Forest Adventure Park

A week ago I invited a very fit and adventurous girlfriend of mine (whom my husband says reminds him of Angelina Jolie) to join me in climbing in the largest aerial forest adventure park in North America. If you are wondering what an Aerial Forest park is... Read >

Proposal Manager's Tips for Running Fast Turn-around Proposals

A proposal manager's role is clear when a proposal lasts 30 days, or even 14, but things get more complicated as the allotted time shrinks. Many wonder what kind of value they could provide as a proposal manager when a proposal is only 5-7 days in duratio... Read >

Lessons Learned from a Proposal Disaster

We have had a wonderful winning streak in the past year and a half winning literally every proposal we ran, but all of a sudden, our fortunes turned. A new client engaged us to help them prepare a proposal. They agreed to provide to us some key inputs suc... Read >

Back to Basics: Understand the full cycle of business development to Win More Contracts

My 5-year-old daughter, when working on a puzzle, knows to glance at the whole picture first, before starting to assemble the pieces. She is up to 30-piece puzzles now, which have gotten quite complex. So, her process is to study the picture, and then fin... Read >

10 Tips for Winning Fast Turn-Around Proposals

Current economy is the driving factor behind the budget tightening trend - not only for households, but also for government agencies. Even if we are to believe cautiously optimistic forecasts about the economy, the evolution of acquisition laws with an ev... Read >

Top 10 tips from Olessia for growing your company in the federal market

Last week was quite a week - OST submitted three proposals for our clients. Two of the three had something in common - our clients didn't provide us with information until the proverbial 11th hour. It was only because we had real pros on the job that we w... Read >

Five Simple Techniques to Build a Cohesive Proposal Team

It is a known fact that people tend to work harder and more intelligently for the people they like and care about. This is why building a teamâ€" putting names to faces and faces to names, so to speak, and adding personal spin to make people real and lika... Read >

Four Executive Summary Mistakes That Hurt Your Chances of Winning Proposals

Much is written on the subject of Executive Summaries, but over the years, these pesky proposal pieces don't seem to get much better. I have seen a few good ones, but most were in dire need of improvement. Make sure to avoid four common errors so that you... Read >

10 Tips for Winning Fast Turn-Around Proposals

You don't need a crystal ball to see that a shaky economy is sure to lead to further budget tightening- not only for households, but also for government agencies. I am not an economist, and I'm not one for popular gloom-and-doom predictions, but I can saf... Read >

"Picasso Method" for Great Proposal Graphics

Picasso's famous quote, "Good artists copy; great artists steal," might as well have been about proposal art. Great proposal graphics can be born in various ways, but "stealing" a concept and making it something that is your own, something completely diff... Read >