Successful Proposal Strategies for Small Businesses 4th edition (Artech House Technology Management and Professional Developm) [Hardcover]

Robert S. Frey (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 31, 2005 | ISBN-10: 1580539572 | ISBN-13: 978-1580539579 | Edition: 4

Newly expanded and thoroughly revised to reflect and meet the demands of a high-velocity global business environment, the Fourth Edition of this popular book is a highly accessible, self-contained desktop references developed to be informative, practical, and easy to use. It helps small and mid-sized businesses as well as non-profit organizations and public-sector agencies to achieve effective, efficient, and disciplined business development, proposal development, and knowledge management (KM) processes.

Among an extensive array of updates and new material, the fourth edition…

· Introduces storytelling as a proposal art, along with solution development;

· Emphasizes the value of front-end proposal planning and storyboarding (including elevator speeches, annotated outlines, and pain tables);

· Underlines the importance of focusing on the customer mission in proposals;

· Significantly expands the discussion of performance-based acquisition (PBA) and the latest U.S. Government procurement reforms and what they mean for small businesses; and

· Discusses the development of successful grant proposals for the first time in this volume.

This edition contains one of the most complete, comprehensive, and fully integrated analyses of U.S. federal procurement reform from 1984 to 2004. In addition, you find numerous useful, up-to-the-minute resources for U.S. and overseas businesses that want to engage in international business and proposal development. Using this book, any small company or organization with a viable product or service can learn how to gain and keep a client’s attention, even when working only a few employees. Entrepreneurs can use this valuable resource to assist in the establishment of best-of-breed business development, proposal development, knowledge management, and publications infrastructures and processes within their organizations. In many ways, a small company's future performance in the federal, private-sector, and international market space will be a direct result of how effectively it chooses to implement the disciplined business development, proposal development, and KM processes and methodologies as well as the modes of thinking presented in this work.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Robert S. Frey, M.A., serves as the vice president of knowledge management & proposal development for RS Information Systems, Inc. (RSIS). During the past 6 years, RSIS has become one of the 50 largest federal information technology (IT) contractors in the United States, and is the largest African-American-owned company in the Washington, D.C. region. As a highly successful prime contractor with projected CY04 revenues of $325 million and a funded contract backlog of $1 Billion, the company’s 1,800 professional staff support 110 prime contracts and 125,000 users spanning defense, civilian, intelligence, and law enforcement federal agencies. With a sustained proposal win rate of 67%--more than 30% above industry average—RSIS is clearly an example of a business that successfully graduated from the Small Business Administration’s (SBA) 8(a) program and then moved forward to become a premier federal systems integrator. Robert S. Frey has leveraged knowledge management processes to perform rapid proposal prototyping for RSIS. He has personally supported more than 2,000 proposals in his career. In addition, he serves as an Instructor in technology management at UCLA in Westwood, California.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 598 pages
• Publisher: Artech House Publishers; 4 edition (January 31, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1580539572
• ISBN-13: 978-1580539579
• Product Dimensions: 10.4 x 7.2 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,426,243 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Latest edition of the Bible for small business proposals, February 3, 2005

By 

Richard Isaacman "Vice President, ADNET Syste... (San Diego, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Successful Proposal Strategies for Small Businesses 4th edition (Artech House Technology Management and Professional Developm) (Hardcover)

Proposal guru Robert Frey raises the bar again in this latest (4th) edition of what has become an industry classic. With some 50 pages of new material, this edition of "Successful Proposal Strategies..." now includes discussions of state-of-the-art proposal development techniques such as the "Black Hat Review", as well as critical but oft-overlooked factors such as public relations outreach as an integrated part of the proposal process.

The scope of this book's discussion, and the detail with which every critical topic is elucidated, are both so great as to belie the title: it is not just small businesses that will mine great value from it. (Indeed, Frey himself is a frequent and highly effective proposal development consultant to companies ranging in size from a dozen or two people all the way up to Microsoft itself.) But it is especially small businesses who will profit the most, particularly who may not have the breadth of personnel or scope of experience to have previously mastered the myriad details of government and commercial procurements. For these, this book is a how-to for everything from storyboarding and SWOT analysis through FAR compliance. An accompanying CD-ROM gives a useful jump start to basic processes by providing templates for bullet drafting and other tools of the trade.

It is no exaggeration to say that, for businesses that thoroughly mine its contents and follow its recommendations, this book can be transformative. Every business in the government support services in particular should own multiple copies.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Rubber Meets the Road Guide to Successful Proposal Writing, January 1, 2006

By 

Donald D. Richardson (Flagstaff, AZ) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Successful Proposal Strategies for Small Businesses 4th edition (Artech House Technology Management and Professional Developm) (Hardcover)

This is THE book for small business wishing to grow and thrive in the Fed Gov market place. Robert Frey is the first author to capture the true essence of Business Development, Knowledge Management, Capture Management and Proposal Development for leveraging small, disadvantaged business such as Service Disabled Veteran Owned, 8(a), HUBZone and others into the Fed Gov, Private Sector and International market. It offers concrete, tangible, rubber-meets-the-road advice on how to succeed in these highly competitive arenas. Highly recommended reading for the company that truly desires to succeed.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An essential resource for anyone preparing proposals, March 3, 2005

By 

Len Duffy "Proposal Designer" (Towson, Maryland United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Successful Proposal Strategies for Small Businesses 4th edition (Artech House Technology Management and Professional Developm) (Hardcover)

Bob Frey has created both a tutorial as well as a reference book that will guide you through the entire business development process from identification of opportunity through the completion and follow on activities of the proposal. It will introduce the novice to all the intricacies of proposal development and provide the seasoned veteran with new insights as we constantly endeavor to provide true value added services to our companies or clients. It is easy to read as a tutorial. It also is easy to find the answer to a particular vexing problem. It is loaded with references to informative web sites. I highly recommend it to all my colleagues whether they work for the small businesses identified in the title or for large corporations. Every consultant should have this on their bookshelf.