Beyond Deadlines: Preventing Proposal Team Burnout

Ashley (Kayes) Floro, CPP APMP • February 27, 2026

In government and commercial contracting, proposal demands can ebb and flow—but high-pressure periods are inevitable. Whether driven by shifting priorities, overlapping deadlines, or a surge of new opportunities, teams are often asked to deliver at a rapid pace with limited resources. To navigate competing priorities without overwhelming your staff, it’s essential to have intentional strategies in place that protect both performance and team well-being.


Review and Prioritize the Pipeline Weekly


Pipeline reviews become even more critical during the proposal busy season because tough decisions may need to be made about which opportunities to pursue. Leadership should consider the various opportunities in the pipeline, the level of readiness of the team (i.e., how much capture has been done), and the resources available to support each opportunity. Sometimes pursuing an opportunity with a low win probability can take critical resources away from an opportunity with a higher win probability. 


Additionally, as part of the pipeline/milestone reviews, make sure you have a bid and proposal (B&P) budget set for each opportunity being actively pursued. You should spend less time, energy, and money on low value/low profit opportunities. You never want to spend more on responding to an opportunity than you will gain from winning—unless there is a very strategic reason to do so. 


Finally, if your proposal team doesn’t participate in the pipeline reviews with leadership, make sure to have separate calls to review the pipeline with the proposal team so that they understand which proposals are active, as well as which proposals are coming up on the horizon. Assign out proposal leads for each opportunity so team members can understand and plan for upcoming workloads (these can always be adjusted if solicitation release dates change). When making assignments, be sure to consider any vacation times team members may have scheduled.


Leverage Templates and Boilerplate When Possible


Having templates ready for your team to use will save so much time and energy. You’ll want the following tools ready to use and in a place that teams can easily locate:


  • Proposal calendars
  • Outline/compliance matrices 
  • Kickoff decks
  • Color team decks
  • Writing templates
  • Street resumes
  • Boilerplate for common sections (e.g., management, quality, past performance, etc.)


Having these templates ready will enable your team to hit the ground running. Instead of reinventing the wheel each time or searching for an old resource as a starting point, your team can focus their time on entering information into the schedule and compliance matrix templates, adjusting the writing templates to meet the formatting requirements of the solicitation, and moving forward with the proposal process smoothly and efficiently. 


Keep Your Team Fueled on Long Days


If your team is collocated, bring in snacks to keep your team fueled during long days (granola bars, peanut butter crackers, nuts, dried fruits—and a few sweet treats like Twizzlers or mini candy bars). When teams stay in the office late to meet a critical deadline, order in pizza or have sandwiches delivered. For remote teams that are working long hours to meet deadlines, consider sending electronic food delivery certificates (e.g., DoorDash or Grubhub) to keep the team fueled and morale high.


Schedule Breaks and Downtime


With multiple looming deadlines and an overwhelming workload, it can be so easy to try push through a long day without any breaks. However, it has been proven that this approach can negatively affect overall output. Taking breaks is critical for maintaining productivity. Short, regular breaks can help prevent burnout, improve focus, and boost overall performance by allowing brains to rest and recharge. But the right kinds of breaks matter. Studies show that scrolling on your phone or surfing the internet can overload your brain and leave you even more depleted. Better break choices include taking a walk, doing a small chore, meditating, or chatting with a friend or coworker. 


Have your team aim for a five-minute break for each twenty-five minutes of work. If this seems overwhelming, remember that even breaks as short as a minute—if they are effective breaks—can improve performance and productivity. 


Additionally, after your teams meet a proposal submission deadline, particularly if they have been working long hours, make sure to give them some time off if the schedule allows. This will allow your team members to recharge and come back ready to tackle the next project more effectively. 


Bring In Extra Resources if Necessary


Sometimes you might not have sufficient resources to handle all the opportunities in your pipeline. If this is the case, you may need to work with leadership to see if the B&P budget allows for bringing in consultant resources. Consultant resources may come at a higher hourly rate than your full-time team members—but they can be brought in for a short time to help meet surge demands, and then you don’t pay for them anymore once they are done with their assigned task(s). This is also generally a better option than burning out your team and then having to recruit and onboard new employees once the burnt-out team members leave. 


Check In with Your Team Regularly, But Keep Meetings Short


It’s critical to keep a pulse on how your team is doing when stress levels are high. Check in regularly with team members to see how they are doing and whether there are any issues/roadblocks keeping them from meeting any of their deadlines. Help provide them with additional resources, if necessary, or track down information they may have been waiting on from a subject matter expert or stakeholder. But don’t flood calendars with unnecessary meetings, or overly long meetings. Check-in calls can be great—but keep them to 15 minutes or shorter. Leverage email, chat, text, and quick calls where it makes sense.


Final Thoughts


Managing proposal workloads effectively requires more than simply working longer hours—it requires thoughtful planning and sustainable processes. By prioritizing opportunities strategically, leveraging templates and proven tools, supporting your team’s energy and morale, and building in space for recovery, you create an environment where people can consistently perform at a high level. A well-prepared, focused, and supported team will always outperform one that is stretched too thin. When you take care of your people and streamline your approach, you position your organization for stronger results and a healthier, more resilient proposal culture over the long term.



From Submission to Success: How Lessons Learned Drive Better Proposals

By Ashley (Kayes) Floro, CPP APMP • March 30, 2026
When was the last time your team truly examined why you won—or lost—a proposal? Every submission your team makes, win or lose, contains a roadmap for doing better next time. Yet many organizations treat each proposal as a standalone event, moving quickly from one bid to the next without pausing to reflect on what worked, what didn't, and why. This is a costly mistake. A structured lessons learned program, built into every stage of the business development lifecycle, is one of the most powerful tools a company can use to sharpen its competitive edge. Conducting Lessons Learned Conducting lessons learned after each proposal submission is a critical part of the business development lifecycle. It helps companies understand where they are excelling and where they need to improve. To ensure the experience is fresh in everyone's mind, each member of the proposal team should document their impressions — both positive and negative — within the first week after submission. Sample questions to consider include: Was the proposal development schedule reasonable and realistic? Why or why not? Were there any bottlenecks or major issues? If so, what were they, and how could they be mitigated in the future? Did the team work well together? If not, how could team dynamics have been improved? How effective was communication among the team? What went well? What could have been improved? Did any unexpected problems occur during proposal development? If so, how could they be mitigated going forward? Did the team stay within its B&P budget? If not, what could have been done differently? What worked best during the capture and proposal effort? What areas require improvement? A practical way to gather and analyze this feedback is to send a survey to each team member using an automated tool, which makes it easier to collate and compare responses. After Action Report Once the results are in, the Proposal Manager should review the feedback and prepare an After Action Report that details lessons learned and recommended next steps. This report should be shared with the full proposal team to ensure that insights are carried forward into future efforts. Lessons Learned Session Additionally, after contract award is announced, the team should conduct a formal Lessons Learned Session to document and discuss observations, findings, and conclusions — win or lose. By understanding where the team encountered roadblocks, and where the customer found gaps in the response, the team can address those issues and strengthen both the process and the final product on future efforts. Equally important: identify what the team is doing well and make sure those practices are preserved and repeated. Analyzing Trends and Updating Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) Conducting lessons learned after each proposal is valuable, but the benefit compounds when you step back and look at the bigger picture. On an annual basis, review your After Action Reports and lessons learned debriefs as a body of work, and analyze them for recurring themes and patterns. As the year wraps up, whether you follow a corporate fiscal year or the calendar year, ask yourself: What challenges keep surfacing? Where does the team consistently perform well? Sharing these trends with your team creates a culture of transparency and accountability, and helps focus improvement efforts where they matter most. More importantly, translate those findings into action by updating your business development and proposal SOPs. If internal feedback shows the team is consistently scrambling during production, adjust your SOPs to launch the production process earlier. If customer debriefs repeatedly cite a lack of customer understanding, take a hard look at your capture process and strengthen your call plan execution. Continuously refining your processes in response to real data is one of the clearest paths to improved performance—and more wins. Final Thoughts Every organization in this industry wants to win more, and win rates are often cited as the headline measure of a business development organization's health. While they are a useful starting point, win rates alone don't tell the whole story. Too many variables influence any single outcome. What matters more is building the discipline to learn from every effort, regardless of the result. A consistent lessons learned program, paired with annual trend analysis and a willingness to update your processes, creates a feedback loop that makes your team sharper over time. The companies that win consistently aren't just the ones with the best writers or the biggest budgets, they're the ones that treat every proposal, win or lose, as an opportunity to get better.

Six Strategies to Tackle Tight Page Limitations

By Ashley (Kayes) Floro, CPP APMP • March 25, 2026
Tight page limitations are continuing to be a challenge as contracting officers streamline their acquisition processes. When faced with tight page restrictions, we often find ourselves struggling with trimming five pages of material into two pages of allocated space. However, sometimes the content we are working with is so long because it is simply overly wordy. In this article, I present six tricks for eliminating waste. 1. Use Active Voice With active voice, the subject of the sentence comes first and performs the action in the sentence. Active voice is more straightforward and concise than passive voice. It typically results in shorter, sharper sentences. So not only does it take up less real estate, it flows better and is easier to understand. Passive: It was decided by the Program Manager to streamline the program. Active, Strong Verb: The Program Manager streamlined the program. 2. Eliminate Redundancies Remove redundancies that take up extra space and don’t add value. I present some examples below.
icons demonstrating how to write clearly

Write Clearly: Why “More” Isn’t Always Better

By Ashley (Kayes) Floro, CPP APMP • March 23, 2026
In the world of proposal development, there’s a persistent misconception that longer writing signals deeper thinking. Teams sometimes feel pressure to fill pages, add more qualifiers, or expand explanations in hopes that additional words will make their message more persuasive. However, the opposite is often true. Clear writing is powerful because it makes it easy for the reader to understand, evaluate, and remember your message. The goal should be clarity, not volume. The most effective writers know that concise, direct language carries more impact than dense paragraphs and complicated phrasing. In this article, we present seven practical tips to help you write more clearly and effectively. 1. Break Up Long Sentences and Paragraphs Long sentences are one of the most common causes of unclear writing. When a sentence stretches beyond 25–30 words, it is easy for readers to lose track of the main point. Instead of packing multiple ideas into a single sentence, break them into shorter, focused statements. Each sentence should communicate one main idea. Example Less clear: Our team will implement a comprehensive data management framework designed to enhance reporting capabilities while also improving accessibility for users across multiple departments. Clearer: Our team will implement a comprehensive data management framework. This approach improves reporting and makes data more accessible across departments. Shorter sentences reduce cognitive load and help readers absorb information quickly. Similarly, large blocks of text can overwhelm readers. Each paragraph should focus on a single idea or topic. If a paragraph begins to cover multiple points, consider splitting it. Shorter paragraphs make it easier for readers to scan and process information. 2. Avoid Nominalizations Nominalizations occur when verbs are turned into nouns, often ending in -tion, -ment, or -ance. While they are sometimes necessary, they can make writing more abstract and wordier. Whenever possible, convert nominalizations back into strong verbs. Example Wordy: The implementation of the solution will result in the improvement of operational efficiency. Clearer: Implementing the solution will improve operational efficiency. Strong verbs make writing more direct and easier to understand. 3. Choose Strong, Specific Verbs Weak verbs like make, do, provide, conduct, or perform typically require additional words to explain what is happening. Strong verbs communicate action more clearly and concisely. Example Weak: Our team will conduct an analysis of system performance. Stronger: Our team will analyze system performance. Replacing weak verb phrases with precise verbs makes writing sharper and more confident. 4. Remove Unnecessary Words Many phrases in proposal writing add length without adding meaning. Words like very, really, quite, and in order to clutter your sentences. Look for opportunities to tighten phrasing. Examples In order to → To Due to the fact that → Because At this point in time → Now The goal isn’t to eliminate detail, it’s to eliminate filler. 5. Use Active Voice When Possible Active voice makes it clear who is responsible for an action and typically produces shorter sentences. Passive voice can be useful in certain situations, but overuse can make writing vague and indirect. Example Passive: The report will be completed by the team next week. Active: The team will complete the report next week. Active voice improves clarity and accountability. 6. Use Lists When Appropriate When presenting multiple related items—steps, benefits, features, or requirements—lists can improve readability. Lists allow readers to quickly understand key points without digging through dense paragraphs. They also highlight structure and make complex information easier to follow. Final Thoughts When readers can quickly understand your message, they are far more likely to absorb your ideas and act on them. Remember: strong writing isn’t measured by how many words you use. It’s measured by how clearly those words communicate your message.