As Federal government account executives, capture managers and proposal writers, we need to learn a few things from Santa. He has been winning the Christmas Contract from God (the All Mighty Government) every year for the past 2 millenniums. What is his secret? He was nice enough to allow me a peek at his proposal for this year:
God’s RFP is very complex with many requirements. So, Santa was hard at work during the past year with many revisions and amendments to his proposal.
In his cover letter, he praises the All Mighty for giving him the opportunity to again bring smiles to faces of millions of children on the earth and boasts about his capabilities and past performance/experience in this job. He mentions that he has all the assets required for the successful performance of the contract in place, including the elves, the little helpers, the reindeers and his sleigh, and he thinks he will bring the best ROI to the All Mighty.
In his past performance section of the proposal, he has included 2000 previous relevant contracts with God (the RFP did not spell out a limit to the contracts) and in each, Santa has explained how he has performed successfully in bringing smiles to the faces of children. He has always been on time to deliver his gifts and not even once has Christmas been delayed to a later date! And he has never received a Letter of Concern or Show Cause Notice and certainly not a T4D.
In his past experience, Santa explains that he has accumulated his experience year after year and has become the subject matter expert in joy and happiness, bringing this experience to Christmas each and every year.
For Key Personnel, Santa has included a large number of resumes. These included resumes of the reindeers: Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donner, and Blitzen, as well as his little helpers and elves. And of course his own resume comes last as project executive/manager for more than 2000 successful contracts with God.
In the Capacity section, Santa explains that he has been able to increase his capabilities year after year, from a few thousand Christians in the early years to more than 2.1 billion in 2010 (the last time Santa asked the Census Bureau to do a research for him), he has been able to increase the capacity of his gift manufacturing plants as well as his fully computerized distribution management system. Although, per the RFP requirements, he and only he does the actual door to door delivery of each present for over 500 million children throughout the world, during one night only!
As to the small business subcontracting, although Santa’s company is a veteran owned (he was in the Crusades but is a peace-loving man now) small business concern (it is a one-man show), but Santa has included a minority owned disadvantaged small business as its subcontractor: his little helpers.
In the next section about safety and security, Santa explains that he has full OSHA certification for sliding down the chimneys as well as all Department of Transportation licenses for sleigh riding. In addition, all his reindeers have gone through 40 hours of safety training each year, for the past 2000 years, with an Accident Incident Rate of zero. He has also subcontracted a security company to protect him and his assets from any ISIS and terrorist attacks; but, Santa is against the gun laws so they are allowed to use Zap Guns only!
Finally, Santa’s proposal has an extensive section about the technical merit of his solution. He explains the fully modern manufacturing plants in the North Pole, using the latest ERP software (which I cannot disclose due to the NDA I signed with Santa). He explains that Google’s mega data center in Finland is a stolen idea of Santa. He already has 10 mega centers in the North Pole operating there for centuries. He also explains that he uses SCM 2.0 (Supply Chain Management) to design, plan, execute, control, and monitor supply chain activities. Yet, when it comes to delivery, Santa believes in the traditional methods. He explains that despite the advancement of science during these millenniums, use of the chimney to enter houses and putting the gifts in the socks has still the best exposure.
Santa never uses templates in developing his proposals. Instead he puts himself in the shoes of God’s angels who are evaluating his proposal and prepares it so that their evaluation process is facilitated. He says these angels are very busy with other proposals so if you give them exactly what they want, where they want it, and the way they want it, it will surely be a winner.
Well, Santa’s words can’t be rebutted because he has 2 millenniums of experience behind him. The question is how would you prepare your proposal if you had won it 2,000 times before, year after year?
If I was able to bring a smile to your face and some distraction from the work pressures, please circulate this post to get more smiles.