Why Strategic Bidding Starts Before the Proposal: Lessons from Michael Chacko
Lessons on collaboration, leadership, and business growth from Michael Chacko’s journey into bid writing.
When Michael Chacko finished university, he wasn’t looking for a traditional graduate career path.
Having completed a Master’s in Political Science, he knew his strengths lay in research, analysis, and communicating complex ideas. Rather than following the routes many of his peers were taking into law, consulting, or accountancy, he deliberately sought out a career where those skills could create real business value. That search led him to bid writing.
In a recent episode of the Optimize Podcast, Michael shared how that decision shaped his career and discussed why bidding should be viewed as a strategic business function rather than simply a proposal-writing activity. The conversation covered collaboration, executive sponsorship, career development, and the growing role of technology in the profession.
Several themes from that discussion stood out, particularly the idea that the most effective bid teams create value long before a proposal is ever written.
What Does a Bid Professional Actually Do?
Ask someone outside the profession what a bid writer or proposal manager does and you’ll often hear a simplified answer:
“They write proposals.”
While writing remains a core skill, modern bid professionals contribute across the entire business development lifecycle.
Depending on the organisation, they may support bid/no-bid decisions, facilitate capture activities, coordinate subject matter experts, manage reviews, improve compliance, develop win themes, and help shape customer-focused solutions.
It’s one of the reasons the profession can be difficult to explain to people outside it. Bid professionals sit across multiple functions, often working closely with sales, commercial, delivery, marketing, and executive leadership teams.
The role isn’t confined to a document. It’s about bringing together the expertise, insight, and information needed to help organisations win.
Why Strategic Bidding Starts Before the Proposal
One of the strongest points Michael made during our conversation was that the real value of bidding often happens before a proposal is ever written.
By the time a tender reaches a bid team, many of the important decisions have already been made. The opportunity has been identified, resources have been allocated, and a pursuit strategy has started to take shape.
That is why the highest-performing bid teams work upstream. They’re involved in conversations about opportunity qualification, customer needs, risks, and competitive positioning long before content development begins.
When bid professionals are included at that stage, they can help shape stronger responses rather than simply manage them.
This early involvement creates stronger alignment between business objectives and customer needs, while giving organisations a better foundation from which to build a compelling response.
Strategic bidding is not just about producing a compliant proposal. It’s about helping organisations make informed decisions about where they compete, how they position themselves, and how they communicate value to customers.
Why Collaboration Matters in Bid Management
One point Michael returned to several times during our conversation was the importance of helping stakeholders understand why they’re being asked to contribute.
Anyone who has worked on a complex bid knows the challenge. Subject matter experts are busy. Sales teams are balancing multiple opportunities. Delivery teams are focused on existing customers. Everyone is working against competing priorities.
In Michael’s experience, engagement improves significantly when people can see how their expertise shapes an opportunity rather than simply being asked to provide content at short notice.
That may sound simple, but it’s often the difference between a rushed response and a genuinely collaborative pursuit.
The strongest bid teams don’t just gather information. They create alignment around a shared goal and help people understand the role they play in achieving it.
Why Executive Sponsorship Improves Bid Performance
One of the strongest indicators of a mature bid function is executive sponsorship.
When leadership actively supports bidding as a business-critical activity, collaboration improves across the organisation. Stakeholders become more engaged, reviews become more effective, and bid professionals gain earlier access to opportunities.
The organisations that consistently perform well understand that winning business is a shared responsibility. It requires coordination across multiple functions, with bid teams playing a central role in bringing those efforts together.
How Strategic Bidding Is Evolving
Many of the themes discussed in the podcast also emerged during VisibleThread’s recent webinar, From Proposal Manager to Power Player: Scaling Careers with Tech & Strategy, featuring proposal leaders Marieke Bland Director of Proposals at KMS Solutions, LLC and Hong-Ah Do Proposal Operations Director at IBM.
The discussion explored how proposal professionals can expand their influence, build leadership capabilities, and use technology to create more value for their organisations.
What connected both conversations was the idea that proposal professionals create the greatest impact when they’re involved in the right conversations, at the right time, and are trusted as contributors to business strategy rather than custodians of process.
As organisations face increasingly complex procurement processes and customer requirements, the role of strategic bidding continues to evolve beyond proposal production and towards business enablement.
Working with proposal teams across industries, we’ve seen a similar pattern. Organisations that consistently produce stronger responses tend to involve bid professionals earlier, not later.
When bidding is treated as a business process rather than a document exercise, teams are better positioned to improve consistency, strengthen reviews, and create responses that are more closely aligned with customer requirements.
Career Development in Bid and Proposal Management
The proposal profession has traditionally viewed career progression through a relatively narrow lens.
Writer becomes manager. Manager becomes leader. Leader becomes director.
But today’s profession is more nuanced than that.
Some professionals want to build deep expertise in proposal writing, reviews, content strategy, or capture. Others are drawn towards leadership, business development, or operations.
As Michael discussed, organisations should recognise specialist expertise alongside management progression. A successful career in bidding should not be defined solely by job title. It should be defined by impact.
How AI Is Changing Proposal Management
Technology featured heavily throughout both the podcast and webinar discussions.
AI is helping proposal teams accelerate research, summarise information, and reduce time spent on repetitive tasks. But its greatest value lies in creating more time for the activities that matter most: strategic thinking, customer focus, collaboration, and decision-making.
The future of proposal management is unlikely to be defined by AI alone. It will be shaped by how teams combine technology with expertise.
Experience Still Matters. So Does Fresh Perspective.
Michael also touched on something that doesn’t always receive enough attention in conversations about professional development.
Learning is rarely a one-way process.
Experienced practitioners bring judgement, customer understanding, and lessons learned through years of delivery. Newer entrants often bring fresh perspectives, familiarity with emerging technologies, and a willingness to question established ways of working.
The most effective teams recognise the value of both.
As proposal teams adapt to new technologies and changing customer expectations, the ability to combine experience with curiosity may prove to be one of the profession’s greatest strengths.
Questions Bid Leaders Should Be Asking
What separates strategic bidding from proposal production?
Strategic bidding starts before a proposal is written. It focuses on opportunity assessment, win strategy, customer understanding, and pursuit decisions rather than document creation alone.
When should bid teams become involved in an opportunity?
The earlier, the better. Bid professionals create the greatest value during opportunity qualification, capture planning, and solution development.
Why does collaboration matter in bid management?
Successful bids rely on effective collaboration between sales teams, subject matter experts, delivery teams, and bid professionals. Alignment around customer needs is often what separates strong responses from average ones.
How can AI support proposal teams?
AI can improve efficiency and reduce administrative effort, allowing proposal professionals to spend more time on strategy, customer focus, and collaboration.
Listen to the Full Conversation
This article captures some of the key themes from our conversation with Michael Chacko, but the full discussion explores these topics in much greater depth.
You’ll hear more about Michael’s route into bid writing, lessons learned from working across different organisations, building stronger stakeholder engagement, and the changing role of bid professionals in modern organisations.
🎧 Listen to the full Optimize Podcast episode with Michael Chacko.
You can also watch our webinar, From Proposal Manager to Power Player: Scaling Careers with Tech & Strategy, for additional perspectives on leadership, career development, and the future of the proposal profession.
Michael chose bid writing because it combined research, analysis, and communication. What he found was a profession that influences far more than the final document.
The best bid professionals help organisations make better decisions, bring the right people together, and create a clearer understanding of what customers actually need.
That’s why strategic bidding starts long before a proposal is written.
