Maryann Lesnick

Maryann Lesnick brings more than 25 years of experience in business development; proposal management, writing, and editing; capture management; project management; and quality management for both federal and commercial sectors. She holds APMP Practitioner-level certification (CP APMP) and is a Project Management Institute (PMI) certified Project Management Professional (PMP). She is also a Certified Scrum Master (CSM) and certified Microsoft Office Specialist (MOS). Maryann is an experienced trainer focusing on proposal management and APMP Foundation Level Certification. She currently serves as NCA Chapter Membership Chair and is on the Board of Directors for APMP International. She is an ACT-IAC Fellow, and member of the Partner’s Class of 2000.

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Articles by Maryann Lesnick

• L versus M: Where do I start?

  Friday, June 21, 2019

  I've noticed a trend with some companies to use section M of the government solicitation document as the basis for their proposal structure. While I understand the desire to make it easy for the evaluators to score your proposal, this could result in a noncompliant bid. Organize your bid or proposal according to the customer’s instructions. A compliant proposal meets the customer's requirements and submittal instructions.

• Improve your writing: Avoid nominalizations in your proposals

  Monday, March 18, 2019

  One of the best ways to improve your writing is to use active verbs instead of nominalizations. What is a nominalization, anyway? A nominalization is a verb converted into a noun. Nominalizations come in two forms. Those that have endings such as -ment, -tion, -sion, -ing, and -ance, and those that link with verbs such as achieve, effect, give, have, make, reach, and take. For example: "The last step is the collection of data for the monthly report," is longer and less clear than: "The program manager collects data for the monthly report." Eliminating a nominalization often reveals passive voice and enables you to correct that as well.

• Applying an agile tool to make your proposal processes better

  Friday, October 26, 2018

  We talk about it in our proposals. We know it works. Agile practitioners take it seriously and are diligent about its use. What is it? It’s the idea of using lessons learned from each proposal effort to improve our approach the next time. In the Agile Scrum world, they call it a retrospective. APMP best practices suggest that conducting a lessons-learned review on each major bid opportunity is a critical best practice. Lessons learned should be well-documented and stored for others to access and reference on future opportunities.

• Strategic differentiation with a customer focus

  Friday, July 13, 2018

  I recently worked on a proposal that required — not an executive summary — but an introduction that called out the vendor’s differentiators. Perhaps one of the hardest aspects of our industry is coming up with real differentiators to cite in our proposals. In his book, "Collapse of Distinction. Stand out and move up while your competition fails," Scott McKain suggests we spend too much time trying to duplicate and outdo our competitors.

• Think positively for positive results

  Friday, May 25, 2018

  Studies have long shown that not only does success at work lead to individual satisfaction and happiness, but that happiness leads to successful outcomes at work. From personal experience, I have seen that teams are happier when they have a happy leader. I am happier when I work for and with happy people. Attitude is everything. I think proposals are fun. And when I convey that message — when I live it — they become fun for everyone in the company.

• Agile proposal management: Proposal team roles

  Monday, May 14, 2018

  The Agile Manifesto talks about people, communications, the product, and flexibility. With respect to people, agile practitioners value individuals and interactions over processes and tools. It takes a team to produce a winning proposal, and they must work together effectively through productive interactions. This does not mean that processes and tools are not important, but simply that the interaction between people on the team is more important.