Sr. Proposal Manager

Job ID #: 10377

Company: Egencia

Location: USA - WA - Bellevue

Functional Area: Other Employment Category

Employment Type: Full-Time Regular

Education Required: Bachelors

Experience Required: 10+ Years

Relocation Provided: To be determined

Position Description 

The Senior Proposal Manager is a key resource for our North American and APAC business development teams. This role is responsible for managing and responding to all aspects of Corporate Travel Management bid requests.  This includes, but is not limited to: RFI’s, RFQ’s, RFP’s, Pre & Post-submittal questions, Client-Branded Sales Campaigns and all Sales Pitches throughout the Acquisition process.  The Senior Proposal Manager will also be responsible the development, implementation and maintenance of procedures, tools, databases and tracking systems related to managing bid responses.

Ideal candidate

Candidates must have a track record of success working independently in a fast paced team environment while meeting or beating very tight deadlines. Successful candidates must also have demonstrated experience working in a corporate travel and/or a technical environment creating strategic client-facing materials that effectively communicate complex information to a broad audience.  Finally, successful candidates will have excellent business writing, brand marketing and creative design skills.

Responsibilities

The primary responsibility of the Senior Proposal Writer is to work with our Sales and Account Management Teams throughout the entire Acquisition process to develop detailed, customized bid response strategies and documents.  These documents must convey Egencia’s ability to manage a company’s Corporate Travel Program and clearly differentiate Egencia in the marketplace.  Finally, Egencia’s bid response must at a minimum meet the stated objectives of the customer and ideally delight them by exceeding expectations. 

The Senior Proposal Writer is accountable for all aspects of Egencia’s bid responses, including: scheduling, project managing, researching, writing, editing, proof reading, formatting, designing, publishing, and shipping the final bid response documents.  The individual will be assigned to a bid and will then be tasked with completing it from start to finish, including: 

• Managing kick-off, strategy and post-submittal debrief meetings.

• Completing a Gap Analysis of client requirements vs. Egencia’s current response capabilities, which includes identifying needs that may not be known to the client.

• Building a Plan of Action to deliver all items required to successfully complete the bid, which includes designing the Campaign that will most effectively deliver Egencia’s messages.

• Producing and Delivering the final bid, which may include both an electronic and hard-copy of the following:  Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations, Visio flowcharts, Microsoft Project plans, PDF’s, etc.

• Resolving all post-submittal bid-related questions from the client. 

Keen attention to detail is paramount and it is expected that all final customer-facing documents & messaging will be professional, put Egencia in the best possible position to win the bid and be devoid of all quality defects, i.e. related to facts, writing, formatting, design or positioning.  In addition, the Senior Proposal Writer will support the maintenance of the RFP Database, monitor competitor practices, keep current on all Marketing materials, maintain relevant data in Salesforce.com and answer ad-hoc requests for information in support of sales efforts

Skills/Competencies Required

• Superior research, writing, editing, proofreading, grammar, vocabulary and punctuation skills.

• Outstanding presentation and sales pitch building skills. 

• Exceptional Brand Campaign creation skills.

• Excellent time management, organizational and multi-tasking skills.

• Finely honed interpersonal and negotiation skills.

• Superb problem solving skills and can-do attitude.

• Natural customer service & support approach to work.

• Power-user in MS Word, PowerPoint, Visio, Project, Excel and PDF editors.

• Ability to craft a simple and compelling story which drives action. 

• Ability to communicate clearly, concisely and persuasively.

• Ability to understand the context and requirements of complex strategic bids.

• Ability to analyze a bid and uncover a client’s unstated needs.

• Ability to get any and all information necessary to respond to a bid, even if that requires working with multiple groups across different business units in several countries throughout the world. 

Experience/Education

• Bachelor’s Degree in Technical Writing, English, Journalism, Marketing, Communications, or other related degree required.

• 10+ years experience in support of a B2B sales organization managing and responding to RFP’s, strongly preferred.

• 10+ years of sound business experience in a big company environment, strongly preferred.

• 5+ years experience working in a Corporate Travel sales organization, strongly preferred.