Proposal Strategy Lead

Commercial Bid Manager  

Purpose  

The Commercial Bid Manager leads Helpware's most strategic and high-value pursuits, managing the end-to-end bid lifecycle for complex opportunities across multiple industries, service lines, and global delivery locations. 

Serving as the commercial lead throughout the pursuit, this role brings together Sales, Client Solutions, Operations, Finance, Legal, Marketing, Information Design, AI, and Subject Matter Experts to develop compelling, customer-centric proposals that maximize win probability while ensuring commercial viability, operational readiness, and alignment with Helpware's strategic objectives. 

Beyond leading individual pursuits, the Commercial Bid Manager continuously strengthens Helpware's commercial bidding capabilities by enhancing governance, standardizing best practices, developing reusable knowledge assets, and driving operational excellence across the proposal function. 

Key Responsibilities  

Commercial Pursuit Leadership  

• Lead the end-to-end management of strategic bids, proposals, and competitive pursuits from opportunity qualification through contract award and transition.

• Partner with Sales to define pursuit strategy, win themes, competitive positioning, customer value propositions, and executive messaging.

• Facilitate pursuit kickoffs, strategy workshops, solution reviews, executive governance sessions, and final submission reviews.

• Lead cross-functional pursuit teams by establishing clear ownership, accountability, priorities, and timelines.

• Proactively identify commercial, operational, technical, and delivery risks while driving mitigation plans to keep pursuits on track.

• Ensure alignment between customer requirements, proposed solutions, commercial assumptions, and operational capabilities.

Bid & Proposal Management  

• Own the end-to-end development of RFP, RFI, RFQ, unsolicited proposals, presentations, and other customer-facing pursuit materials.

• Develop and manage detailed bid plans, workback schedules, review cycles, content plans, and submission strategies.

• Ensure all submissions are compliant, compelling, accurate, and aligned with customer requirements and Helpware standards.

• Lead proposal quality assurance activities, including compliance reviews, executive reviews, and final production readiness.

• Manage submission logistics to ensure timely, complete, and high-quality deliverables.

Commercial Strategy & Solution Development  

• Partner with Client Solutions, Operations, Workforce Management, Finance, Pricing, and other stakeholders to develop commercially competitive and operationally executable solutions.

• Support pricing strategy by ensuring assumptions, scope, dependencies, risks, and commercial considerations are accurately reflected throughout the proposal.

• Challenge solution assumptions where appropriate to improve competitiveness, profitability, and customer value.

• Ensure proposals effectively communicate Helpware's capabilities, differentiators, innovation, AI solutions, and operational excellence.

Stakeholder Management  

• Build trusted relationships across Sales, Client Solutions, Operations, Finance, Legal, Marketing, Information Design, AI, and Executive Leadership.

• Coordinate multiple stakeholders simultaneously while maintaining alignment on priorities, deadlines, and pursuit objectives.

• Communicate pursuit status, resource requirements, risks, decisions, and executive actions throughout the bid lifecycle.

• Influence cross-functional teams to deliver high-quality outcomes within aggressive timelines.

Process Excellence & Continuous Improvement  

• Drive continuous improvement across bid management methodologies, governance, templates, content libraries, and reusable assets.

• Conduct post-submission and post-award reviews to capture lessons learned, competitive intelligence, and improvement opportunities.

• Identify opportunities to improve proposal quality, efficiency, resource utilization, and overall win rates through process optimization and automation.

• Contribute to the ongoing evolution of Helpware's commercial bid management framework, standards, and best practices.

Performance & Governance  

• Monitor bid portfolio health, workload distribution, resource capacity, and pursuit priorities.

• Ensure compliance with internal governance processes, commercial approvals, legal reviews, and executive decision gates.

• Track and report key pursuit performance metrics, including:

• Win Rate

• Submission Timeliness

• Proposal Compliance

• Bid Cycle Time

• Content Reuse

• Portfolio Throughput

• Provide leadership with pipeline visibility, workload forecasting, resource recommendations, and actionable insights to improve commercial performance.

Qualifications  

Required  

• Minimum of five (5) years of experience in Bid Management, Proposal Management, Pursuit Management, Sales Enablement, Business Development Support, or a related commercial function.

• Proven experience leading complex, cross-functional bids and proposals in a fast-paced, customer-facing environment.

• Exceptional business writing, proposal development, project management, and executive communication skills.

• Strong commercial acumen with the ability to understand customer requirements, solution strategies, and pricing considerations.

• Demonstrated ability to manage multiple strategic pursuits simultaneously while consistently meeting deadlines.

• Advanced proficiency in Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and collaboration platforms.

Preferred  

• Bachelor's degree in Business Administration, Marketing, Communications, Management, or a related field. 

• Experience supporting business process outsourcing (BPO), customer experience, technology services, digital transformation, consulting, or other outsourced services organizations.

• Experience working with CRM platforms such as HubSpot or Salesforce.

• Familiarity with pricing models, commercial negotiations, solution development, and proposal governance.

• APMP Foundation, Practitioner, or Professional Certification.

• Lean Six Sigma certification or equivalent process improvement experience.

• Experience working within global, matrixed organizations.