I’m remedying that with the outline below, which covers proposal processes: What to look at and how to divvy up the work, from the time an RFP first comes in the door until you put it in FedEx. It’s a framework that can work for everyone from one-person shops to large agencies.

The smart folks over at McKinsey have a real winner in their most recent article on marketing, and it gets to the heart things every marketer should be asking themselves today.

Talk to PR and marketing agency types, and you’ll hear all manner of moans and groans over Requests For Propopsals (RFPs) or their lesser-seen siblings, the Request For Information (RFI) or Request For Quote (RFQ).

Why? Well, part of it is just Pollyanna-ish thinking about how business comes in the door — a surprising number of agencies grow their practices through purely organic networking and word-of-mouth marketing. This isn’t a bad move (more on that in another post), but it’s hard to be known by all the right people all the time. Now and then, a great piece of work will come up and you’re going to have to walk through the beauty pageant just like everyone else.

But the other reason agencies sometimes shy away from competitive bids is a little more basic: There are a lot of unreasonable, unclear or otherwise undesirable RFPs out there. And it doesn’t have to be that way.

Let’s start with a basic premise: You like to win.

Whether it’s chess, cards or the communication campaigns you work on, you (like me) probably like to come out on top. Victory is sweet most of the time; profitable most of the time; and fun damned near all the time.

The bad news: No magic pixie dust guarantees a win. The good news: There’s a framework for identifying how you can control the debate in most communications situations. And if you control the debate, you’ll win more often than not.