Bid & Quote Specialist

BID & QUOTE SPECIALIST (I or II)

JOB DESCRIPTION

PRIMARY OBJECTIVE:

Coordinate B&P and engineering requests initiated through CRM sales support requests (SSRs), ensuring timely review of such requests, follow-up, and documenting the plan forward in the CRM system. Ensure commercial and government (state, local, and federal) proposals are prepared to the best current company and industry standards and meet EFJohnson and agreed-upon customer requirements. Assist in creating, presenting, designing, engineering, documenting, and delivering solutions that best-fit customer needs and/or bid requirements.

ESSENTIAL FUNCTIONS

• Responsible for all administrative aspects of proposal development, ensuring security and integrity of documentation, coordinating flow and review of internal and external proposal inputs, coordinating proposal schedules, and ensuring final proposal submission.
• Responsible for tracking opportunities in CRM, ensuring parties are made aware of requests, and have the information needed to make a bid/no-bid decision.
• Facilitate weekly internal B&P and Engineering meetings to discuss the end-to-end process of the opportunities in B&P and Engineering’s queue (i.e., identify the project scope, risks, EFJ’s capabilities, response strategy, price to win, and the timeline for submission)
  • Set and manage initial priorities based on sales prioritization reports, the first-in-first-out method, resource availability, and current workloads.
  • Develop and rollout proposal planning documents, capturing the needed inputs and outputs, proposal schedule, and responsibility matrix.
  • Write, edit, and desktop publish proposal responses and sales presentations as needed to provide high-quality, responsive competitive proposals.
  • Ensure management buy-in and support of plans.
  • Qualify, prepare, submit, and track the status of information, quotes, and proposals (solicited and unsolicited).
    • For current opportunities, facilitate regular team management meetings to ensure subject matter experts and proposal contributors understand their roles and responsibilities and to address any obstacles that may prohibit the team from meeting the customer’s expectations.
    • Act as liaison between departments to ensure completeness of competitive quotes/bids and improve requesters’ ability to make future requests accurately and timely.
    • Route quotes and proposals for executive input and approval/sign-off as internal processes require.
    • Responsible for providing document design support for proposals.
    • Responsible for managing the production and submission of final proposals.
• Organize and assemble proposal artifacts per defined departmental processes and monitor department record management policy adherence.
• Capture, analyze, and report on key proposal metrics (i.e., number of firm-fixed proposals submitted by market in a particular month and metrics comparing the volume of proposals submitted year-over-year)

REQUIRED EDUCATION AND EXPERIENCE

• Post-secondary schooling or training required.
• Proposal or business development training preferred.
• APMP foundation-level certified required within two years of hiring.

COMPETENCIES

• Exhibit strong leadership skills, independent judgment, industriousness, problem-solving, resourcefulness, teamwork, and creative thinking
• Operate with a sense of purpose, focus, urgency, and integrity
• Ability to prioritize and juggle multiple projects with varying levels of complexity
• Above average written and verbal communication skills, able to interact with key internal work partners, channel partners, suppliers, and customers.
• Skilled in professional-level document preparation using MS Office Suite, Visio, and Adobe.