Consultant Spotlight: Greg Petrecca
Favorite part of being a consultant?
Constantly learning more about different disciplines, projects, companies, and Government initiatives combined with the ability to leverage the similarities and best practices obtained through the completion of hundreds of proposals over my career to help clients achieve success.
What is the secret to managing a successful proposal?
Keeping track of the messages and details at both an overview and a very detailed level. Proposal management often requires extreme focus at both ends of this spectrum, and a typical proposal is much too complex to allow for concentration on one end without loss of connection with the other. A proposal manager must know how to be an inch deep and a mile wide at times, and a mile deep and an inch wide at others, and has to have mechanisms in place to make sure they don’t get stuck in one mode.
Any tips for writing a winning proposal?
Picture your reviewer in the worst case scenario: Someone with little or no program knowledge who has to finish reviewing your proposal before they can make their carpool home. They’ve been given a checklist and told that they need to provide proof behind any top evaluation scores. How easy is it for them to find each element on their checklist? How easy is it to find and cut-and-paste your proof justifying a top score? Have you written your proposal to make it easier for them to find and grade each element and get home, or did you bury the evaluation elements by re-ordering them to achieve a story that likely won’t be read?
Biggest proposal pet peeve?
Last minute reviews and changes to the proposal that are not focused on critical issues only. These usually are just changing ‘happy’ to ‘glad’ and bring with them a high risk for unsuccessful delivery and/or loss of compliance.
Where was your last vacation and what was the highlight of the trip?
Playa del Carmen, Mexico in July. It was a great 1000+ acre resort that felt like it was built right into the jungle. The resort had its own official Cirque du Soleil show attached to the grounds that the whole family went to see in the middle of the week; it’s not often that you see a 15 and 16 year old with their jaws on the floor!
Do you have any hidden talents?
I do most of the cooking for my family, and have highly sought after dishes and recipes over a range of regions (Italian, American, Thai, French, and Spanish). I also play music as a hobby, having been on stage playing five different instruments, and was also once a nationally ranked swimmer.
If you could meet anyone in the world (dead or alive) who would it be and why?
Isaac Asimov. He’s a science fiction writer from back in the day when the concentration of science fiction was more on using reason, science, and history. They used these tools to try and construct an accurate picture of how humanity might evolve rather than trying to make up alternate realities and worlds. He is one of the best I’ve ever seen at this kind of long-range thinking, and I would love to hear his thoughts and observations on ‘modern’ society.
