The 2025 APMP conference delivered bold ideas, real-world inspiration, and practical tips for proposal management professionals across all levels and industries. And one universal takeaway couldn’t be clearer: proposal teams are evolving. Leaders and practitioners alike are stepping into new roles, embracing new tools, and redefining their impact on the business as a strategic growth lever.
At Weber Associates, we’ve seen this evolution firsthand. Our clients are no longer “just” responding to RFPs. They’re leading with insight, strategy, and smarter technology to stay on top of the many changes we’re seeing in bid strategy and management.
Here are our top three takeaways from APMP 2025 and how Weber can help your team embrace these changes.
- AI is a Proposal Partner, not a Threat
AI isn’t just the future; it’s already in the room. From building compliance matrices to supporting first-pass outlines or even first drafts, AI tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, and clients’ own proprietary systems are helping proposal professionals save time and improve productivity. The catch? Most teams still don’t know where to start or how to scale.
According to multiple APMP sessions, more than 75% of organizations are investing in AI, yet few have a clear strategy beyond experimentation.
How Weber Can Help
We build custom AI integration roadmaps for proposal teams, helping you:
- Identify and pilot the right use cases for your organization
- Train your team on responsible, value-added AI use
- Create governance that protects voice, tone, and compliance
- Strategic Response Teams Are Taking Over
Another strong theme? Teams are moving from the traditional cost line item of “proposal shop” to a strategic growth lever contributing to companies’ top-line goals and profitability. These strategic response teams are leveraging data and tying metrics more purposefully into their response strategies to evaluate win-loss strategy and infuse data-driven insight into win themes, content performance and overall bid strategy.
How Weber Can Help
We help you elevate your presence and performance by:
- Leveraging data to refine your capture translation, win theme definitions, content, and finalist strategy
- Designing role definitions and performance models to more accurately reflect your business impact
- Coaching leaders on how to secure executive buy-in and resources at every stage of your response process
- Tailored Wins: Say Goodbye to One-Size-Fits-All Solutions
One frustration that echoed across sessions was, “We’re tired of off-the-shelf content and solutions.” Whether it’s a new content platform, the same old process or cookie-cutter responses, teams want solutions that reflect their unique environment, needs and work style to show up more meaningfully in their bid responses.
Proposal professionals aren’t just looking for more sophisticated bells and whistles; they’re looking for the right tools for their environment.
How Weber Helps
Whether it’s content or consulting support, our work is always tailored, never templated or off the shelf. We work alongside your team to:
- Build and refresh content libraries that reflect your unique value proposition and needs
- Define processes that bridge technology and team workflows and reflect your real world realities, not some other company’s version of it
Consult on how you choose and customize the right RFP technology to fit your team’s exact needs
Bonus Trends We Loved
- Storytelling Still Wins Bids: Even with AI on the rise, human-centered storytelling remains a top differentiator in memorable responses
- Color Reviews Need an Upgrade: Teams are calling for more collaborative, iterative review cycles that reflect their work environment and style, not just process for process’ sake
- Mind the Gap: Many executives prioritize speed and volume, while practitioners seek quality and context; aligning both is key
Where Do You Go From Here?
Whether you’re already on your transformation journey or just getting started, we are ready to help.
From AI strategy and team design to smarter content workflows, we bring insight, structure, and execution to help you evolve from a response-driven to a results-driven organization.
Curious how to make your proposal team more strategic?
Explore our Growth & Performance practice to see how we help teams like yours lead with purpose –> https://www.weberassoc.com/proposal-and-rfp-solutions/
