If you ask most proposal managers what keeps them up at night, the answer probably isn’t formatting or even deadlines—it’s getting input from subject matter experts (SMEs). SMEs are the brains behind the brilliance in your proposals, but coordinating their contributions can feel like trying to nail Jell-O to a wall. Everyone’s busy, timelines are tight, and while proposals need their expertise, SMEs usually have a dozen other priorities competing for their attention.
Proposal professionals know this scene all too well: you’ve got a critical proposal on your desk, and the technical details must come from an SME who’s juggling client projects, meetings, and fire drills. You send a polite email reminder. Then another. Then a follow-up Teams message. Finally, three days before the deadline, you get a two-line reply that says, “See attached,” with a file that barely resembles what you asked for.
It’s a universal pain point. In fact, in our most recent benchmark report 62% of our survey respondents said that getting SMEs to stick to the schedule was their #1 challenge. Without timely SME input, deadlines slip, content suffers, and the whole process teeters on collapse.
Without SMEs, proposals risk sounding generic, outdated, or, worst of all, factually wrong. And if Sales, Marketing, and SMEs aren’t aligned, proposal and business development teams are left patching together content from scraps, hoping it resonates.
Here’s what happens when SME collaboration breaks down:
Quality suffers. The proposal lacks the technical depth or credibility needed to win.
Timelines stretch. Managers spend more time chasing responses than building strategy.
Morale dips. Proposal teams feel more like traffic cops than strategic contributors.
Win rates drop. Proposals fail to stand out, lowering chances of success.
HubSpot research confirms that when Sales and Marketing are aligned, companies see better win rates and stronger customer retention. Add SMEs into the mix, and that alignment becomes even more powerful—because proposals blend expertise, storytelling, and strategy.
SME wrangling doesn’t have to feel like a constant loop of “just following up on my last email.” With some intentional strategies, you can make collaboration smoother for everyone.
The good news? Modern proposal management tools with integrated AI can help reduce the heavy lifting for both proposal managers and SMEs. Instead of endless back-and-forth emails and manual content hunts, AI takes on the grunt work so humans can focus on strategy.
Here’s how AI transforms SME wrangling into real collaboration:
But don’t take our word for it, here’s what clients who use QorusDocs AI-powered solutions report:
Here’s what a streamlined, AI-enabled SME process looks like in practice:
The result? A process where SMEs feel respected, proposal managers feel supported, and organizations submit stronger, faster, and more competitive bids.
SMEs may always be busy, but with the right approach, they don’t have to be a bottleneck. By combining smart collaboration practices with AI-powered tools, proposal teams can shift the narrative from “wrangling SMEs” to genuinely partnering with them.
Because at the end of the day, SMEs aren’t just contributors—they’re the voices of authority that make proposals credible, compelling, and worth awarding. With less chaos and more collaboration, your team will spend fewer nights chasing experts and more days celebrating wins.
Next Step: If wrangling SMEs feels like your team’s biggest barrier to better proposals, it’s time to explore AI-powered proposal management tools. They’ll help you work smarter, collaborate better, and—most importantly—win more often. Talk to us, or book a demo.