June 25, 2025
Alex McPhail
Before I took over EXA, I worked for a small consulting company with several business lines. For me, it was a mid-career shift—I already had nearly 20 years of experience. My core expertise was in proposal support, complemented by more than a decade in project management. I didn’t hold a Project Management Professional (PMP) certification—an increasingly important credential in the consulting world, especially when the Government of Canada was the client. As a result, most of my billable work focused on proposal support, where I had reals trength.
In that firm, I was something of an outlier. Almost all its revenue came from government clients, while all my proposal consulting clients were in the private sector.
Transitioning from government consulting to private-sector consulting is challenging. The private sector moves faster, tolerates more risk, and runs with leaner management structures. It’s a bit like a pilot moving from a propeller aircraft to a jet: everything happens quicker, and decisions must be sharper.
There’s another crucial difference in proposal consulting that doesn’t exist in most government consulting: the stakes. Companies sometimes live or die based on the outcome of a single proposal. It’s not always that dramatic, but a single win or loss can mean the difference between hiring or laying off dozens of employees. By contrast, a government department’s survival rarely hinges on one consulting engagement. That intensity often overwhelms people making the shift from government to private-sector consulting. Consequently, the firm offered little support to my proposal consulting practice, neither in available consultants nor in the leadership’s understanding of what proposal consulting truly required.
Like all successful consulting firms, the company focused on billable hours. But overtime, I realized that this fixation came at the expense of long-term value creation. When I looked at the market, it was clear that, while we were mid-range for government project management consulting rates, we were underpricing our private-sector proposal work.
I proposed a different approach: reduce proposal consulting billable hours by one-third, and reinvest that time in developing intellectual property, new capabilities, and stronger market positioning. Then, double our billable rates to align with top-tier consulting firms. My goal was to reposition the proposal consulting practice as a niche leader, not a generalist vendor—creating more revenue, more profit, and far greater strategic value.
The executive team rejected the idea. Their reasoning was simple: the firm couldn’t tolerate inequality between employees. Everyone had to be treated the same.
That was the moment both the firm and I knew my time there was coming to an end.
I pivoted my full attention to building what would become today’s EXA. I studied. I taught. I presented at symposiums, round table discussions, and conferences. I sat on industry panels. I attended trade shows. I developed proprietary methodologies, frameworks, and processes for proposal support.
I built EXA’s business model around trust, long-term relationships, and reputational excellence. EXA achieved TRACE certification for transparency and ethics. I wrote and published a 500-page book that became the recognized body of knowledge for capture and proposal leadership in Canada. Both EXA’s professionals and our clients refer to this book frequently.
Over the past 20 years, EXA has grown into Canada’s leading authority in capture and proposal leadership. We don’t just hire great people—we hire the best of the best. To work at EXA, you must already operate at that level. Our professionals are compensated accordingly (our billing rates are among the highest in the country), but most don’t work for the money alone. They work because they love the craft—and it shows. Clients repeatedly thank EXA for the exceptional value we deliver.
That original idea—reduce billable hours, increased rates, revenue growth, market position, and strategic value—was a gut-level conviction. I knew it could work, but the firm I was with couldn’t see the vision.
My Inside the Decision moment came when I took matters into my own hands and reimagined EXA as a premier proposal consulting firm.
It was a defining moment. And I have never once regretted it.
