Posted by Jon on 8 November, 2006 under Word play & writing | 
I was tempted, when writing my recent post about the characteristics of a great Proposal Manager, to include the phrase “able to think outside the box”. And then I stopped myself, remembering the two perfect ripostes to that particular clichéd phrase:
“He’s great at thinking outside the box. The problem is that his box is so small to start with.”
and
“I’ll be more enthusiastic about encouraging thinking outside the box when there’s evidence of any thinking going on inside it.” (Terry Pratchett)
If anyone can pinpoint the author of that first quote, which I picked up somewhere on my travels a few years back, I’d love to be reminded.
Posted by Jon on 3 November, 2006 under Musings |
We fell into a discussion recently about roles within a proposal centre, considering the variety of skills needed to pull together a first-class document. To quote from a note I fired off to a friend who runs a proposal centre in the States:
Oh that it was easy to get someone who could simultaneously conduct that orchestra superbly, write an award-winning book, and draw a masterpiece… and that clients gave us long enough for one person to do everything necessary from a proposal perspective.
But, of course, these are very different skills – and time pressures mean that some sub-division of labour is essential. Either that, or affordability means that there has to be a trade-off.
So what of the “Proposal Manager” – “the conductor”, if you like? Take excellent project and people skills, and add in a healthy dose of creativity and lateral thinking. Make sure they’re a great facilitator, and adept at building internal relationships (often at the most senior levels). Check they can combine almost-paranoid attention to detail with an uncanny ability to help the team to see the big picture. Verify their ability to be calm under pressure, and to work brilliantly at six in the morning, on three hours’ sleep.
Require them to be highly “proposal savvy”. And (if it’s possible) make sure they know their way around your organisation and understand your market too – although this would be the area in which I’d compromise if I were recruiting for the role: a great proposal manager can lead a proposal team selling breakfast cereal to a supermarket or business-critical technology services with equal aplomb. But at least make sure they’re great strategic reviewers – able to dissect draft text and see where improvements need to be made, pushing towards a truly excellent document.
Finally, in some organisations, offer this mythical being the salary of a glorified administrator. And then wonder why you can’t get the staff!
Of course, these competencies are very different to those of a great Proposal Writer (brilliant at editing text and building one-to-one relationships with content contributors, but liable to run a mile if asked to stand up and facilitate a workshop). And the skill-set is poles apart from the great Word and design skills of a good Document Manager. But hey, we can expect them to do all of this brilliantly as well, right?
Posted by Jon on 1 November, 2006 under Processes & best practice |
Most customers these days seem to ask for an electronic version of your proposal in addition to the traditional printed copies. Indeed, it’s far from uncommon nowadays to see instances where no paper is required at all.
The response from most proposal teams? Burn the files containing the proposal onto a CD, and – if they happen to have the right kit – print a nice CD label.
Consider the impact on the buyer. Your printed copy (one hopes) looks extremely professional; in comparison the CD is totally uninspiring!
BJ posted recently about the importance of keeping in touch with the latest tools in the market, and a good example for me has been the software that now exists to produce high-quality multimedia versions of your proposal, quickly and cost effectively. The step up in credibility that you get when buyer inserts your CD and sees a professional, branded, tailored screen – rather than the dull old list of sub-directories and files on your competitors’ CDs – is fairly easy to imagine.
It’s well worth a look across at QND, if you haven’t had a chance to explore this area yet. (And tell them the Proposal Guys said hi!)
