My two train-journey-neighbours have just departed - senior managers en route to a bid presentation, amazingly indiscreet, as people so often are on public transport. I’ve been entertained for the past two hours with a full account of their proposed solution, as they’ve polished up their PowerPoints and fortified themselves with free coffee.

Just before they left, the older of the two confided in his colleague: “Have I mentioned that the chair of the evaluation committee is my brother-in-law’s girlfriend’s dad?”

As grounds for optimism, it’s not the strongest win strategy I’ve ever heard, but I’m guessing that the bid plan might feature him taking his wife over to see her brother for a family reunion this coming weekend!

I clipped a story from the papers recently about grandee 1960s prime minister Harold Macmillan. His grandson recalled a meeting at the family home.

Cabinet colleague ‘Rab’ Butler produced a pile of papers.

“What are those?” asked Macmillan.

“Policies,” said Butler.

“Oh, I beg you, not policies,” the prime minister retorted. “They come back to haunt you. Give them broad sunlit uplands, dear boy.”

I smiled at the similarity between political spin and the challenge of securing sponsorship from “on high” for programmes to deliver improvements to proposal capabilities. As proposal folks, we may be absolutely fascinated by the detail of how we’re going to improve our processes, our structures, our documents. Yet when talking to the CEO or Sales Director, we need to remind ourselves that the key to success is to paint a picture of the “broad sunlit uplands” if we want to capture their imagination and support. And budget and headcount!

A recent article from the Scripps Howard News Service highlighted some overused/misused words. Here’s a few of them for your amusement.

• Armed robbery (or such) gone bad. This implies that most of them are all well and good.
• Now playing in theaters. Oh, so that’s where the movies are shown.
• Undocumented alien. This is like calling a drug dealer an “unlicensed pharmacist”.
• Healthy food. If chicken is good for you, then it’s healthful. If it’s healthy, it’s still running around.

Jon and I see a fair number of misused words within responses we’ve reviewed (as you might have seen in previous posts.). This list should be a reminder for us all to make sure we’re not misusing words and phrases within our responses.

To Tate Modern, the art gallery on the south bank of the Thames built within the former Bankside power station. The cavernous internal space has been filled with a collection of near-vertical slides, catapulting visitors - who should presumably be concentrating on the Picassos - from the upper floors to ground-level at great speed.

Quite what do the slides have to do with art, I wondered? I saw something of an analogy with the design of some bid centres. Not, I hasten to point out, that these spaces include slides to eject disruptive account managers into the car park outside at high velocity.

No, more that a good environment for a proposal organisation includes plenty of space, brightly-painted walls, toys. relaxaton areas, long wall-to-ceiling whiteboards for no defined purpose other than for team members to scribble up whatever’s sparking their imaginations that day…

In other words, the physical design of the centre breaks with the conventions of the office in which it’s located. Content contributors joining bid teams are surprised: slightly disorientated, perhaps. They’re forced to accept that this is a different type of space, where a different type of work will be called for.

Rather than the bid centre being a dispiriting area to be avoided at all costs (”they lock you in until late at night with only cold pizza to eat, you know”), by being more playful, the very design draws contributors in and allows, encourages them to approach the work at hand in a more positive manner.

Rather like the Tate’s slides and the gallery’s artwork, perhaps.

I’ve finally succumbed to the constant nagging of Jon and my colleagues to get a real time e-mail devise such as a Blackberry. Those of you who know me well know that I’ve been very reluctant to have constant and instant access to my mail for fear of it being to intrusive and distracting.

Coincidentally, my niece (11) recently asked that the computer be removed from her room as she finds the constant barrage of e-mails, IM’s and friends hoping to chat with her too distracting and getting in the way of her getting her schoolwork done.

Wise beyond her years me thinks.

The 12 February edition of ‘The New Yorker’ describes a profession thus:

“men and women with proficiency in sales, spin, propaganda, language and personal relationships.”

Sadly, friends, our esteemed career path as proposal experts hasn’t quite made the pages of my favourite magazine, depsite the uncannily accurate role profile.

Rather, they were discussing the public relations trade. And I’m not altogether sure I’m flattered by the comparison!

The American Dialect Society recently chose ‘Plutoed’ as its 2006 Word of the Year*. The word is defined as, v. to demote or devalue someone or something. (You may recall that last year the General Assembly of International Astronomical Union determined that what had up until then been the planet Pluto did not meet its definite of a planet.)

I wonder if this can be applied to some of the people presented within a proposal to the customer as the team who will be responsible for implementation but who are quite mysteriously unavailable when the contract is awarded. I guess now we can just say that these individuals were “Plutoed” :)
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*The runner-up word was “climate canary”, defined as “an organism or species whose poor health or declining numbers hint at a larger environmental catastrophe on the horizon. I think term applies to those individuals whose position within the proposal function is the first one eliminated when an organizations is faced with the need to cut costs. I think these individuals are definitely “climate canaries” as the elimination of their position is a sure indicator of larger problems within the organization.

When considering the proposal in the context of the overall bid effort, it’s always important to think ahead to the negotiation phase. After all, few customers are simply going to give an immediate “yes” to the document that you submit; they’ll try and push you to improve your solution and lower your price before entering their Purchase Order or signing on the dotted line of the contract.

The proposal content needs to reflect this, ensuring that what you offer up-front:

(a) is sufficient to put you clearly out in front of your competitors, to become the bidder with whom the customer wants to move forward in negotiation, and
(b) leaves the necessary room to manoeuvre in the negotiation phase.

If you’re interested in reading more about negotiation, might I point you towards an excellent new book by a friend, Tom Beasor, with whom I’ve worked in the past and who’s acknowledged as an expert in this area. “Great Negotiators: How the Most Consistently Successful Negotiators Think And Behave” is fascinating stuff – a mandatory read for salespeople who drive negotiations, as well as for proposal staff who need to appreciate “what happens next” after the proposal and presentation. It’s available from Amazon in the UK and US. Who knows: if enough of you order copies, Tom might even buy the beers next time I see him!

I’m getting a fair number of inquiries regarding APMP accreditation and one of the recurring questions is, “Why should I become accredited?”

I had to consider this question myself prior to undertaking the process myself. I have now been through the process to obtain ‘Professional’ level accreditation and with Jon (who has also achieved Professional Level accreditation) have presented the Foundation Level Exam Preparation Workshop and coached others through the higher levels of accreditation I’ll offer my view on this question.

There are several reasons to seek accreditation –

1. You’ve earned it and deserve to be recognized.

If you have more than a year’s experience and have a good solid understanding of the basics of proposals you are eligible to take the Foundation Level exam. Successfully passing the exam is your opportunity to demonstrate that you’ve learned the relevant lessons well. And being awarded “Foundation Level” accreditation will let others know you are serious about your chosen profession.

2. Career advancement.

Achieving APMP accreditation provides tangible proof to your employer of your knowledge of proposals. Each level of accreditation achieved demonstrates your having gained more experience and validates the significant contributions you’ve made within your organization and to the profession of proposals. This should translate into career growth, promotions and the associated increases in salary.

3. It looks good on your resume (and is showing up these days as a ‘desirable’ during recruitment of proposal personnel).

APMP accreditation on your resume is proof of what you’ve don e and learned and helps you stand out among the other candidates.

4. To be part of your professional community.

As more and more individuals within the world of proposal seek and obtain APMP accreditation and in turn, both your fellow proposal professionals and employers will no doubt view this as one of the benchmarks of a person’s proposal capabilities. I’ve no doubt that having APMP accreditation will be seen as necessary within the next couple of years and you’re going to want to become accredited eventually, so you might as well get started now, right?

Watch for upcoming entries on our experiences going through the APMP accreditation process as well as our coaching and preparing others.

I talked a little while back about the need to establish empathy with the customer in your proposal – especially, from the outset, in the Executive Summary.

It amuses me to see how some teams set about establishing said empathy. They’ll cut and paste copious extracts from the client’s web site and RFP, describing their corporate history and achievements. They’ll patronise the readers by playing back macro-level issues of the type that keep the CEO awake at night - but which bear little or no relevance to the hopes and fears of the team working on this particular initiative for the client.

In fact, in seeking to demonstrate understanding, they’ll actually achieve the exact opposite. Buyers are hoping to see that you have really understood their needs; that you can paraphrase, interpret, add insight. They’re not testing your ability to use Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V.