Thursday, May 31, 2007
‘The Murrayfield Test’ for proposal collateral
A design team recently presented me with samples of some new proposal binding and packaging. I immediately dropped one of the ring binders onto the floor. “May I?”
They looked at me, concerned. I proceeded to tell the story.
Some years ago, I facilitated the evaluation workshops for a major IT procurement for a leading financial services institution. We gathered the evaluators together in the executive suite at Murrayfield, home of Scotland’s national rugby team.
One bidder’s proposals had started to come apart before it reached us: pages were falling out of the somewhat crushed ring binder. I well remember struggling up the cold staircases on the outside of the stadium, balancing their fragile documents as best I could.
I can still feel the moment that the ring binder started to disintegrate completely in my hands. I can picture the pages of that bidder’s proposal, floating away in the wind and the rain, in the general direction of Glasgow.
Needless to say, we didn’t trek across the muddy training pitch to retrieve them. I’ve never since underestimated the importance of packaging and binding for proposals. And I put any collateral to what I now term ‘The Murrayfield Test’: if I stand on it, does it survive the experience?
If not a three-ring binder, what do you propose using in its place?
Michelle - ring binders are fine, if they’re good quality ones! The problem here was that the team had clearly used the economy range from their local stationey store - and then made the fundamental error of using inappropriate packaging. Why some bid teams persist in shoving their proposals into that old box that used to hold copier paper, or the one that’s been kicking around the mail room for the past few weeks, rather than using packaging that’s designed for the purpose (e.g. those retailed by shipping companies such as DHL) is beyond me.
BTW other that ring binders, we see people using a whole range of other options - book binding, heat binding, good-quality spiral binding,…