Posted by BJ on 11 October, 2007 under Word play & writing | 
I caught a commercial on the radio today introducing a new doctor at the local hospital. The commercial closed with the doctor stating, “I treat all my patients like you’d treat a member of your family.”
Okay. I understand the intent here…but I think you can easily see where this could be confusing or out of alignment with the listener’s thinking. (Oh sure, like I’m the only one with a few dysfunctional family members, right?)
As we all know and have heard many, many times, it’s all about understanding the client.
Posted by Jon on 9 October, 2007 under Processes & best practice |
I’ve reviewed a couple of Executive Summaries for clients in different sectors lately. Both were well-written; they sought to restate the customer’s requirements succinctly, showing real insight, and they presented their respective organisations’ capabilities persuasively. Yet both fell short, for different reasons.
The first contained a list of bullets describing what claimed to be the compelling reasons to buy from the bidder concerned. Their approach would be “fully compliant”, their team had “proven experience”, they offered “unrivalled commitment” at senior levels and their solution would be extremely “cost effective”.
I was concerned. The list felt very “me too”: could I imagine a competitor submitting a proposal describing their non-compliant approach, delivered by an inexperienced bunch of recent graduates with little senior support, costing the earth?
But what really worried me was the lack of flow through into the remainder of the document. I applied a simple test, by searching on the key phrases from the stated ‘themes’. Lo and behold, they were notable by their absence. In nigh on 150 pages, the first mention of cost effectiveness came on page 127, and then only in an aside whilst discussing training. Management ‘commitment’ wasn’t referred to at all after the Executive Summary.
It seemed clear that the Executive Summary had been written after the fact, without a coherent overall vision for the proposal – rather like an artist painting a delicate watercolour of an eighteenth century rural scene, only to decide at the last moment to add in a pencil sketch of a spaceship in the far corner.
The second document fell into a slightly different trap. It was extremely well-written, creating empathy, offering great proof points and showing real differentiation. I fired through a few comments to the team, suggesting minor tweaks here and there. And then, not long after, I followed up with a second note on reflection:
By the way, do your three or four win themes really come through in this? There’s lots about the cool stuff you’ll do, but I’m not sure that the messages are quite as memorable as they might be. (Put another way, ten minutes on, I can’t remember what your themes are!).
If your strategy isn’t memorable – if the evaluators won’t read the book with your story clearly positioned in their minds – then it needs some further work and clearer articulation.
Posted by BJ on 5 October, 2007 under Word play & writing |
I came upon the following two ‘speed bumps’ in proposals recently. They literally stopped me in my tracks (reading wise).
“…the price of this is priceless.”
“…the diameter of which is 5 square yards.”
Are you confident that your content doesn’t contain any ‘speed bumps’?
If you’ve seen a good one lately please fell free to share it with us.
Posted by BJ on 3 October, 2007 under Musings |
My Grandma makes the world’s most critically acclaimed coffee cakes. And if you care to argue the point, you’ll have to take it up with the company. The company being My Grandma’s of New England Coffee Cakes.
I recently purchased one of these wonderful cakes and I highly recommend them. But be forewarned, they’re a bit expensive. Part of the cost is in the vanilla they use – “100% pure real bourbon vanilla ($92.00 per gallon)” – as they explain in the literature provided with each cake.
They go on to state, “We’d rather explain the price than apologize for quality.” I think that is a very powerful statement and certainly goes along ways in the “it’s all about price” argument.
Posted by Jon on 1 October, 2007 under Word play & writing |
Staying in a central London hotel last week, I came across this rather bizarre notice pinned to the wall:
OK, so if it’s ‘relaxed’ before 9.30am, is it back to the usual chaos and confusion thereafter – guests ducking flying bread rolls, orange juice poured into diners’ laps, staff behaving in a particularly surly way? (“Coffee? Of course: you do look like you need waking up. A pastry? No, Mr. Williams, looking at your waistline, you really shouldn’t…”).
And then there was a correction in the Guardian newspaper on Friday that I’m sure will appeal to anyone who’s ever had to do any proofreading:
(Blogging does this: it makes one forever on the lookout for things that just cry out to be added to the site!)
