Posted by Jon under Interviews and the Panel | 
In addition to the introduction of our Readers’ Panel, our other new regular feature here at The Proposal Guys will be interviews with people working in the proposal world. I’m delighted to say that our first interviewee is Lewie Miller.
Please could you describe your current role.
I am currently president of The Sant Corporation, and based on my background, directly manage our sales efforts. I began my career in sales with IBM in 1976 and I have sold or directly managed sales in every position since. In the past 30 years I have personally made thousands of sales calls, managed thousands of sales people, and contributed to thousands of proposals.
This career experience gives me direct perspective of the needs of sales organisations and what works with prospective customers. I have been trained in virtually every sales process or methodology and have implemented numerous sales systems. Therefore, I have a unique perspective regarding what sales people and proposal professionals will embrace to improve their performance.
What characteristics make for a first-class proposal?
A first-class proposal is professionally formatted, free of spelling and grammar mistakes, and is structured using a method we call the “persuasive paradigm”:
1. Restate the business problem or need
2. Identify the outcomes the client seeks
3. Recommend a solution
4. Provide substantiating details
Companies who incorporate this structure into their proposals have the highest probability of winning the bid.
How can proposal centres go about making their proposal processes more efficient?
Efficiency is very important in the proposal centre. Proposal writers are most efficient, and effective, when they are writing client-focused content and focusing on the proposal’s win theme. Proposal writers are least efficient, and effective, when they are searching old proposals for RFP answers, copying & pasting content, and reformatting answers to be consistent with the document.
One simple way to improve efficiency in the proposal centre is to store best-in-class RFP answers in a database that is accessible to everyone involved in proposal writing. When a new RFP is received, users can quickly search the database to find relevant answers from the past. This allows the proposal manager to assemble a first draft much faster so he/she can spend their time making sure the answers are the right answers and address the customer’s needs.
How do you respond to those who claim that, “It’s all about price”?
In reality, some buyers are only focused on price. Research from Holden Advisors indicates 30% of buyers are only focused on price. If you’re selling to a price buyer you should provide the minimum solution to meet their requirements, because they won’t see any value-add in your solution.
The good news is, the majority of buyers understands and appreciates value. The true value buyer wants to know how your solution is different from competitors and why that matters. Some buyers are more focused on relationships. They want a long-term, advisory relationship that is based on trust. Value and relationship buyers will purchase a solution that is more expensive if they see meaningful value. It’s always best to quantify your value proposition.
Unfortunately, many value buyers disguise themselves as price buyers. Holden calls them poker players. They want the best of both worlds – good value at a low price. Holden has effective techniques to identify buyer behaviors and deliver a value-based solution.
If you had to recommend one book to proposal managers, what would it be? (It doesn’t have to be specifically about proposals!)
Persuasive Business Proposals, by Tom Sant (would you really expect me to say anything else!). Tom’s book is the world’s best selling book on proposal writing. It’s a great resource for new or veteran proposal writers who write proactive proposals or RFP responses. Tom’s been in the proposal business for 30 years, was named the first-ever Fellow of the Association of Proposal Management Professionals (APMP), and is well respected throughout the proposal community. Amazon.com has good reviews and a “look inside” feature to preview the content.
“If buyers wrote good RFPs, they’d receive good proposals in return. In the meantime, they should stop complaining!” Discuss!
True!! The single most frustrating part of the proposal process is poor quality RFPs. We work with a lot of companies who receive RFPs that contain irrelevant, repetitive, and conflicting questions. It’s frustrating and challenging for a proposal manager to respond to questions that have nothing to do with the current sales opportunity. Resources are spent on these questions that could be better used in other areas of the response document. Even worse, some RFPs contain conflicting requirements, causing proposal managers to speculate about the prospect’s true needs. Inconsistent formatting and numbering in the RFP is also frustrating. It should not be the proposal manager’s responsibility to correct formatting mistakes in the prospect’s RFP.
Thanks, Lewie! We really appreciate your time.
We’ll be interviewing someone new every six weeks or so. If you’d like to suggest someone you’d like to see us interview, then do feel free to comment.
Posted by Jon under Interviews and the Panel |
Yesterday we posted the frustrations that our panel of proposal professionals from around the world experienced in their roles. Today we’ll turn the tables to look on the bright side, since we also asked them to describe the single most rewarding aspect of proposals in their organisations.
Barbara’s response was succinct: “Winning!” I love that: indeed, I’m often heard to comment that I don’t turn up to work in the morning because I enjoy losing!
David picks a similar theme: “The most rewarding aspect of proposals is the win! Nothing is more motivating that a big win from a proposal you developed…. At the end of the day, winning is all that matters – unlike my daughter’s school who believe that ‘trying hard’ is most important!)”. (Reminds me of the feedback at my own son Benedict’s first-ever school parents’ evening, that he was ‘very competitive’. Yes, and…?)
Robin picks not only “wins”, but also “win bonuses”!:
A couple years ago I got my senior leaders to agree to bonuses on RFPs that turned into contracts. This is great extra incentive to the writers. I am also empowered by my organization to give individual awards at whim and even grant up to 10% of an employees’ salary in company stock. There’s also comp time, flex time and work from home options that are very rewarding.
The culture of the organization is also key to employee satisfaction. The company is full of people that want to do their best work and the company tends to hire qualified people that fit the culture. This helps to minimize the frustration of getting subject matter expert cooperation or co-worker support.
We are also encouraged and compensated for continuing education and advancing our skills (i.e. APMP membership, conferences, courses). And we have fun! We work hard and we play hard. People ask me all the time if I have any openings in my department because we know how to have fun.I have to remind them that they also have to work their butts off, but they’ll have fun doing it. It all goes hand-in-hand with work/life balance.I want people to be passionate about their work and happy to be here.
I often describe the proposal team as being in the game of job creation. After all, the proposal is a critical part of winning the deal, and winning business not only helps to secure the futures of existing staff, but also potentially creates vacancies for new roles to deliver to new customers. Along similar lines, Lesa views the most rewarding aspect as being:
…knowing how much we contribute to the company’s bottom line is very rewarding from a team perspective. In 2006, RFP wins represented $100 million in new or retained revenue for our company (total annual revenue for our company is about $2 billion).
From a manager’s perspective, I find it very rewarding to watch the growth and development of the proposal specialists on my team as they move from being tactical to strategic (e.g., go from writing “compliant” proposals to crafting “compelling” proposals that really get the big picture and hone in on each client’s specific needs).
Jeff picks out another of the things that gives me a buzz from working in the world of proposals:
“Every proposal we get is like solving a mystery or a puzzle: Who is this company; how is our relationship with them; what are their real issues; how can we win the work; where can we get the information that needs to go into it? Solving the mystery, along with working with teams of lawyers and marketers to solve real client issues, are the most rewarding parts of proposals in my organization.”
Lisa feels extremely fortunate to -
be part of an organization that is paying close attention to the proposal process these days, which includes paying attention to the people who create proposals and the people we work with. Many improvements have been put in place lately that enable us to better perform our jobs, and the improvements keep piling up.
Our manager is very keen to the idea of the critical interrelationships between our team and the sales team, as well as others throughout our area of the business, and recent initiatives have included a push for higher quality information from salespeople before a proposal is written, as well as a more formal definition of the bid/no-bid process.
The last word goes to Roisin again:
In the early hours of the morning, as you stand there in your crumpled suit, hair standing on end like some form of deviant, nothing looks as pretty as a glossy document, bound, packed, and glistening with the excellence bursting from within. Or perhaps it’s a mirage, a hallucination. After all, you’ve been there for the last twenty hours. Or maybe it’s thirty. You lost count after breaking into the cold pizza.
But when it’s reverently handed to the courier, with admonishments of ‘Be careful with it now, its very important’ and you sign that little slip, there is a deep sense of satisfaction and pride as you watch it begin its journey to the client, like watching your first born head off for their first day at school. And it feels good. You did it – you negotiated, you yelled, and sometimes you begged, but you made it!
Thanks again to the Panel for such thought-provoking and entertaining contributions. Their next challenge will be coming their way very shortly – and do feel free to comment with your own suggestions for topics you’d like them to debate.
Posted by Jon under Interviews and the Panel |
A big thank you to the members of our Readers Panel for their response to the first question we threw in their direction. (You can read the panel members’ profiles here).
The issue we asked them to debate was as follows:
“What are the single most (a) frustrating and (b) rewarding aspects of proposals in your organisation?”
It drew out some fascinating answers. Frustrations first. (Hey, you suggesting that I’m a pessimist by nature?!)
The challenges start with the poor quality of the RFPs that proposal teams receive from potential clients, described by David as containing “irrelevant, repetitive, and conflicting questions.” The proposal team wastes time responding “to questions that have nothing to do with the current sales opportunity”, which “could be better used in other areas of the response document.” And “inconsistent formatting and numbering in the RFP is also frustrating. It should not be the proposal manager’s responsibility to correct formatting mistakes in the prospect’s RFP.”
For Lisa, a frustrating aspect of proposal creation is getting hold of the information needed for RFP responses.
This is a large firm that has undergone several acquisitions and managerial changes over the years; systems have been added and accountabilities have been spread around. With multiple systems and people managing different subsets of information, the whole statistical snapshot of a given time in the company’s existence between annual reports can be difficult to find. Luckily, management is aware of the problem and steps are being taken to correct it…
Meanwhile, Barbara bemoans the “lack of control in picking the RFPs with the best chance of winning and lack of involvement in driving it to the win or debriefing the failures. It is disheartening to craft a winning RFP that is followed up by lackluster interest on the part of the salesperson or that had no chance of winning in the first place.”
Lesa hates the last minute changes prevalent in her organisation. “We work directly with our sales people on every proposal and it seems that no matter how well organized we are by pre-planning and engaging them in the process up front, there are still “reasons” that pop up necessitating last minute changes and rework on our proposals. And we all know that means sacrificing final quality checks and risking errors in the final proposal, which we as proposal professionals loathe.”
For Jeff, “the most frustrating part is the lack of belief in our, or any, proposal theory or best practices. Like most organizations, we have our proprietary proposal “textbook” and program. Both are great too! However, getting the students to actually crack her open, let alone read and believe in her, is another matter.” He continues:
My advice to firms that are crafting such a document and program (e.g. Propose to Win, Refuse to Lose, Pitch to Perfection), before you put anything down on paper, you should figure out how you can get your folks to change their current behavior. More likely than not, even if you have a program and document as good as ours, getting the individuals to change their current behavior as a result is is another matter entirely.”
The people dimension crops up in Robin’s response, discussing the lack of “respect for the work that is being accomplished”:
Once the sales person has been through the process, they “get it”, resulting in a new found respect for the writers. HOWEVER, that does not mean that the sales person can dump it in our lap the next time and not participate! They are sales people – they use flattery to sell! Don’t buy the “I trust you know what you’re doing so send it to me when you’re done” nonsense!
…and “scope creep” is also a challenge – that is requests for support that go “beyond the scope of our defined roles in the department”, such as:
the follow-up questions that trickle in or the request for presentation assistance or ‘can you find X’ for me. We bend, we are flexible, we are always willing to help, but we will not be used. We are not your clerical staff, we are professionals.
Roisin also focuses on the issue of respect, with a wonderful description:
Every Proposal Manager I know is a perfectionist. And a bit of a control freak. But that’s okay, we’re allowed, because we have to be, to get the job done. Except that only Proposal Managers themselves recognise that, and can sympathise and empathise.
If we were brain surgeons, we would be applauded for being particular about detail, thorough to the end. As a Proposal Manager, I am frequently prodded, rushed, and harrassed, to the tune of phrases such as ‘Don’t bother reading it, I checked it myself – it’s complete’, ‘Does the font REALLY matter?’, ‘You’re too fussy’, and worst of all – ‘It’s only a proposal’.
These are the moments when I quietly slip outside for blessed fresh (usually dewy) air and a shot of nicotine. No-one tells a surgeon that ‘It’s only a brain’. Okay, so they aren’t REALLY comparable, no-one ever died as a result of a dodgy proposal, but Proposal Management is our discipline, our art, and it needs more respect.
Check back tomorrow to see what the panel members described as the most rewarding part of their jobs!
Posted by Jon under Musings |
I’m going to Malaysia in December for my 40th birthday. Vic and I have been there before – on honeymoon, three years ago – and most of the trip will be spent lazing at the resort doing not-very-much-at-all.
That said, I’m at the stage of starting to look for a good, up-to-date guidebook or two for the trip. So I drifted into the travel section of a bookstore the other day – and stopped dead in my tracks.
For the books were sorted by publisher. To the left, the rows of Lonely Planets. Straight ahead, the bank of Rough Guides. Over there, the stash of Eyewitness Gudies.
Now, I may be in a minority here, but I don’t tend to buy travel books in a store on the basis of “I wonder where Fodors is recommending today?” Instead, I’ll be browsing to see what’s available that could give me insights into the particular destination that I have in mind.
This vendor-centric thinking is sadly inherent in many proposals I read – especially pro-active proposals (rather than responses to defined RFP questions). It seems as if the structure is determined by the list of subject matter experts: “Let’s include a chapter from each department that’ll be involved in the solution.” It’s the wrong way round: far better to start with a brainstorm of the information needed by the customer to make a decision to go ahead with your proposition.
I see similar dangers – even with RFP responses – with material contributed by sub-contractors. I can well imagine this bookseller showing a publisher’s reps around the store. “Look how many of your books we’re stocking!” Perish the thought that any proposal might park the material from any teaming partners, effectively, on a different shelf – written in a different voice (”because we’ve scarcely got time to edit our own material, never mind theirs”), the style and substance not fully integrated with the rest of the document.
Posted by Jon under Musings |
Bored at lunch the other day, I passed the time watching the gig that was showing on the large plasma screen in the corner: the Pussycat Dolls, at some recent music festival.
What particularly struck me – other than the fact that one of the band seemed to have quite forgotten her skirt – was the make-up of the audience. Directly in front of the stage, a few rows of youngsters danced away ecstatically; behind them were ranked row upon row of seats filled with bored-looking adults.
So, picture if you will the customer’s evaluation team, reviewing your proposal:
Who are the kids who’ll be singing along in the front row – excited, knowing the words; the ones who were delighted to see your name appear on the festival line-up, who’ve been looking forward to this for weeks, who’ll tell their friends how great you were?
Who are the folks who really aren’t here to see your performance: they really don’t like your stuff – they just wanted to get a good spot ready for their favourite band, next on stage?
Who’ll be sitting, looking bored, in the corporate sponsors’ seats: there on sufferance, pre-disposed to be bored, hard to win round, but potentially the ones paying for the tickets and the drinks?
Now it’s not my job as a proposal manager to get in amongst the stakeholders within the customer’s organisation. But I do believe I have the right to test that the salesperson will have done so by the time they get to read the proposal. And I also have the right, the need to suck the salesperson dry of information about the potential audience so that I can fine-tune my performance – proposal – accordingly.
Posted by BJ under Musings |
Okay. So who says everything within this site needs to directly relate to proposals? Certainly not us.
Those that know both Jon and me will understand why I chose to include this comic within the blog and they would tell you that Jon is incredibly knowledgeable about wine and I know very little about it… except to always let Jon pick the wine.
Posted by Jon under Musings |
I smiled at an article in The Times Magazine a while back, which explored the fortunes of a new British polo team.
Apparently, polo players are given a handicap – rather like golf, I suppose. The best players in the world are ranked as tens. Decent players have a handicap of something like four.
Now, here’s the part that amused me: the handicap system rates players “from -2 to 10″. In other words, there are players who are so bad that they are deemed to bring the whole team down, and they’re actually given a negative rating! I’m minded to propose that the same principles be applied to potential proposal team members: then again, I’ve worked with a few account managers and technical experts for whom a score of ‘minus two’ would be positively generous.
