Posted by BJ on 7 January, 2008 under Word play & writing | 
The next time someone is late with a deliverable, look them straight in the eye and say, “Thou art a forward shard-borne ratsbane!”
Or when your manager adds yet another proposal effort to the already overloaded schedule, you might wish to let him or her know that you think he or she is a “..mumbling white-livered tyrant!”
These wonderful insults are from a great site I stumbled upon that has a “Shakespearean Insult Generator”.
I suspect some of the sales people with whom I’ve worked might have used a similar site to generate their strategies. They merely push a button and they get something like, “A Extremely User Friendly, Robust, Dependable, Highly Efficient Infrastructurally Based Design That Will Deliver Exceptional Value For Money.”
Posted by Jon on 6 January, 2008 under Musings |
In a recent post, I commented that some proposal centres – and teams – lack passion. A few years ago, BJ coined the phrase ‘Passionate about Proposals’ to describe our approach to our work. We liked it so much that we adopted it as our corporate slogan when re-branding Strategic Proposals, our business, in mid-2006. We like to feel it encapsulates something of our team’s philosophy: proposals matter to sales organisations – and doing them well can be an immensely rewarding experience.
I’ve therefore been taken aback in the past few days by a sudden outbreak of passion wherever I look. The development organisation for north-east England, the area where I live, has adopted the phrase “Passionate about…” for its brand. Flying from Newcastle Airport the other day, I was surrounded by its new slogan: ‘Passionate people. Passionate places’. And then the noticeboards on a client’s site I was visiting urged their staff to become more passionate about their work.
Maybe it’s time for a change. How about:
- Proposals? Yeah, whatever.
- Call us when you’re done.
- When “that’ll do” will do.
OK, now I’m being cynical. But I wonder what your proposal team has for a slogan, a philosophy. What would you print on the T-shirt, or on the sign at the door to your proposal centre, or on a laminated notice pinned up by your desk?
