Tan Parmar of design agency Redwood was another of the presenters at last month’s UKAPMP conference. I enjoyed his comments on designing magazine covers: the parallels to proposals are evident. “Covers are really important,” Tan explained. “A good cover should encapsulate the mood and tone of the magazine.”

His design checklist for a good magazine cover? Simplicity, clean typography, and visual impact. Not many of the proposal covers I see – often cluttered and uninspiring – would pass the test.

Tan also outlined one of the benefits of good design: “when you’re skimming through the magazine, you can access information really, really quickly.” Again, that’s so similar to our world, where evaluators need to be able to navigate our documents quickly and easily, whilst absorbing our key messages.

I know that many of our readers, like Jon and I, are avid readers. I also suspect many of you, like us, when lacking for something that we want or need to read, will read whatever happens to be within reach.

I recently found myself reading a local entertainment guide, for lack of anything else to read while eating lunch. I’m sure most of you are familiar with such a guide. They contained a few restaurant reviews, a couple of articles on various community events and a couple of pages of clubs and music venues. And most such guides it seems also have a personals section at the back, as this one did.

Within a few minutes I had read all the articles, skimmed through the listings and found myself reading the personal ads (purely out of having nothing else to read I assure you.)

Under “couples for couples”, I came across an ad that made me laugh out loud and which clearly demonstrates the need for the services of someone with the  right skills set, in this case an editor.

This personal ad read,

“Married couple seeks same. Woman must be pretty, sexy and sensual. Man must be muscular, handsome and well in doubt.”

Either this couple is seeking an insecure guy or, as this is a great example of the often humorous affects of the misuse of words.

The recent UKAPMP conference was a triumph for the organisers: an excellent programme, extremely well-attended, in a high-quality venue. (My congratulations to Richard Jenkins, Frances Campbell and the rest of the organising team, as well as to Pat Thomas as UKAPMP CEO for overseeing the chapter’s success).

I particularly enjoyed the presentation by Jack Paine, Director of Procurement at the Department for Transport. He emphasised that whilst his team has an obligation to seek the most advantageous economic solution, “that does not mean that the cheapest price wins”.

He went on to explain that:

“We start with deliverability, then we look at price… It is no good me buying something on behalf of the taxpayer that is not fit for purpose.”

Great ammunition, this, for those working with sales colleagues who dismiss the importance of strategy and value, in favour of “it’s all about price.”

I also loved Jack’s anecdote of the worse line he’s seen opening an Executive Summary:

“Inn every aspect of our business, we seek ultimate quality.”

Yes. “Inn”.

I was listening recently to Gary Mule Deer, a brilliant comedian. In his routine he presents things he’s read, in this particular case, from a church bulletin.

As is immediately apparent upon hearing the items read, it’s important to consider the impact when presenting two items close together.

The following are two items I recall Gary presenting (I’m sure these aren’t verbatim -my apologies Gary).

The first two items -

“Experience Hell”

“Join us for a special presentation by our choir.”

And the second two -

“Weight Watchers Meeting – Tues. at 7:30pm”

“Please enter through large double doors on side of building.”

I recall Jon telling me about a proposal he reviewed that contained information that had him laughing due to the unintended impact. To a question regarding training for customer service, the response listed various training courses the CSR’s (customer service representatives) would attend.

At the top of the list was, “Dealing with unreasonable clients.”

Our dear friend Sheilagh Douglas-Hamilton is one of those rare folks whose career has straddled senior roles in both purchasing and proposals, with great success. She’s been back in the world of procurement for the past few years, but we still end up debating proposal issues together on a regular basis.

One recent discussion concerned the role of the Executive Summary. Sheilagh fired the following across to me the following day by email, and was happy for me to share it here:

The purpose of an Exec Summary? To blow me away so I can say, “Yes! Yes! Yes! They really do understand my business and what I want!”

A good Exec Summary “shows that not only do you understand my requirements, but why you are the one to deliver them.” It should provide “a clear, concise summary telling me at a glance, in easy to understand language, why your offering is the best.”

And here are Sheilagh’s views on the characteristics of a successful Executive Summary:

1.    Beautifully written
2.    Nice language - no mistakes please
3.    Clear concise and compelling
4.    Tells a story
5.    Is short and punchy
6.    Makes no more than three pitches
7.    Makes me want to read the rest of the document to find out more
8.    Doesn’t contradict the main body of the text!

I always find this sort of input from an experienced evaluator’s perspective really useful. How does the Exec Summary of your most recent proposal fare against her criteria

I recently heard the song “The Walk of Life” by Dire Straits. This song has, in my opinion, a wonderful intro. And as I listened to this intro, I started thinking about intros within proposals - both as part of an executive summary, to individual sections and within responses to specific questions.

The intro to this song, like any great musical intro, does several things: It introduces the key signature (E Major), the chord progression (in this case E A B A B E if I have it right. [No doubt Jeff E, Robin or another of our readers who happens to be an accomplished musician will let me know if I have this wrong.]) and the chorus. And it repeats all of these several times.

In this case, the intro truly made me eager to hear more (this might have been influenced by my knowing the song!*)

Overall, the intro gives the listener a taste of what is to come and makes them want to hear more.

And isn’t this what the introduction to an Executive Summary should do?  Set the tone, give a flavor of how the information will be presented and make the reader want to continue reading?

Give a “listen” to the intro to your Executive Summary and see if it “catches your ear”.

*I think familiarity plays are a big part in proposals as well. Clients who know you well and to whom you’ve previously presented proposals will have an expectation as to what they will “hear” from you.

We would like to butture you that the software behind The Proposal Guys’ is not at all affected by the bug described in the following wonderful story from the Daily Telegraph…

“President Abraham Lincoln was buttbuttinated by an armed buttailant after a life devoted to the reform of the US consbreastution.”

Not an extract from an essay by a particularly poor history student, but a selection of the nonsense phrases created by automatic software designed to remove offensive words from articles posted on the internet.

The phenomena, known as “The Clbuttic Mistake” after a mangling of the word “classic” that is believed to be the first identified instance of the problem, can be found on tens of thousands of websites.

 (read on)

The resources required to develop a high-impact, high-quality proposal are too expensive and limited to be applied to unqualified opportunities. Many of you will have a process in place whereby a fully informed qualification decision is made prior to undertaking a proposal effort. We applaud you for that.

Those of you working within companies where little to no qualification is being done and where the norm is “if it moves, go for it!” should consider the following.

Submitting a proposal without a fully informed qualification decision is like shooting in the dark. I suppose, as the saying goes, it might be true that, “even a blind squirrel finds an acorn once in a while.” but that certainly isn’t a viable business model.

This seems to be the model used by a couple of companies which recently contacted me. One company, from China, sent me an e-mail letting me know “We have available for you best quality aluminum for any purpose, any size order no more how big. Please tell us your needs and we fill it for you. WE make excellent price.” Not having a need for bulk aluminum and figuring if I ever do I can probably find someone a bit more local, I deleted the mail.

The second company contacted me by phone. They offered, “We are your best source for your diabetic supplies.” Here too, thankfully, I don’t have need of such products and again, hit delete.

In both these cases, I suppose it can be argued that their cost for doing such marketing is extremely low and it is feasible for them to send out information in this fashion.

Proposals, as already stated, are much too expensive (by all measures) to take such approach. Even without the cost consideration, I can’t help but wonder how often companies acting like “blind squirrels” actually connect with someone interested in their “nuts”.

If you’ve ever worked on a proposal where content’s had to be translated between different languages, you’ll know this can be time-consuming, expensive, risky and fraught.

You need to find translators with a truly excellent command of each of the languages concerned - whilst adding in great proposal writing ability. And using translation agencies can be tricky for the unwary. Take the following example, from a different context:

See, all road signs in Wales have to be bilingual. The team working on the project all spoke English. They emailed the council seeking a translation, and added the reply to the sign.

Only the reply wasn’t a translation of their text warning about trucks. It was an automated message explaining: “I am not in the office at the moment…”

In a recent Dear Abbey column, the topic was “Why are some people more popular than others?”

One of the points Abbey made as to which people were more popular was their attitude and approach. She stated, “Some people’s attitude when they walk into a room says “Here I am!” The more popular person will have an attitude of “There you are!”

Most of us would much rather connect with the second person and it’s the same for someone reading a proposal.

So, what attitude does your proposal convey?