Risotto envy
To dinner recently at Envy, one of my favourite restaurants, whilst across in Amsterdam to run an event with our Dutch colleagues. A family appears at the next table – son in his 20s, parents in their 50s. They read through the menu, then call the waiter over.
The mother speaks up. “See, we all want to try the same thing, but my son’s vegetarian, my husband’s allergic to dairy products, and I don’t eat mushrooms. So we wondered – could you do us the ‘Creamy mushroom risotto’ without the cream or mushrooms?”
The waiter – just – restrained herself from checking whether any of them had an allergy to rice, heading off to the kitchen to consult with chef, and returning to explain – very politely – that there really wouldn’t be much left of the dish. At which said family decided to leave and find another restaurant.
We’re all regularly faced with similar challenges when bidding: our organisations often have standard offers, which they can flex to an extent to meet the needs of the individual client. And, as good proposal professionals, we’re great at demonstrating how this fully-tailored solution completely meets the client’s needs.
But there is a danger in this. Had the waitress followed the approach of many bid teams, she’d presumably have brought out a plate of the regular creamy mushroom risotto, and hang the consequences. “Cream? No, sir, that’s very thick stock. Mushrooms, madam? Of course not: have you never tried Dutch beans?”
This article was written by Jon on 21 September, 2009 and filed under Musings. If you found it useful, you can with others. To receive automatic updates, subscribe to The Proposal Guys via 
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I so enjoyed your risotto story. I was all prepared for what I thought would be the ending, but was surprised that it wasn’t what I thought. I was ready for the story to end with a comment like ’sometimes, no can’t meet the client’s fundamental needs and it’s best to pass on that opportunity and move on to the next one.’ -I was even ready to forward it to the sales team, since they insist on bidding on everything. Your ending is great too because they frequently ask us to present our offerings as ‘broth’ when it is clearly (pardon the pun) ‘cream.’ -thanks for the inspiration -Connie Sanford