Posted by BJ under Processes & best practice | 
A buddy of ours, Jeff E., sent me a note recently letting us know that one of his clients was selected as an approved vendor for a large municipality. Jeff wrote the proposal for this opportunity.
He proudly reported that this proposal scored #1 in overall points. He also said that a large number of vendors had actually submitted “responsive and responsible” proposals, and in fact, less than 10 points separated the top 8 bidders.
Wishing to learn more, Jeff reviewed the score sheets and the competitors’ submissions. Of note was the largest single-category point loss on his proposal: the proposal only received a half point (out of five possible) because the client deemed the proposal “barely compliant” with the municipality’s small business inclusion requirements. Jeff states:
“I wasn’t happy about the lost points, but satisfied that I’d done my job as a writer and proposal manager. However, as a consultant I now have valuable information that supports what I’ve seen as a growing trend, first in the nonprofit world, and now moving to commercial funders. Everyone seems to be placing more and more emphasis on collaboration and community, and they are rewarding organizations that get it!”
Jeff also noted that he was glad to be a part of our community, and appreciates our advice, encouragement and our supporting and sharing proposal best practice. Glad to have you Jeff, and congrats on your win!
You can read more about Jeff’s other takeaways from this proposal experience on his blog.
Posted by Jon under Musings |
I’ve had plenty of stimulating discussions recently with Mark Jones, one of our associate directors, who we use to help clients to write more competently and confidently. (So many salespeople and subject matter experts lack confidence and skill with their writing that Mark’s work proves to be a most welcome and very powerful intervention).
Now, Mark’s background is in journalism (he’s a former features editor of the London Evening Standard) and magazine editing (including publications such as Campaign and High Life). He and I fell into conversation about the way in which a magazine editor would approach developing a publication – and the similarities and differences to the way proposals are pulled together.
As a result, he and I ran a short workshop in September for a few senior proposal folks in the UK. I scribbled down some of Mark’s words of wisdom, and thought you might enjoy them:
► magazines: “like a mediaeval monarchy, with an all-powerful ruler at the top, called the editor” – versus many proposal managers struggling for influence
► magazines have around five seconds to catch your attention on the newsstand: does your proposal catch the evaluator’s eye in the same way
► the importance of strong “cover lines” for a magazine to sell itself to potential readers: could we do the same with proposals?
► playing with formats – many magazines have shrunk in recent years; could that help your proposal to be different and appealing?
► the use of a “magazine within a magazine”, or pull-out section, to cover specific topics
► the use of bylines (articles generally being by a named author – whereas proposal text comes from the corporation, not the individuals who would own a particular aspect of the solution: “let’s hear from your people”)
► the importance of design: “There’s always relief for the eye somewhere on the page”, and the editor and art director work closely alongside each other
► the need to make an impact from the start: the first double-page spread is usually the most expensive for advertisers, yet the opening pages of most proposals look “very dull”
► “the beginning should be big” for every article
► the use of signposts throughout the magazine (“The highlights”, “Need to know”, “Boring but important”)
► “give the reader a treat” and “give something back to the reader”
► “get the newsroom atmosphere going somehow… there’s no substitute for getting people together to knock ideas around”
► “we sometimes spend more time writing the summary of the article than we do writing the article itself”
► the concept of the magazine editor “commissioning” content from writers (“who could write this best?” and “how to I fit the right writer with the right story”)
► “people are so sensitive about their writing”
► your proposal is “like a mediaeval knight, flying the colours” of your organisation
► the importance of reader research (and the fine art of doing this) – “describe in three words what you felt about our proposal”; “which of the following words would you use to describe our proposal”.
Posted by BJ under Word play & writing |
Those of you who have attended an APMP Annual conference in the past couple of years will be familiar with the “Caption Contest” we have run as part of those events. (We’ve also written about and presented the results of the contest here on the blog.)
We occasionally run an internal caption contest here at Strategic Proposals, most often sparked by someone passing around a photo that just begs for a caption. We’re currently running such a contest, triggered by a photo of one of the team, Graham, taken while he was presenting at a conference. The photo shows Graham standing in front of a room, gesturing to a screen on his left. Jon covered the image on the screen in the photo with a white square and passed it around with the question, “What’s on the screen?”
This led to several of us submitting entries, some of us (okay, me) submitting several.
Here’s one of my entries:
(We’d show you others but as is often the case with such exercises, the entries include either “inside jokes” that wouldn’t make sense to those not on the team or are of a nature, as is also typical of such exercises, that it wouldn’t be appropriate to show them here.☺)
This one of many such exercises we do here at Strategic Proposals to keep the creative juices flowing and have some fun. We’d love to here what you and your team members do to foster creativity and have fun.
Posted by Jon under Processes & best practice |
I’m generally disappointed in the quality of the books on the market about proposal management. (And yes, before you shout, BJ and I know we ought to get on and write one. Just find another 50 hours for us each week and we’ll get there, we promise).
But there’s one that really stands out from the pack, and that’s Mike Parkinson’s “Billion dollar business graphics”. As Mike’s a good friend, I may stand accused of bias, and as such I’ve refrained in the past from posting about the book. But a couple of unsolicited emails from clients to whom I’ve recommended it convinced me to write a commendation for it here.
The first comes from a Bid Manager in a major (FTSE-250) company in the UK:
“Hello Jon,
We met in June when you gave an APMP practitioners course at [our company]. On the course you recommended the book ‘Billion Dollar Business Graphics’.
I have bought it and am actively using it. It is amazing. Thanks for telling me about it.
At the moment I’m using it to generate my own high-impact but simple graphics (because I’m in a gap between big bids). When the next major bid comes up I’m sure it will help me get more from the graphic designer I use.
So thanks again.”
The other came a little while back from the highly successful proposal centre in one of the UK’s leading financial companies:
Quite simply, the book has caught everyone’s imagination in the team – the proposal writers are using it to understand when to use graphics and how to brief the designers and the designers are using it to revolutionise what they produce.
We’re now seeing graphics in a completely new light – as a means to influence emotions, aid decisions and communicate benefits. We’re getting the designers involved in storyboarding sessions – never thought of doing that before – and the results are amazing. I’d say that buying this book has been by far the best decision we’ve made this year.
