Distracting your readers
Graham Ablett, one of our UK consulting directors, spotted the following photo in the Daily Mail last month:
It’s interesting to read the accompanying story: there’s little or no discussion of the benefits that the £116m scheme will bring to public transport users in the area, but plenty of opportunity for those opposed to the scheme to make cheap, humorous jibes at its expense.
I guess that’s paralleled by apparently minor errors in a sales proposal: they distract the audience from the real story, and give your enemies on the evaluation panel a free pass to criticise your bid. Worst case, you’ll become the butt of their jokes. We may have said it before, but those detailed final checks before you issue a document really are hugely important, no matter how time-constrained you are. (Some in the proposal world talk about ‘white glove’ reviews; we prefer to just talk about checking the document carefully).
And if you simply don’t have the people or skills to do the checking? Then it’s time to go and shout at people until they understand the impact that under-resourcing your proposal team is having on your documents – and hence your win rates.
This article was written by Jon on 28 January, 2010 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 saw a great proofing error last week during a review of a client’s proposals. They not only got their customer’s name wrong, but actually their own – all on the same page. Quite spectacular! I certainly was distracted whilst trying to read that section of the proposal and if I were the customer, I would have probably stopped reading at that point.