Posted by Jon under Interviews and the Panel | 
The recent news of the merger between leading proposal software providers Sant and Kadient has provoked much discussion within the proposal profession. I thought this would be an interesting topic, to explore further, so took some time out at the APMP Conference at the start of June to pose a few questions to Brian Vass – Vice President, Marketing for The Sant Corporation.
JW – So, the obvious question: why the merger? What’s in it for your two companies – and your customers?
BV – There are a lot of synergies between our product families and organizations that made the merger an ideal marriage. Our customers will benefit from everything the two companies have to offer – technology, people, and an incredible depth of expertise. They now have access to a broader set of capabilities from a single vendor to address what their sales team needs throughout the sales cycle.
Customers will also benefit from:
• Our commitment to customer satisfaction through the “Customer for Life” program
• Access to an online Customer Community to share ideas, best practices, and locate implementation resources
• Opportunity to attend an annual customer conference
JW – Any views yet on which products will survive into the long run – or how you’ll decide that? Surely one of your aims must be to rationalise and pick the “best of the best” of the two product sets?
BV – As a combined company, our commitment is to provide our customers the very best of each of our solutions for RFP and proposal creation, sales content management, and the strategic delivery of that content through sales playbooks. Our Product Management team is working on an integrated product strategy that will incorporate the best of both offerings. For now, it’s “business as usual” for our customers.
JW – It’s always seemed as though the two companies have spurred each other on in the race to develop their respective product sets. Long-run, will the loss of competitive pressure result in a slowdown in the pace of development?
BV – We still face competition in the market and we anticipate new competitors to emerge. Regardless, we develop products that meet the needs of our customers. We capture feedback through our customer community, focus groups, surveys, annual conference, and daily interactions. Our commitment to providing customer-driven product upgrades, on a timely basis, will not change as a result of the merger.
JW – The new company: focused on proposals / RFPs – or on sales collateral more broadly?
BV – All of the above. We remain fully committed to provide solutions that arm sales professionals to:
• Automate the creation of client-focused proposals, RFP responses, and presentations
• Quickly and easily locate, personalize, and deliver their company’s best sales and marketing content
• Access situation-specific coaching through electronic “sales playbooks” within their CRM system. The playbooks guide the sales person through the steps of the sales cycle and provide links to relevant content & advice.
JW – Bitter rivals suddenly becoming best friends. How are the people in your respective teams getting on now they’re on the same side of the table?
BV – We’re getting on surprisingly well. It’s been strange at times sharing our sales pipelines, product roadmap, marketing strategies, and other internal gems. But we’re making our company better by taking the best practices from each organization. And everyone is motivated to be the largest provider of sales enablement solutions in the marketplace.
JW – And finally – what will be the name of the merged company?
BV – Kadient and Sant will operate under their existing names until a rebranding project is completed later this year. Stay tuned!
Many thanks to Brian for taking the time to share his views. If you have any thoughts or questions regarding the merger, do add your comments to this post!
Posted by Jon under Musings |
After flirting over the years with various newspapers – most notably The Independent and The Guardian – I’ve recently gone back to The Times. I love its writing – crisp, original, providing enough detail to make you feel well-informed without leaving you overwhelmed with information. Just like a good proposal, I guess.
But its structure? Oh my goodness! Inserted inside the main paper last Friday was the “Arts & Ents” section. Inside that: the “Mindgames” supplement. Next came “Bricks & Mortar”. Inside that – in this bizarre Russian doll of a newspaper – “the game”, their soccer update (its title in supposedly-trendy lower-case). Inside that – a separate listing of the coming season’s football fixtures. None of these were separately bound or stapled, you understand – just six different sections within the overall paper, needing to be separated out from one another before any individual component could be enjoyed without interruption.
I can guess where the problem arises: each area of content doubtless has its own editor who wants the glory of a separate section rather than seeing their material blended coherently into the overall document. And production lead times may play a part, too. But the result is a total mess – feeling like it’s structured for the writers rather than the readers. And there’s a lesson in that for those of us who develop proposals.
Posted by BJ under Proposal Guys news, Word play & writing |
As was the case for the cartoon caption contests* we ran at the annual APMP conferences the past two years, we would have posted the finalists immediately upon returning from the conference. This year I wasn’t able to do so because someone** wasn’t thinking and packed up the responses with the rest of the material from our booth and shipped it back to the Strategic Proposals US offices.
The materials have finally arrived here in our offices and I’m now able to provide the finalist entries and have our readers vote on them.
We received quite a few responses at the conference and, not surprisingly, many of them hit very close to home. Also not surprisingly, many of these (about 20 or so) were related to extensions (I.e. “He didn’t see the notice that they had given us an extension”. John S.) and the turnaround time (“I just asked him to reread the entire thing before we submit it…in 20 minutes.” Tom L.) Another favorite topic was the impending deadline/due date (See one of the finalist entries.) A somewhat surprising topic was pizza (“I just told him they were out of pepperoni.” Submitted by Neil E.). We even had a Disney related entry (see honorable mentions.)
As it is each year, it was tough to come up with the finalists but, after much debate, lobbying and a bit of whining, we were able to come up with an agreed top three entries.
Our two honorable mentions are –
“When did his eyes start bleeding?” (Chris J.)
“He can’t find his Mickey ears.” (Alexandra M-J)
Our three finalists (in alphabetical order of the last name of the submitter) are –
1. “Can’t your family go to Hawaii without you?” (Anita F.)
2. “Who knew a 14:00 deadline meant 2pm?” (Gregg K.)
3. “Just because the client makes computer chips and not potato chips?” (Cynthia M.)
You can cast your vote (one per reader) by sending an e-mail with the subject line “Cartoon Caption Contest” and stating within your mail the number of the entry for which you wish to vote. Please send your mail to bj@strategicproposals.com. We’ll collect votes for one week from the date of this post and then announce the winner.
*We ran our first Cartoon Caption Contest in 2008. This contest is based on and modeled after the long running and very popular cartoon caption contest done by the New Yorker magazine. Entries are submitted, from which three finalists are chosen. The readership then votes for their favorite and a winner is determined based on receiving the largest number of votes.
For each contest, Jon and I come up with an idea for a cartoon and then this is developed and drawn by Mike Parkinson of 24 Hour Company. The cartoon is distributed to conference participants and they then submit their entry (or entries, as participants may submit as many ideas as they wish) and we post it on a board at the conference. Participants at the conference tell us they really enjoy seeing the ideas of their fellow members.
**Okay, I admit it. I was the one to put them in the box. But those supporting me should have known to check to see if I had, yet another, bright idea that wasn’t quite thought through and which needed to be corrected.)
Posted by Jon and BJ under Proposal Guys news |
Those of you who’ve met us at conferences or courses will know that we’re not usually the quietest of people… and so you might have been a bit surprised by the lack of posts here since the APMP session in Florida at the start of the month.
We’ve just worked out that although we’ve been posting merrily away, and the control panel for the site was claiming that all was well, our posts haven’t actually been showing up on the site.
Everything’s now fixed, and normal service is resumed – and we’ll now re-publish the entries that should have appeared over the past few weeks. Sorry for the radio silence!
Best wishes
Jon & BJ
