Posted by BJ under Musings | 
I was just out in Seattle, delivering an APMP Foundation Level Accreditation workshop and presenting at the first Fall Symposium held by the Pacific-Northwest Chapter of APMP.
As one does when visiting in Seattle, I went to the Pike Place Market. The market has at least half dozen stalls selling fresh fish. One stall in particular, the Pike Place Fish Market, was quite busy, and much busier than the other stalls.
I was aware of the Pike Place Fish Market, and I suspect some of you are as well. This company is famous for the way they work. They stop people walking by. They engage potential customers in conversation. They are loud. They shout out orders. And, most intriguingly of all, when a fish is ordered it is thrown to, and usually caught by, the person packing it up. The people working here have so much fun, are so much fun to watch, and are so engaged with their customers that a video of them is part of a management training course that is used by other companies.
I visited all the stalls in the market and from what I could tell the prices from one stall to the next were, for the most part, comparable. But that’s where the comparisons ended.
The Pike Place Fish Market stood out from all the other stalls. When I approached person there, he smiled, told me his name, asked me what my name was and where I was from. He then asked me which of the fish I’d like to sample. He let me try several, while at the same time explaining how the fish was caught, prepared, etc. He was very knowledgeable and I asked lots of questions. HE seemed genuinely happy to answer them all.
This person kept me engaged in a pleasant conversation and there was never any pressure to buy anything or for me to rush. He seemed to truly enjoy conversing with me (I know Jon, hard to believe, right?). He also seemed to very much enjoy his work.
While he and I were speaking, orders were being taken, shouted to the back and fish were flying. The atmosphere was infectious and people gathered to watch, many of them engaging with the staff, trying samples, etc. I bought quite a bit of fish to take home with me.
Now, I suppose I could have, maybe even should have, checked prices at the other stalls. But I didn’t. Instead, I bought my fish from this person who had taken the time to establish a ‘mini’ relationship with me. We’d hung out together, even if only for a few minutes. But those minutes were fun and memorable. By the time I had decided which fish I wanted to purchase, this person felt more like a friend than just a sales person. I would have felt disloyal going to another stall, even if I did save a bit of money.
The Pike Place Fish Market certainly debunks the myth of it being “All about price”.
Posted by Jon under Musings, Processes & best practice |
When we survey buyers to find what they see as the characteristics of a good proposal, “a logical structure” always comes near the top of their wish list – never mind that their RFPs are often so illogically organised as to make responding in a coherent way nigh on impossible!
I was reminded of this recently whilst staying in an ever-so-trendy new hotel in the Middle East – part of an international chain, clearly keen to impress its guests and win awards by making everything as cool as possible. I’d finished running the first day of a two-day course, and decided it’d be good to go for a dip in the hotel’s pool. But where to find it in the hotel? I knew it was described on their website as a “rooftop pool” – yet I also knew that I’d been to the top floor of the hotel the previous evening, eaten in the lovely bar, and seen neither sight nor sound of anywhere to swim.
Time, I thought, to consult the hotel’s directory. Being new and slick and modern, my room didn’t offer me anything so old-fashioned as a booklet of information – everything I might need to know being on their lovely interactive online system. I fished around to find where I’d hidden the remote control (how *had* it ended up so far under the bed?), flicked on the TV, and loaded the menu. And here were the choices that faced me:
Arrive
Awake
Eat and drink
Amuse
Asleep
Away
Abuzz
A-list
“Swimming pool”, perchance? No such luck. I guessed at “amuse” or “abuzz”, but neither of those contained anything remotely helpful – so, in frustration, I gave up and phoned reception.
I was left reflecting on the triumph of style over substance – both the format and the structure of the content doubtless making so much sense to the hotel’s design team – but being useless, frustrating, frankly downright annoying for their customers. Like, dare I say, a fair number of proposals…
Posted by BJ under APMP & accreditation |
As I’ve no doubt you’ll all immediately recognize, the title is the abbreviation* for the APMP Foundation Level Accreditation Preparation Workshop and Exam.
Now, upon seeing this, you might think this post will be about the dangers of using arcane abbreviations, jargon that the client isn’t familiar with, etc. within proposals (and I admit to being sorely tempted to do so and I reserve the right to come back to this topic in another post on another day). But that is not the intent of this topic; this post is intended to help clarify the objectives/goal of workshop.
I’m prompted to write this post based on the response I hear at the start of an APMPFLAPWE, “What is your objective in attending this workshop?”** At almost every workshop there are at least one or two participants who respond with, “I’m here to learn what I need to know to perform my job function as a proposal (manager, writer, specialist, etc.).” or some version of that statement.
I have to sigh a bit when I hear this from a participant because they obviously have not understood the purpose of the workshop.*** The objective of the workshop is to review the basics of proposal management, the material covered on the exam. A secondary objective is to provide guidance as to how best to approach the exam and answer the questions. The goal is to give participants who have the necessary understanding of proposal basics the highest probability to pass. The workshop is NOT and does not teach participants the basics of proposal management. It does not provide the exercises necessary for participants to practice, learn and gain efficiency with new skills and knowledge.**** The workshop is not training in the true sense of the word, it is a review of material the candidate for accreditation participant is expected to know.
*This is an abbreviation, not an acronym.
**At the workshop we do try to emulate proposal best practices. In this case, as I do at a proposal kick-off, I ask those involved their objective(s) for participating in the effort.
***We have attempted to make the objectives of the workshop clear within the workshop description, write-ups and even with the careful wording of the workshop title – preparing for the APMP Foundation Level exam.
****These ARE the objectives/goal of the many proposal workshops we present.
Posted by Jon under Processes & best practice |
I’ve been travelling pretty extensively for work of late. So much of the core of proposal management ‘best practice’ is common around the world, but I always find it fascinating to uncover the subtleties associated with bidding in different countries and cultures.
Take a recent trip to Abu Dhabi. Flicking through a local paper at dinner one evening, my eyes were drawn to an advert announcing an ITT for an engineering project to be delivered for a public sector body.
And there, in the write-up, amidst the format of the proposals they’d require and the submission dates, was a quite fascinating phrase:
Deadline for buying tender documents
Yep, you read that right: ‘buying’. A rough mental calculation showed that bidders were expected to pay the equivalent of around USD 1,000 to the client’s Contracts & Tenders Department for the priviledge of participating. Discussions with the team on the course revealed that this was common practice locally.
Even the most experienced international purchasers to whom I’ve mentioned this since have been astonished and quite dismayed! But hey, it’d certainly focus minds during the qualification process if a ‘go’ decision involved writing a cheque to the prospect, on top of any internal bid costs!
Posted by BJ under Word play & writing |
Need a break from working on a proposal? Perhaps a quick game of proposal related Jeopardy would help.
As many/most of you will know/remember, in Jeopardy, your response must be in the form of a question.
As an example:
Answer: A part of an ascent of a mountain that is extremely difficult.
Question: What is “a technical section?”
All questions contain proposal related terms. I’ll post the answers as a comment.
If you have a great proposal related answer/question, we’d love to hear it. Please submit these as a comment.
Here are the answers:
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Easy
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- Notes directing someone as to where they can find the spare key.
- The steps to be taken to cage a woodchuck that has been eating in the garden.
- A coach, manager and place kicker discussing whether to have the football held by hand or placed on a tee.
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More Difficult
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- Reviewing what needs to be done before popping the big question.
- The loudest person in a choir
- A deposit and letter of intent for a large circus.
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Toughest
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- The annual gathering of people who attend auctions.
- Assessing the beach volleyball players who didn’t wear sun screen on a very sunny day.
- A spreadsheet of which members of the S&M club are behaving as expected.
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Have fun…and then get back to that proposal on which you’re supposed to be working!
