In an article published by the company, Melissa highlighted the role accreditation has played in the development of her company’s proposal group. She commented, “Just as an accountant should have a CPA and a lawyer needs to pass the Bar, our proposal professionals should be accredited and have the chance to participate in learning and development programs.”

In the article, Melissa also offers her views on ways to develop your team (and echoes many of the things Jon and I have stated and written about here in the blog). Here’s what Melissa advises:

• Recognize that each individual is different – with different skill sets, needs and interests.
• Understand the expectations for your group and consider ways you can coach and mentor.
• Join professional organizations (such as APMP) to stay abreast of best practices for your group or industry.
• Seek out training opportunities
• Don’t get too comfortable – There’s always something to learn!

Congratulations to Melissa on this prestigious award, on her promoting APMP accreditation and her obviously ‘getting it’ when it comes to the profession of proposals.

APMP’s 2011/12 Global Salary Survey has just been unveiled. You can complete it anonymously here. The survey assesses eight key salary drivers and the associated compensation structure:

Industry

Region

Gender

Age

Education

Job Function

Management Responsibility

Experience

The deadline for participating is 23 December: do pop over to the survey site and join in! I’ve just filled it in myself, and it only took about three minutes.

If you choose to provide your email address, you’ll receive a report showing the key findings once the survey results have been analysed – probably around the end of January. If it shows you’re underpaid, what better way to support your claim for a pay rise. And if it shows you’re overpaid – well, let’s just hope your boss hasn’t participated too!!

Most people recognise that the current standards are too oriented to larger proposal projects – a bias perhaps reflecting APMP’s heritage in the US federal government and defense markets. The next generation of the competencies has to reflect the skills needed to run proposals successfully in other sectors – such as the commercial and healthcare markets – and around the world.

“Pink teams” reviewing “wall-mounted storyboards”? ‘Capture’ management? Bid budgets for each deal? A requirement at Practitioner level for experience on ‘complex’ bids? There are too many things that simply aren’t appropriate for a scheme that has to appeal to all proposal staff around the world. And there are gaps, too: there’s far too little on leading and motivating the proposal team – or, perhaps, on problem-solving. There’s nothing on the content development process – or on writing great content!

And even once the competencies have been refined, the way in which they’re tested needs real work. There are numerous questions at Foundation level that are ‘controversial’, to say the least. The “PPAQ” form at Practitioner is in dire need of an overhaul – a personal opinion that would tend to be validated by the relatively low number of people who’ve attained this second tier of accreditation. And the language used throughout needs to be less impenetrable, especially for candidates who are not native English speakers: put bluntly, the next iteration of the scheme needs to be far better written.

I’m very much looking forward to feeding in my views to whichever research organisation APMP selects to canvass opinion from proposal teams worldwide. After all, I think I’m right in saying that I’ve delivered APMP Foundation training in more countries around the world than anyone else – sixteen nations across four continents in the past eighteen months alone! I’m willing to providing whatever time it takes to comment in detail on the current competencies, questions or forms – and to contribute (as a member of the APMP steering committee for accreditation, and as an Approved Trainer) to the peer review of any new materials.

We’ll share anything here that we’re able to – including, if we can, anything we learn about how you can contribute your views to the research exercise. In the meantime, we’d welcome your comments on the changes that you’d like to see to the scheme, and we’ll make sure that your input’s drawn to the attention of the relevant folks.

This year’s theme, “The Art of Winning”, takes its inspiration from Sun Tzu’s famous book on military tactics, “The Art of War”, written some 2,500 years or so ago. Much as Machiavelli is my preferred evil source of reference for running proposals, it’s been great fun returning to Sun Tzu’s book having not read it for many years. I thought you might enjoy a few selected quotes, which seem particularly pertinent to those of us who write proposals.

1.       “Do not make war unless victory may be gained thereby; if there be prospect of victory, move; if there be no prospect, do not move.” (Qualify, folks!)
2.       “To be late, and hurrying to advance to meet the foe, is exhausting.” (Pre-proposal planning matters: let’s plan for success rather than merely responding to RFPs)
3.       “These things must be known by the leader: to know them is to conquer; to know them not is to be defeated.” (How clear are you with your sales teams on the information they need to dig out before you start work on a proposal?)
4.       “The army that conquers makes certain of victory, and then seeks battle. The army destined to defeat, fights trusting that chance may bring success to its arms.” (What a fabulous endorsement of the need to work out your proposal strategy before you start to write)
5.       “If a victory be gained by a certain stratagem, do not repeat it. Vary the stratagem according to the circumstances.” (We need a specific strategy for every opportunity – and simply cutting and pasting the Exec Summary from the last deal isn’t good enough!)
6.       “The wise man considers well both advantage and disadvantage. He sees a way out of adversity.” (That’s why the APMP accreditation syllabus puts so much emphasis on the Bidders’ Comparison Matrix)
7.       “In general, the procedure of war is: the Leader, having received orders from his lord, assembles the armies.” (Hey, we’re working for the sales organisation, right -  supporting them as they seek to win business. To an extent, we need to know our place).
8.       “As a rule, the soldiers prefer high ground to low. They prefer sunny places to those the sun does not reach.” (Yep, motivating the team’s pretty important)
9.       “Universal courage and unity depend on good management.” (Ever seen a dysfunctional proposal team, with everyone pulling in opposite directions…?!)
10.   “We create a situation which promises victory; but as the moment and method cannot be fixed beforehand, the plan must be modified according to the circumstances.” (How relevant to the ever-changing world of managing proposals)
11.   “If victory be certain from the military standpoint, fight, even if the lord forbid. If defeat be certain from the military standpoint, do not fight, even though the lord commands it.” (A controversial one, this – does it encourage rogue bidding? Not necessarily one I’d want to share with salespeople, but an interesting insight into their mindset!)
12.   “As has been said: “Know thyself; know the enemy; fear not for victory.” (That’s proposal strategy in a nutshell!)
13.   “To fight and conquer one hundred times is not the perfection of attainment, for the supreme art is to subdue the enemy without fighting.” (Hey, if we can avoid getting into a competitive tendering process in the first place – writing pro-active proposals, especially seeking to renew existing contracts, then so much the better)
14.   “He who does not employ a guide, cannot gain advantage from the ground.”  (Training for all participants; coaching; mentoring – all key to success)

It promises to be a great conference: if you’re lucky enough to be attending, do come and say hi!

David has been actively involved with APMP for the past 20 years, and has served as our Executive Director for the past 18 years. He has worked tirelessly to grow our membership and to increase recognition for our profession. Under his tenure, APMP has grown to more than 3,800 members in 68 countries, and more than half of the membership has achieved accreditation. He has successfully coordinated and co-chaired 18 annual international conferences, and many chapter events and symposia.

On a personal note, I’ll be extremely sorry to see David leave; he’s someone I admire and respect greatly. He’s offered marvellous support to me since I first met him nearly ten years ago – being wonderfully helpful to the UKAPMP chapter in its early days and since, and being incredibly helpful regarding the conferences at which we’ve presented and exhibited over the years.

The search is now on for a new Executive Director for APMP (and anyone interested should contact Kirste Webb). Whilst policy for the association is set largely by its elected officers, the Executive Director inevitably has a huge impact on APMP’s direction. Here are my personal thoughts on some of the priorities for the new post holder (and the Association more generally) in the coming years – building, of course, on much excellent work that’s already underway:

1.     Grow membership. 3,800 is an impressive figure – but still represents merely a fraction of the bid / proposal community in any of the countries where we have chapters or members. Let’s set an aggressive, challenging, step-change target – say, to at least double it (or to 10,000) within four years – and build a clear plan to get there.

2.     Grow internationally. March 2011 marks the tenth anniversary of the APMP’s first international branch. Nearly a decade on, the association’s roots have spread, with chapters in several other countries. Yet many of these international groups are still relatively young, and relatively small. I’d like to see real focus from APMP on growing these more rapidly – with strong financial investment if needs be. We also urgently need more realistic membership rates in countries where the cost of living is so much lower than in the US / western Europe, if we’re not to inhibit growth.

3.     Run a non-US conference. Why don’t we decide that APMP’s main worldwide conference in, say, 2014 will be one of the autumn events held outside the US – e.g. an expanded version of the excellent event that takes place every year in the UK? The May/June summer event could still take place that year – but would be classed simply as the US national gathering for a year. I think that’d give a very powerful message about the association’s worldwide reach. (And let’s run the conference in, say, South Africa or India before the end of the decade, too).

4.     Commercial focus. Clearly, APMP’s legacy is in the government / defense space – and I respect and value the pioneering work in those areas, which have largely shaped the way we view our profession today. But so many proposal teams work in such different environments – with response times measured in days and weeks, rather than months or years – that APMP needs to come to terms more fully with the commercial world, with approaches in this arena seen as equally valid as those in the traditional areas of APMP’s strengths. More research focused specifically onto this area may also help.

5.     “Accreditation, mark 2”. The accreditation scheme has been one of APMP’s greatest success stories in recent years. Yet the current model draws on benchmarking data from a study nearly ten years old – at a point where the Association was largely US and government / defense oriented. That means that the competency definitions are skewed (and irrelevant for many who wish to become accredited) – whilst some of the syllabus feels increasingly dated. The competencies and questions urgently need updating; there needs to be a vendor-independent study guide (rather than a proprietary textbook, no matter how good that is); we need an exam in languages other than English. And the investment needed to make that needs to be generated and made available – surely not infeasible, given the revenues and memberships that accreditation has generated. Moreover, far too few members have reached the higher levels of accreditation (Practitioner & Professional) – progress in this area needs to be accelerated.

6.     Financial openness. I’d like to see the Association’s financial accounts and plans published openly every year for all to review, along with a review of central spend versus monies invested back into local chapters. It’s tough for a not-for-profit organisation to balance financial robustness with the investments that we’d all like to see; letting members understand the finances can only help.

7.     Exploit the website. How many members regularly access the www.apmp.org site, or really make use of the wealth of wonderful information in the APMP “Body of Knowledge”? I genuinely believe that there’s far more potential for the APMP website to become the focal point for proposal professionals – the daily “must visit” site for all members over their morning cup of coffee.

8.     Focus on proposals. I know I’m fighting an unpopular cause here, but we’re called the Association of Proposal Management Professionals. The clue’s in the name. By focussing more and more on “business development”, I believe we’ve diluted our message and lost a degree of focus.

I’m sure there’d be other things on my wishlist, if I kept writing, but that’s enough for now. And I know I write from the luxurious position of being someone who’s served as an officer of the association in the past, but whose commitments mean I can’t take on elected posts again myself at the moment – especially in such a US-oriented organisation. But I’d welcome readers’ thoughts on the future priorities for the association, to assist the new Executive Director, whoever that may turn out to be.

The event – “Making a splash” – took place in Johannesburg on Wednesday, and I was honoured to be invited to give the keynote speech in front of a sold-out audience of over sixty participants. I was delighted, too, for the dozen participants who passed their APMP Foundation Level exam on Tuesday after we’d worked intensively through the syllabus together.

Proposal Panda – who’s been in hibernation for the past couple of months (aka sat in the corner of my office looking glum) – joined me for the trip, and met the local proposal mascot, Wendy Witch. Here are a couple of photos from the conference and the accreditation course:

It’s great to see the emergence of the ‘profession’ in South Africa, and the organisers (led by local APMP chapter chair Sandy Pullinger) deserve huge praise for their hard work.

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.

The APMP Foundation level accreditation exam tests an individual’s knowledge of basic proposal best practices, which is, in my opinion, appropriate for the first level of accreditation.

However, for several reasons (which I won’t go into here at the moment but which I will perhaps address in a future post) the exam is also heavily based on federal government proposals. Those of you who have only worked on commercial or public sector proposals would probably not be familiar with concepts or terms such as ‘color reviews’, ‘capture planning’, etc. Further, the correct answers are very specific, and while you might think the correct answer is “it depends” (that is, based on the particular scenario), you need to give the answer that is looked for. All this makes for it being extremely difficult for those who have only worked on commercial proposal to pass without extensive review of the exam material. Even those who work primarily or solely within the government space tell us that the exam can be difficult to pass without the appropriate review of the exam material.

What Jon and I hear from those who have attended workshops we’ve presented, both verbally and on feedback forms is:

• “I never would have passed this exam without having attended this session.”
• “I might have passed, but the workshop gave me the confidence to know I would pass.”
• “The review of materials within the workshop was incredibly helpful and definitely contributed to my passing the exam.”
• “I work on federal proposals and I would have had a very difficult time passing this exam without having attended this session.”
• “The tips for how to approach and take the exam were invaluable.”
• “I would highly recommend this workshop, especially to those who work on commercial proposals.”

I’ve no doubt that it’s possible to pass the exam by studying on your own and I’m sure many people have. I’m also equally sure that the workshop makes it much easier to review, prepare for and ultimately pass the APMP Foundation Level accreditation exam.

The milestone? Given the number of members who have achieved some level of APMP accreditation to date, as well as the number of members who will achieve APMP Foundation level accreditation either at workshops prior to or at the annual APMP conference, by the time of the conference – the first week of June – more than 50% of APMP members will have achieved some level of APMP accreditation.

I’ve no doubt that reaching the point where the majority of APMP members have some level of accreditation will lead to an expectation of a person working in the proposal arena being APMP accredited. More and more, ads for proposal staff will read, “APMP accreditation required” or “APMP accreditation given preference.”

The good news is there’s still time for you to become accredited prior to the conference. We will facilitate an APMP Foundation Level Accreditation Preparation Workshop and Exam in the Washington D.C. on May 24t (information and registration regarding the workshops Strategic Proposals has scheduled can be found at www.apmpaccreditation.com). And there’s also a workshop scheduled immediately prior to the conference.

Jon and I, as strong supporters of and believers in the value of APMP accreditation, hope reaching this important milestone will help many you who have been undecided about APMP accreditation finally go for it (and we hope to see you in one of our upcoming workshops!)

As well as a session (“Proposal World”) from the main stage with BJ on the Thursday morning of the event, I’m presenting a slot on “The Excellent Executive Summary”. I submitted my final paper last week, and the good folks at APMP were kind enough to review it in detail.

They came back with the observation that they’d apparently found a “punctuation error”. The issue concerned was a box in which I’d used the phrase “e.g. RFP”, provoking them to observe:

there should be a comma after “e.g.” and before the RFP acronym, so it looks like “e.g.,”

This rather surprised me, so I thought I’d check it out. After all, if “e.g.” without a comma is incorrect, I’ve made proofreading errors in pretty much every document I’ve written over the years! And a reliable online source made for interesting reading:

For American English usage, you should always put a comma right after both “i.e.” and “e.g.”, as shown in the examples above. For British English usage, do not put a comma right after either “i.e.” or “e.g.”.

Well, I never knew that! I’m used to the fact that spellings are sometimes different on opposite sides of the pond – but I’d never picked up on this particularly subtle difference in punctuation.

Of course, were the APMP conference a US event, I’d clearly translate my material into American English. But it’s not – it’s an international event that happens to take place in the States, with an audience drawn from across the globe. As such, I think it’s more appropriate to present in my native language! Yet even that’s an interesting point for debate…