Jon and B.J.'s Proposal Blog
Posted by Jon on 24 August, 2010 under Musings | 
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Natalie, one of our team, sent us the link to the following YouTube video the other day. It’s quite, quite wonderful – and I just had to share it hear.
Not proposal-specific, but I think we’ll all relate to it:
Posted by BJ on 5 August, 2010 under Musings | 1 Comment
A friend of a friend related the following incident recently (via his Facebook page) –
“While in horrendous traffic today, constantly being cut off left and right, moving at a snail’s pace and generally getting myself all riled up, my 3 year old turned to me and said “Daddy, you need to calm down. Let’s take a few deep breaths together. Then we can find a playground, you can swing for a while, and we’ll all feel much better.”
I’ve been on many proposal teams that could use someone with this kind of wisdom.
Posted by BJ on 22 July, 2010 under Musings | 1 Comment
My latest addition to my office is a wireless head set. Not for my cell phone, for my landline. I’ve used a headset for my cell for quite some time (as I’m a firm believer that holding a phone while driving is both dangerous and dumb.*). However, I was, up until a short while ago, using a phone (both corded at my desk and cordless in the outer offices).
With either my cordless or corded phone I found myself cradling the phone in the crook of my neck or holding it, both ways making it difficult to listen and type. (It also caused significant pain in my neck… different from the kind caused by challenging people.)
As I tend to do, I contemplated getting some kind of wireless device that would let me have my hands free to type while speaking on the phone. As I am wont to do, I did some research, found a few suitable products, read some reviews and debated whether to spend the money. The product I thought would best suit my purposes was more than $300… yikes! Hard for me to justify.
I finally broke down and ordered the product (a Plantronics Voyager 500A. Woo hoo. Doesn’t that sound sexy?) and, as often happens for me, I’m kicking myself (or I would if I were a bit more flexible and thanks for the kind offer of handling that for me Jon) for not having utilized such a device a long time ago.
This device lets me sit with my head straight up, type comfortably with both hands free. In addition, I have the added benefit of being able to be on my feet and pace while speaking. As you’d probably expect, this has changed my conversations as I’m now able to get some ‘body English’ into them.
I highly recommend such a device for anyone who spends a fair amount of their day on the phone and it’s going to be part of my recommended tool for clients.
Now I’ve got my eye on one of those scanners for receipts… but so far I haven’t been able to mentally justify it. Anyone for providing the needed kick?
PS I’d love to hear what some of required tools are that you’re currently using or have on your ‘wish list’.
*The comedian Craig Shoemaker, whom I find to be very funny and insightful, does a great bit on driving while on a cell phone. He says, “Remember when you got your first cell phone? You’d call your friends and say, ‘Hey, I’m calling you while I’m walking my dog.’ ‘Check it out. I’m calling you while I’m driving.’ ‘Hey, I’m calling you after I just ran over some guy walking his dog.’
Posted by Jon on 6 July, 2010 under Musings | Add your comment
My travels for work took me to Brittany last month – a great group for the course, in a lovely part of the world. I had work to do most evenings, but writing whilst overlooking a picturesque harbour certainly beat being in the office!
I was staying in a small, family-run hotel: clean, comfortable but a little basic. I arrived at 9pm on the first evening of my stay, and the ever-so-friendly receptionist gave me a code for the front door – ‘just in case’ I needed it. I dropped my bags in my room, set straight off for dinner – and returned an hour or so later to find the hotel in darkness, the front door locked. Thank goodness I’d remembered the code – and thank goodness my plane hadn’t been delayed on the way in!
So here’s a debate: when does – and when should – your proposal centre ‘lock its door’ on a bid on which you’ve been working?
Many proposal teams engage with the sales team purely up to the moment at which a document is delivered. Some recognise the value of staying engaged until the team presents the proposal to the customer. Many support the bid effort throughout endless rounds of clarification and negotiation, struggling to disengage and even risking being dragged into transition and delivery!
In our desire to be helpful and to win business, there’s certainly a danger that some proposal folks stay involved too long. Certainly, salespeople will try to keep you on board for as long as they can: after all, you make their lives easier. But we’re not there as comfort blankets for account managers or for the team who are responsible for designing and implementing your offer.
The optimal point of disengagement depends – to an extent – on the skillset within your team, on where you can add the most value with the capacity / headcount you have available, and on the definition and perception of your role within the business. For me, the default ‘door shutting’ moment for a proposal team is the proposal presentation – I think the continuity that we bring at such a critical stage, helping to translate the written book into a powerful presentation and helping to coach and rehearse the team, are hugely important. But after that? It’s time to lock the door and give the salesperson the code for use in emergencies.
After I’d stumbled through the front door of the hotel after dinner in near-total darkness, searching in vain for a light switch and struggling up the stairs to my room, I also reflected that there are good ways and bad ways of handling the proposal team’s disengagement from the bid. You need to communicate clearly up front, and then to handle your exit professionally and in line with expectations – you don’t want to leave the team with whom you’ve been working feeling suddenly unloved, or thinking that you’re abandoning them!
Posted by Jon on 22 June, 2010 under Musings | Add your comment
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 Jon on 31 May, 2010 under Musings | Add your comment
We’re here in Florida, raring to go for this year’s APMP conference. We’re due to have ten of our team here this year, and most of us arrived last night having flown in from Europe and across the States.
We headed straight into the hotel’s steak restaurant, and the group handed me the wine list – knowing that that’s a great way to keep me quiet for a while! When the sommelier arrived to take our order, I asked his opinion about a particularly-interesting wine on the list.
“It’s far too young to drink now, sir. But this one’s really good.” And he pointed to an alternative costing nearly twice as much – the most expensive selection in that particular section of the list. Now, had he recommended one (say) $10 – $15 more expensive, I’d have happily heeded his advice – but one at virtually twice the price?
So… to the first half of his statement: if it’s not drinking well now, what on earth is it doing on the list? Sometimes including too much information in the proposal (i.e., here, the wine list) actually damages your credibility. And if the customer’s given you an indication of their price range, countering with a suggestion so far outside the clues they’ve given you is hardly likely to impress. Your offer doesn’t always need to be the cheapest, but it does always need to fall within the customer’s affordability window
The dinner as a whole was also a good indication of the need to adapt your sales approach to the requirements of the specific customer. We were all pretty tired, after long journeys – and for some of us, counting the time difference, it was already well after midnight for our body clocks by the time we got to the restaurant. Moreover, most of us had skipped lunch on our travels (in my case, no food whatsoever being entirely preferable to British Airways’ meal offerings). I mentioned this as we chatted cheerfully to the lady who greeted us on our arrival and showed us to our table.
I’m guessing it must then have been an hour or more before our order was taken. By this point, we were all so hungry and tired that we declined the suggestion of appetisers. By the time we’d finished our entrees, we were in no mood for desserts (especially given the time it might have taken them to arrive). Now they must have guests – relaxing on vacation at Disney – who want a leisurely dinner; in our case, ignoring our stated buying preferences cost them the best part of $150 in lost additional revenue.
If you’re here for the conference, the steaks are pretty decent – I’d give them about 7.5 out of 10. So don’t let my comments put you off! But maybe we should invite the staff across to the event?!
Posted by BJ on 27 May, 2010 under Musings | Add your comment
As many of you are aware, I am a big fan of comedy, especially stand-up. So it was with great interest that I read an AP article on Bob Newhart celebrating 50 years in showbiz. (Normally at this point I’d provide information regarding the person I had referenced but I doubt there’s anyone reading this that doesn’t know who Bob Newhart is. In fact, I suspect many of you will have even played a few rounds of “Hi Bob”*).
In reading the article, as happens fairly often, I came upon some comments and ideas that relate to the work we do as proposal professionals.
Says Bob (who’s 81 and been doing stand-up for 50+ years),
“I’ve had time off and it drove me nuts. I was crawling up the walls. I know some people say, ‘I want to quit making people laugh. That doesn’t make sense to me. Why would I want to stop?” I think for many of us, it’s the same mind set. If we’re doing things right, developing proposal is exciting, challenging, and fun.
As regards refinement –
“I have an idea and I’ll try it in Seattle and maybe refine it a bit in Calgary and maybe refine it a little more in Vancouver. The art of it is doing it a million times and see what happens. That’s a kick. Do it a million times but make it seem like it’s the first time. That’s the art of it.” Here too, lots of parallels to what we do, if we’re doing things right. We submit content within one proposal, get feedback, refine it, and submit it to on next opportunity, constantly trying to make it as powerful as possible and tailored to the specific client (think audience here!). And we need to make it appear fresh, no matter how many times it’s been used (think ‘cut and paste’ done right.)
On preparation –
“About 6pm, I start pacing up and down getting ready for a show. You never take it for granted cause if you do it will slap you in the face and make you wake up.” This, after 50+ years. Still a bit nervous each time. Still the nervous anticipation. Still acknowledging the need to not take things for granted. I need not point out the parallel here to our work, right?
*For those of you who might not be familiar with this game, “Hi Bob” is a drinking game wherein the players have to take a drink each time one of the characters says, “Hi Bob”. (Each of the characters says this every time they see Bob…which is several times during each episode.)
