We typically hear such things as, “I now understand the roles and responsibilities of the various individuals involved and why it is critical that we all understand and respect our respective roles and responsibilities.” Or “I have a much greater appreciation for the importance of an Executive summary and the role it plays in influencing the person review my proposal.”

On a recent workshop, when I asked if someone had a significant learning that they wished to share, a young man excitedly raised his hand and waved it to get my attention. I asked him to share what he had learned he said, “The coolest thing. I found out that you don’t have to drag the cursor over a word or sentence to highlight it, you can just click on it and it automatically highlights the word or sentence. That is SO much easier and it’s going to save me tons of time.”

Just goes to show that there are a great many levels of expertise with the tools we all rely upon on a daily basis (and varying levels as to what will get any one person excited.)

The client in question wanted us to run a series of training courses in a far-flung land. Pricing was agreed, terms and conditions discussed, dates provisionally scheduled in diaries. And then… And then: just a few ‘minor’ tweaks to the Ts and Cs were proposed by our client contact. A few highlights might raise your eyebrows as much as they caused us to raise ours.

We’d obviously be happy to provide them with electronic copies of all our materials, and grant them unlimited permission to reproduce and reuse these at no cost. Those travel expenses they’d offered, all along, to pay? Actually, we’d need to cover them after all.

Cancellation terms? See, they’d been thinking about those – and we’d need to take the risk: fly our team half way around the world at our own cost, and the client could cancel the event up to the night before it was due to start, with no penalty.

It raised a couple of issues for us, as a business. We always aim to be open, honest, fair and trustworthy in our dealings. In this case, the potential client didn’t seem to uphold the same honourable standards. How could we trust them? And could we do business – no matter how lucrative the potential contract – on an entirely unreasonable commercial basis?

Sadly, dear reader, the project’s not going ahead. There reaches a point when enough has to be enough. And our little escapade illustrates the dangers of measuring proposal centres on win rates alone, when the negotiation phase can cause even a sole bidder to walk away from the table.

One of the exercises I’ve used for many years is “Stand Up If”. This exercise is one I learned from Izzy Gesell, author of Playing Along*, and adapted with his permission. When Jon or I use this game, we give credit to Izzy.

I suspect many of our readers will be familiar with this exercise, wherein statements are made and participants are asked to stand up if the statement is true for them. The individuals then remain standing till the next statement is read. If it is also true for them, they remain standing, if it is not, they sit down. This causes an up and down movement in the room that creates great energy. This is typically used for introduction purposes in workshops or presentation and Jon and I have delivered this many times at APMP events and used it to kick-off workshops we’ve presented.

At this recent conference, someone attempted to use this exercise. I say attempted because the exercise was so poorly delivered and so corrupted that it bore little resemblance to the original exercise, save for the name, which was displayed on this person’s presentation slide (with no credit given).

The person delivering this exercise didn’t explain the rules of the game and it was obvious people weren’t sure what was going on. He began by just saying, “Stand up if you are attending this conference for the first time.” He then said, “Okay, sit down if you are a new member of APMP. What? Confusion rained and it continued to go downhill from there.

During one statement, while people were standing, this person spoke at some length about the conference and during this time those participants who had been standing sat down. He then said “Okay, now raise your hand if…” Excuse me? Raise your hand? In Stand Up If? That’s not how the game is played…and it certainly caused some confusion among the participants.

Suffice to say, the exercise did not go very well and I was not happy to see the exercise used and abused in this manner.

So, am I writing this just to complain? No. I’m writing this to point out a few important things related to the reuse of content.

Whether you’re using an exercise that you’ve participated in or, as is more often the case in the proposal world, re-using content, ALWAYS:

1. Always get permission when using someone else’s intellectual property.
2. Give appropriate credit.
3. Last but not least (and in fact perhaps most importantly) don’t change the content in such a way as to diminish its quality and associated impact.

*Stand Up If and other great improve exercises can be found in the book Playing Along by Izzy Gesell (available through Amazon.com or from www.izzyg.com)

One team I worked with recently was struggling to get their minds in gear on this topic. We’d tried the usual tricks: we’d brainstormed, we’d used post-its, we’d visualised the evaluators reading the document, we’d drawn pictures – but to no avail: nothing really clicked.

So I tried an alternative approach the following morning. I copied the back covers of a selection of paperback books – novels and non-fiction. I asked the team to look through them and study their composition. A headline to catch the eye, a plot synopsis, an author profile and a few gushing quotes seemed to be the common features.

And then I invited the team to write their own perfect back cover for the proposal they were about to write. And it worked like a dream!

Yet I was minded to push the concept a step further. Most evaluation teams will produce some form of internal briefing note about each bidder’s proposal. That summary, it struck me, is broadly akin to a book review.

So, what if we asked proposal contributors to write a ‘review’ of the ‘book’ they’re about to produce – specifically, the review they’d hope would be written by the customer’s chief evaluator? That’d make them think about structure, style  and story of the proposal they were about to develop – and might well unlock some fascinating insights.

Not surprisingly, their lists differed somewhat – each of the readers having come up with differing lists of half-a-dozen or more themes. It wasn’t a huge leap to imagine the evaluation team having been left with similarly muddled messages as to the reasons why they should have selected this supplier. And as an illustration of the need for a proposal to focus clearly on three or four key messages, and to present these in a memorable way, the exercise couldn’t have been more powerful.

A recent experience with workshops that Jon and I delivered highlights this.

Within this particular company there are two divisions, and we delivered the same workshop to both.

One of these divisions produces proposals of a fair to good quality (based on an audit using standardized criteria), and has a win rate of about 40%. The other division produces proposals that are very poor (based on the same audit and criteria), and their win rate is below 10%.

The group with the higher quality and win rate saw the value of conducting the workshop, had a positive attitude and an open mind, and actively participated.

And the other group? Well, you know already, right?

From the head of the group on down, they failed to recognize the need to improve the quality or win rate, questioned the need for conducting any training, and did everything possible in an attempt to not have to attend. Then, once in the workshop (yes, the powers that be got them in their seats), they were extremely negative, refused to participate, and behaved in a rude and arrogant manner.

Of course, as one would expect, the feedback from the first group stated that they got a lot out of the workshop, and early indicators show that the changes they are making are resulting in higher quality and improved win rates. And, of course, the inverse is true for the second group. They’ve done nothing, and if anything, things have declined further.

And the reasons for this? They are many and varied, and I dare say, not the important question. For me the more important question, and it’s applicable to many situations, is how do you make sure that you are in the first group, and that you have a realistic view as to what you’re doing and looking for ways to improve.

As one who has been at the game for quite some time now (never mind Jon, they know how much older than you I am without you pointing it out!), I am acutely aware of the potential for falling into the “but that’s the way we’ve always done it” trap, and Jon and I coach each other to always be looking at what we’re doing, how we do it, and how it can be improved (no matter how good it might already be!) :)

Hopefully, your thinking and actions put you in the first group too.

BEFORE THE WORKSHOP –

I Think - I Feel
This is going to be very difficult – Anxious, nervous
I have no support, No one will help me – Frustrated, angry
I don’t know how to do this - Intimidated
I hate doing this - Annoyed
No one understands what I do - Abandoned

AFTER THE WORKSHOP –

I Think - I Feel
This is an opportunity - Excited
I understand my role - Eager to assist
There’s a logical process to follow - Competent, equipped
I know why we’re doing this - Energized, psyched
This is important - Valued.

This is after a 1 day workshop. So, I guess that might explain why I am so “Passionate About Proposals”. After all, I’ve been exploring, working with and discussing proposals for how many years now? :-)

If I were a sales director, I’d certainly have proposal skills up near the top of the training syllabus for my team. Yet many proposal teams always seem to battle to secure funding:

“Have we run that course on ‘Keeping Your Desk Tidy’ yet for all the sales people? No? OK, well we obviously need to do that before we run the writing ‘Winning Proposals’ session.”

(Typical sales director / sales training manager)

It was also great to hear news of APMP’s continuing growth: membership is significantly up on last year. I was particularly proud of the UK APMP chapter, which has broken through the 200 members barrier for the first time. And 400+ people have attained qualifications to date via the APMP professional accreditation programme, led so impressively by Cathy Day.

Most of all, I’ve relished chatting to peers from other organisations. Conversations today have covered building new proposal centres in Canada, bringing together proposal teams after a merger, and the challenges of training an expanding proposal team. It’s truly refreshing to have a relaxed and open forum in which to share experiences and ideas with so many other proposal folks.

And then there was the small matter of our own presentation, “Two Proposal Managers Walked Into A War Room”. I think this defined the term “packed house” – I never would have thought that we’d have been able to cram 180 people into a room designed for 100 (and, presumably, neither did the venue’s fire marshals!). I’ll let BJ update you on the session itself in a later post.

Favourite comment of the day came from Sandy, who was helping us to devour the pack of Starbucks chocolate-coated cherries on our stand. “You realise they’re good for you?” she asked. We looked puzzled. “They contain fruit.” I can now indulge my new-found addiction to my heart’s content.

This was one of 3 concurrent sessions, and it was scheduled late in the afternoon on the second day of the conference so I really wasn’t sure how many people would select this presentation. I was pleasantly surprised to have a standing room only audience of more than 70 people.

I began by asking, ‘How many of you are seeing me present for the first time?’ and was surprised to see the majority of hands go up. I went into the session thinking that more than half of the people there would have previously attended a session I had presented, given that I have present at APMP for the past several years (and presented at the annual, the UK annual and at the Southern Accents Chapter last year!). I suppose this indicates that there are a great many proposal people out there that aren’t yet involved with APMP. (Joining the association was #10 on my list within the presentation.) Of course, as is my style, I then asked, “And how many of you have never seen me present before?” and had about a dozen hands go up which caused a bit of laughter and to which I commented, “Just testing to see who’s still awake at this time of the afternoon on the second day of the forum.”

The session must have resonated with the audience as the feedback was overwhelmingly positive (5 out of 5) and the majority of the participants (75%) suggested (some very strongly) that this session should have been given more time.

With only 30 minutes, I had to cover the topics very quickly and at a high level, but here too, participants I spoke with after the session commented that they found the information extremely valuable. Handouts of the presentation were provided to the participants and I’ve had a great many requests for additional copies to be given to associates of participants who were unable to attend the conference.

Within the presentation I provided a sneak preview of the presentation for the upcoming Annual APMP Conference – “Two Proposal Managers Walk Into A War Room…” – that will be co-delivered by Jon and I along with a good friend and fellow consultant Izzy Gesell (Izzy specializes in the use of humor within the work and is the author of ‘Playing Along’). I included my ‘Top Ten Signs’ that you might be a proposal professional, delivered in the style of Jeff Foxworthy, best known for his, ‘You Might Be Redneck’ routines. These included, “If you’ve ever received flowers, candy and a thank you note…from a paper company, you might be proposal professional.” And “If you’ve ever helped a child with a book report, and suggested they convene a ‘Red Team Review’, you might be a proposal professional.” You’ll have to attend the APMP conference to hear the others.

If the amount of laughter was an indicator (having even managed to cause one woman to laugh so hard she ‘snorted’ (high praise indeed to this presenter!), then it would appear that the audience related to these observations as well.

The Pragmatech folks who were in the room stated that next year they’d like to have me do a longer, non-concurrent session. I’m flattered.

I’m glad airlines don’t take the same approach. I can just imagine flying home on Saturday and hearing the greeting, “Hello from the flight deck, Sam here. A group of us were standing round at the airport in uniform, and they picked me out to fly the plane tonight. Not done it before, so fasten your seatbelts tight, and here’s hoping that I can work out what all of these levers are for.”

I so love getting companies to realise that developing a proposal isn’t a trivial task to be passed over to whomever happens to be at a loose end that day – or to be undertaken with no training whatsoever.