Posted by Jon under APMP & accreditation, Proposal training | 
The first full day of APMP, and the schedules have been packed as usual. My favourite session of the day was Martin Andelman’s slot, opening the conference. One particular slide struck a real chord. Martin bemoaned the fact that “Every company has spent time and money to get better at selling in person”, but that they seem to lack the same focus and effort at improving the way they sell in writing.
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.
Posted by BJ under Musings, Proposal training |
Just finished presenting ‘The Top Ten Things You Can Do (Today) To Improve Your Proposals’ at the Pragmatech User Forum. (This year’s forum is being held in Washington D.C.)
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.
Posted by Jon under Musings, Proposal training |
Depressing comment from Emily, a participant on today’s course for proposal staff drawn from across Australia: “On my first proposal, I cried every night”. Interesting how many people start work on proposals by being thrown in at the deep end, with no prior experience and no training. And yet Emily’s first proposal would have won or lost her company a potentially important piece of business.
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.
