Read the text before looking at the photograph:

You may be asking for trouble when you commission taxidermy work from someone who is unfamiliar with the species. That was just the case for King Frederick I of Sweden in 1731.

The lion was a gift, but after it died, the pelt and bones were presented to a taxidermist who had never seen a lion. You see the result looks more like a cartoon character than the king of beasts. The stuffed lion is still on display at Gripsholm’s Castle.

• how important are proposals
• how good are the proposals that you receive
• what advice would you offer to proposal teams.

The results were quite fascinating: in essence, proposals  are clearly a vital part of customers’ decision-making processes, yet few vendors submit truly excellent documents. (Since we were presenting to the UK chapter of APMP, those who participated in the study were in the UK and continental Europe, but I have no doubt that similar conclusions would be reached from a similar survey in other geographies).

Here are my ten favourite quotes:

• “A good written proposal, in itself, might not win you business but a badly conceived and written one may put you out of the race.”
• “It is never enough to say “I’m qualified.” So is everyone else.  The point is “Pick me because I’m different.”"
• “The easier the seller makes it for us the better for them.”
• “Some are articulate, really have got under my skin, are really convincing – whereas others look mechanical, dull, pre-written and could have been meant for anyone.”
• “They vary from excellent (rare) to awful (quite common), but most of them are mediocre.”
• “Your ability to do what is required of you at proposal stage reflects upon your ability to perform once in contract!”
• “Buyers are not idiots. They read good proposals thoroughly and they are not amused at fluff, being patronised, inconsistency, arrogance or shabby editing.”
• “They are seeking a reasonable deal with low risk to themselves (oh yes, and their employer).”
• “Clearly understand the problem to be solved.  Then and only then can you provide the appropriate solution.”
• “If the customer wants the responses written in quill, printed on papyrus with a bow around it, please conform. Comparing proposals that don’t follow the templates requested is often a long and difficult task… and does lower the tolerance levels of those marking.”

We’ve put together a white paper containing all of the responses that we received; click here if you’d like to download a free copy (and here if you’d like to see a copy of the presentation we gave to UKAPMP). Feel free to share the white paper with colleagues – this is precisely the sort of stuff that your VP Sales needs to read to understand the importance of strong proposal management. And, as ever, we’d be fascinated to hear your comments.

1) The enemy lies within. Somewhat bizarrely, the easiest discussions for a buyer are with their potential suppliers. It’s far tougher trying to align resources, budgets and views internally. Running the procurement process is often a precarious high-wire act.

2) Powerless purchasers. The evaluation team will formulate recommendations as to which supplier to choose – but they’ll rarely sign off the decision. Making the presentation internally to the “great and the good” can be a daunting prospect. And, as a buyer, I’ll probably choose whichever bidder I think I can sell internally most easily.

3) “I’m the buyer. Stupid.” Most procurement people are acutely conscious that they know far less about the subject matter of the bid than their potential suppliers. (If this is what their organisation did, they wouldn’t need to ask you to do it for them!)

4) “Your fate is in my hands.” I have the power of life or death over your bid. Win, and you’ll get the glory and our money. So you bidders had better be grateful, respectful, deferential and nice to me. (After all, my colleagues internally aren’t!).

5)  I’ll have to live with the consequences of the decision as to which bidder we choose – and those we reject. Thinking short-term, I’ll select whichever company will make me hit my performance objectives, whatever they may be. And in the medium term, I’ll want the bidder who’ll minimise the risk of things going wrong and maximise the probability of me looking like a hero. (And, incidentally, debriefing unsuccessful suppliers can be a terrifying prospect – especially losing incumbents).

6) Making it up as I go along. Only a small minority of purchasers have ever been trained in writing RFPs and leading evaluation workshops. I’ll copy and paste, I’ll use the last document I wrote; it was probably good enough then, and it’ll probably get me through now.

Cynical and jaded? Moi? No wonder I prefer working in proposals!

I ran an event recently for a group of purchasing managers, discussing the proposal process – and sharing thoughts on how they could engage bidders more effectively and write better RFPs. (The unofficial sub-title of the course is “What Jon wishes he’d known when he worked in procurement”!)

The conversation turned to proofreading, and one of the buyers shared her most embarrassing mistake in this regard. She’d just led the evaluation team on a major tender, and was presenting to the Board with their recommendations.

She clicked onto the slide titled: “Weighting and Ranking” – only to find that she’d accidentally swapped around two very important letters….

It reminded me of the all-time worst proofreading error I’ve seen in a proposal – which, fortunately, was noticed at the very last minute. The team was bidding to a major city’s “Mass Transit Authority”. Some content contributors had decided to merge the two words together – “Masstransit”. And a document manager, tight for time, had simply accepted the word processor’s recommended correction.

The result? All the way through the proposal, the bidder had referred to the customer as the “M*sturb*te Authority”.

That’s why I was delighted when Kevin Treeby, Director of Procurement for the House of Commons, agreed to give the keynote presentation at the recent conference, “Taking proposals to the next level.”

I sat at the back of the room, noting down as many of his comments as I could. Here are a few of my favourites:

“We have a fear and distrust of people who sell us things.”

“I hate people who shuffle the answers” and whose proposals don’t reflect the structure of the RFP.

“Don’t tell me it can’t go wrong. Tell me what you’ll do if it does.”

“Don’t hold anything back” from your proposal to your presentation. “There’s no such thing as a nice surprise in a bid presentation.”

“It all comes down to confidence” in the bidders and their teams.

“Many buyers are frightened – I daren’t risk a legal challenge.”

And finally, one I particularly loved. “This is a great game, people – enjoy it!”

I particularly enjoyed the presentation by Jack Paine, Director of Procurement at the Department for Transport. He emphasised that whilst his team has an obligation to seek the most advantageous economic solution, “that does not mean that the cheapest price wins”.

He went on to explain that:

“We start with deliverability, then we look at price… It is no good me buying something on behalf of the taxpayer that is not fit for purpose.”

Great ammunition, this, for those working with sales colleagues who dismiss the importance of strategy and value, in favour of “it’s all about price.”

I also loved Jack’s anecdote of the worse line he’s seen opening an Executive Summary:

“Inn every aspect of our business, we seek ultimate quality.”

Yes. “Inn”.

One recent discussion concerned the role of the Executive Summary. Sheilagh fired the following across to me the following day by email, and was happy for me to share it here:

The purpose of an Exec Summary? To blow me away so I can say, “Yes! Yes! Yes! They really do understand my business and what I want!”

A good Exec Summary “shows that not only do you understand my requirements, but why you are the one to deliver them.” It should provide “a clear, concise summary telling me at a glance, in easy to understand language, why your offering is the best.”

And here are Sheilagh’s views on the characteristics of a successful Executive Summary:

1.    Beautifully written
2.    Nice language – no mistakes please
3.    Clear concise and compelling
4.    Tells a story
5.    Is short and punchy
6.    Makes no more than three pitches
7.    Makes me want to read the rest of the document to find out more
8.    Doesn’t contradict the main body of the text!

I always find this sort of input from an experienced evaluator’s perspective really useful. How does the Exec Summary of your most recent proposal fare against her criteria

What impact does the quality of the customer’s RFP have on the quality of the proposal? And what advice would you offer to customers to improve their RFPs?

Roisin seemed to sum up the panel’s frustrations with a wonderfully provocative response:

My mother often says ‘You reap what you sow’. And in this case, she is completely right. Any customer who issues a poorly constructed RFP is setting a poor tone from the outset. It will immediately sway the mood of the bid team who have to spend hours extricating requirements and compliances from a web of confusion.

First impressions count. That’s right, isn’t it? Everyone knows that. It’s why people practice their handshakes, polish their shoes before an interview, and so on…. So why, why, do potential clients think that it is acceptable to send a tangled mess of formatting, hidden text, and obscure questions?

If this is the issue, then the client should be likened to the small child learning to speak. The child knows what it wants, but the communication skills it possesses are not developed enough to clearly define it. The vendors are the adults trying to understand what the child is saying, trying to offer suggestions as to what it may be that is required…

Barbara picked out some specific frustrations:

Poor syntax would have the most effect, as we might not understand the question. Poor formatting, etc., doesn’t affect our response as we always remove the questionnaire and put it into our (beautifully formatted) response template.

In terms of advice, Dave offered four suggestions:

1. Ensure the questions are clearly written and applicable to the project.

2. Eliminate redundant or duplicate questions. Nobody likes to answer the same question twice! (buyers don’t want to read the answer twice, either)

3. Apply consistent formatting to the questionnaire. A proposal manager should not have to correct formatting and numbering in the original RFP document.

4. Allow the vendor to respond in Microsoft Word (or PDF). Excel and web-based RFPs do not typically allow the vendor to incorporate formatting and graphics in their response.

I’ve long held the view that buyers view the “document exchange” process as their default, when other (more creative) sourcing methods could produce more effective results. Jeff concurred: instead of an issuing an RFP straight away, buyers should meet potential bidders, then challenge them to present their thinking back in a follow-up session.

If the second meeting goes well and you think this is a company you want to work with, have them write up their findings into a formal document, factoring in some of the specific questions you have identified, so you can may make whatever decision is in the best interest of your company. You save yourselves potentially hundreds of hours by not issuing formal RFPs, which typically don’t speak to your needs in the first place.

He also proposed a wonderful new term to replace RFP – the “RFR: Request for Relationship!

By now, I was starting to feel the panel’s collective pain! Lesa agreed with other panellists that the old principle of “garbage in, garbage out” tends to apply:

We see so many poorly written/constructed/formatted RFPs, with the nerve to require adherence to their crazy formats! For example, why ask “Provide a detailed description of ______” then restrict the response to 40 characters?!?!? Another frequent faux pas is the obvious combining of content from several RFPs into one (in)coherent document…

My advice? Many companies that issue RFPs also have proposal departments (or individuals) that respond to them…tap into that expertise and have them review the RFP for consistency / respond-ability! My department regularly offers our consultative expertise not only to divisions within our own company, but also to consultants/clients with whom we do business…

Robin objected to receiving RFPs “written by somebody who clearly doesn’t understand what they are buying” – quoting an example of a potential client “submitting the RFP for a health risk assessment but [stealing] the RFP questions from the guy in IT that was buying a software program six months earlier.” Her baker’s dozen tips for buyers:

1) Know what you are buying
2) Understand what is important to you in your buying decision
3) Ask direct, complete and relevant questions
4) DON’T USE EXCEL FOR A RFP
5) Explain your goals and objectives
6) Provide your budget
7) Provide your scoring criteria
8) Describe what the products/services will be used for
9) Clearly define what is negotiable and what is not
10) Be open and transparent – let everybody ask questions throughout the process if they need to – after all, the goal is to get the information you need
11) Provide questions and answers to those questions to all the bidders or hold a pre-bidders conference
12) Provide a sufficient timeframe – give the responder enough time to really do their best work (don’t make them jump through hoops or work holidays….its just not nice)
13) Clearly define the assumptions we should use for pricing our products/services so that you can have an apples-to-apples comparison

And last – and certainly not least (hey, he will read this, after all), BJ added an important thought:

An impact of a poor quality document is a feeling on the part of those responding, myself included, that the requestor doesn’t really take their own RFP seriously. I think this has a subliminal affect on those developing the response and the resulting proposal is poorer for it.

Fascinating debate. Do forward the URL for the post to any buyers you know – we’d love it if they (and you) joined the debate by commenting!

I still spend about 10% of my time working with purchasing teams. They find it fascinating to hear what happens on the bidding side of the table, and I personally like to keep in close contact with the way that buyers think and operate. And if I can persuade one or two sourcing teams that they need to write better RFPs, then it might make life easier for some proposal folks out there!

It’s a long hard slog, though, trying to persuade buyers that what they’re doing when producing an RFP is an exact mirror image of what we’re doing in our proposal teams. Their process logically includes:

• Pre-RFP preparation (building their team, developing their project plan, positioning their requirements with the market to ensure that the right suppliers do bid)
• Developing their strategy (“What are our real needs? How do we want to position this with bidders?”)
• Working out the structure of their document (“How can we make sure we get the right information in a format that’s easy to evaluate?”)
• Designing their content (“What questions do we need to ask, and why? What would good answers look like?”)
• Developing their content (collating information from different content experts, and melding it together to ensure consistency of tone and content)
• Producing a professional-looking document that presents their opportunity appropriately to the RFP’s recipients
• Gaining final sign-off from relevant stakeholders before the RFP is issued to the market.

Problem is, they don’t really (by and large) see it as a process. And when they don’t treat it as a process, they don’t understand the skills associated with doing it well – least of all, any professional writing or design skills, as mentioned in some of the comments on BJ’s post. So it’s left to the purchasing manager (frequently untrained in the art of developing RFPs) to cut and paste from past questionnaires, and to issue documents that veer between inconsistent and incoherent, whilst often feeling a sense of desperate isolation from business stakeholders who don’t want to get actively involved until the proposals are in.

Done well, mind, the benefits to the buyer are immense: we’ve seen this whenever we’ve helped procurement teams with their RFPs and subsequent evaluations. They receive far higher-quality proposals from their suppliers. So much better for the evaluators to be able to choose between a selection of truly excellent proposals, than to play a confrontational game that inevitably results in poor documents articulating unnecessarily weak, costly and risky solutions from ill-informed bidders. They find the transition from contract to implementation much smoother. And they find it far easier to manage the debrief process, as even losing suppliers confirm that they recognise the quality and fairness of the process they’ve just been through.

More on this shortly – our Proposal Guys panel is working on advice for those developing RFPs, and we’ll share their thoughts next week.

I did just that. I took the time to understand what the paragraph was really trying to say. I then rearranged the order of the information, restructured several of the sentences and completely rewrote others. When I was done, I would say, at the risk of sounding conceited, that the paragraph was much clearer and easier to understand, and it was written well and correctly.

It was only after I had completed this exercise that I realized the paragraph was part of the RFP and not the response. As Charlie Brown would say, “Arrrrgggh!” Maybe this has happened to you. You have become so caught up in editing or worked with an RPF that was so poorly written, that you’ve inadvertently edited the RFP. Please tell me I’m not the only one who’s done this. (And yes, sadly, this is not the first time it’s happened to me.)

I would point out that any one who has a bit of time in the proposal game has surely come across an RFP that was poorly written and very unclear. Such RFPs, and the one I’ve described above in particular, would have benefited greatly from some of Jon’s expertise in developing effective RFPs. As he’s said many a time to a buyer (and this is also the name of a course Jon presents), “You get the response you deserve.”