http://www.theproposalguys.com Jon and B.J.'s Proposal Blog Fri, 03 Jul 2009 07:00:29 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en A participant in a meeting I was running recently picked up a message during a break. She looked excited, and turned to her friend: "We've got an extension - until first thing on Monday". The slightly scary thing was that this was at 10.30 on the Friday morning. Oh well: there ... http://www.theproposalguys.com/2009/07/03/work-life-imbalance/ Greetings all. I am SO glad to be out of my box once again. I’ve just arrived in Nashua, NH (that’s where the U.S. offices of Strategic Proposals LLC is located) having travelled (apparently by the slowest means possible!) from Chandler Arizona, where I attended the 20th Annual conference of the ... http://www.theproposalguys.com/2009/07/02/have-box-will-travel/ Mike W. recently sent me a link to a site that has several graphics depicting various baseball statistics. I wasn’t real keen to check this out as, unlike Mike who is a huge fan of baseball, I’m not*. However, despite my low expectations, I was quite intrigued by the way ... http://www.theproposalguys.com/2009/07/01/picture-this/ At the risk of sounding like an old fogey: does anyone else hate the word, "Whatever!", usually uttered dismissively by younger folks? You can picture proposal teams ten years hence, when the awful phrase has crept into everyday business usage: Requirement - "You will resolve at least 99% of problems within one ... http://www.theproposalguys.com/2009/06/29/whatever/ I recently came across a small piece in the New Yorker, excerpted from the Wall Street Journal, that demonstrates how easy it is for something in writing to have various meanings and often, humorous consequences for the unintended meaning to be very humorous, and quite distracting. In this article, Andrew Concors, ... http://www.theproposalguys.com/2009/06/19/follow-the-bouncing-ball-%e2%80%93-if-you-can/ Vic, my wife, has recently taken to using Twitter, currently very much the 'in' thing amongst her circle of friends. For those of you not in the know, Twitterers (twits?) send short text messages from their phones to the website, describing what they're up to at any given moment in time. ... http://www.theproposalguys.com/2009/06/17/twittering-along/ From a salesperson in a learning review last week: "I don't feel that we lost it, we just didn't necessarily win it." No. You were the incumbent. The customer came out to tender. Your main competitor now holds the contract. You lost. http://www.theproposalguys.com/2009/06/11/there-are-winners-and-there-are/ About half of our readers will already have noticed our new design here at The Proposal Guys. The rest of you – those who subscribe by email or our RSS feed - might well want to head over to the site to have a look. We’re tried to make it easier ... http://www.theproposalguys.com/2009/06/08/a-makeover-for-the-proposal-guys/ Sometimes a simple word just isn't good enough for a proposal: your content contributors feel the need to reach for the thesaurus and seek out some extra-flowery alternative. Take one recent document we reviewed. Apparently, should they win the contract, the supplier's staff will conduct regular "client visitations" to the customers' ... http://www.theproposalguys.com/2009/06/08/spooky/ No doubt, many of our readers will be aware of ‘apps’ for the iPhone. These are applications that allow a user to different things, ranging from useful (locating your car in a parking lot or finding a nearby restaurant), to fun (games such as Scrabble, Tetris and the usual assortment ... http://www.theproposalguys.com/2009/06/06/just-what-i-needed/