Posted by Jon on 3 August, 2010 under Word play & writing | 
There are so many skills associated with developing a first-class proposal: project management, team leadership, facilitation of each stage of the proposal process, design, document management and many more.
But what of writing? The longer I work on proposals, the more I come to appreciate that lots of the best people out there at managing proposals out there are actually pretty mediocre wordsmiths.
So: you work in the world of proposals. (At least I assume so! If not, the web’s full of far more interesting sites for you than The Proposal Guys!). What are you like as a writer? Honestly?
My test, I guess, is whether you write for pleasure. I find that most folks who can write proposal content that really flows invariably also write outside office hours – perhaps a blog, or fiction, or for some society or local journal.
Writers write – incessantly, addictively. And if you don’t – if your skills are in some of the other, equally critical elements of the proposal process – perhaps you need to surround yourself with a few wordsmiths if you want inject a little magic into your proposals.
If you do write cool stuff that’s online, why not add a comment with a link? We’re always on the hunt for cool stuff to read!
Posted by BJ on 29 July, 2010 under Processes & best practice |
No, this entry isn’t about the Queen’s kind of subjects such as Jon and his fellow countrymen (or if you need me to be politically correct, country persons) but the kind in the line at the top of a mail referred to quite cleverly as the “subject line”.
I recently had a call from someone who informed me that I hadn’t answered a mail from her which she sent several days prior. She told me this mail was quite important and she asked why I hadn’t read or responded. When I asked her for the subject line so I could check on this she said it “Meeting on Tuesday cancelled”.
Well, I had received a mail regarding Tuesday’s meeting, with the subject line Meeting on Tuesday, opened it, read it and responded to it. I then put the date and time in my calendar (the sender hadn’t used an ‘invite’).
I then subsequently received a mail with the subject line “Tuesday meeting cancelled”. Again, I opened this mail, read it and responded to it. I then deleted the date and time from my calendar.
When I received the second mail with the subject line “Tuesday meeting cancelled I. quite logically in my opinion, ignored it. After all, I’d already read and responded to it. I assumed, again I think quite logically, assumed it had inadvertently been sent a second time.
Most of us receive an incredible amount of mail. Most of us also receive an incredible amount of mail that is “just so much noise”. In our workshops, Jon and I talked about the need for a good proposal strategy to “cut through the noise level.” It’s the same with mail. Want me to read it? Make sure the subject line is appropriate and informative.
A few tips on what makes for an effective subject line –
• Be specific as to the topic “Meeting to discuss next steps on project XYZ. Please confirm intention to attend.”
• Be clear and specific. I.e. “Confirming my intention to attend Tuesday meeting.”
• Let the receiver know if there is action required, “Decision on purchase of XX. Action required.”
• If it’s not a priority or essential. “Meeting notes. FYIF* – if/when you can get to” it.”
*For your information/files
Posted by Jon on 27 July, 2010 under Processes & best practice |
My previous post got the ball rolling on a list of thoughts on the qualification process. As promised, here are the rest of my “baker’s dozen” hints and tips:
- Use simple, memorable qualification criteria. We advocate four: “is it real, do we want it, can we win it, can we do it?” Pretty much all of the more detailed discussions you’ll need to have can be categorised under one of those headings – and there’s real power in having a qualification mantra that everyone involved in bidding understands and can repeat.
- Make sure your process has teeth. It’s not uncommon for me to be assured by a client during a benchmarking exercise that they do indeed have a qualification process – often a time-consuming and complex one at that. Yet when I ask what percentage of deals they qualified out of the previous year, they look blankly, and confess that it was a round number: 0.
- Treat the usual last-gasp tactics of salespeople (we can’t win, but we’ve got to bid because either “it’s strategic” or “if we don’t bid this time, we won’t be invited to bid on their next deal”) with healthy cynicism – even, perhaps, a degree of disdain. I’ve worked on bids that have fallen under those headings – but only after a particularly thorough review, and with a clear strategy as to what we’re going to do in our proposal, knowing that we won’t win and that doing so isn’t actually our goal.
- Be brave! Recognise that your qualification decision may change as the deal progresses – particularly, as you learn more about your competitive position. If something happens to convince you that you’re wasting your time, shout about it! Even on the most reliable airlines, flying the most modern planes, sometimes people need to listen to the safety announcements so that they know where to find the emergency exits!
- Subject to the above… make sure the client is always given a clear, consistent, early and honest view of your intent regarding whether or not you’re going to expect to bid.
- Handle any “no bid” decision extremely sensitively. Planning, scripting and rehearsing the feedback to the customer needs great care – as does coaching salespeople in how to handle the buyer’s likely objections (“but we do want you to bid: of course you can win” being shorthand for “if you drop out, you might compromise my purchasing process and / or my personal credibility internally”)
- Be clear on the role of the proposal manager in the process. Do you own the salesforce’s or business unit’s revenue target for the year? No? I thought not. So our role in helping those folks to achieve their goals is to offer advice from a proposal perspective (is it possible to produce an appropriate proposal in the timescales?), perhaps mixed with a sense of the deal’s “winnability” drawn from your bidding experience, perhaps blended with your ability to act as an excellent facilitator (and to be seen, perhaps, as an independent in the process, sitting ‘between’ the salespeople and the business). You have the right not to be expected to waste your time on lost causes. And yes, you may sometimes have to be the one that provokes the telling debate – given (1) above, salespeople are rarely the first people to jump up and say: “you know what – we shouldn’t go after this”. But, ultimately, it’s not your call.
Hope that helps. And I’d welcome your own experiences and advice if you’d care to leave a comment!
Posted by BJ on 22 July, 2010 under Musings |
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 20 July, 2010 under Processes & best practice |
The topic of qualification – the “bid / no bid” or “go / no go” decision – has raised its weary head in several recent conversations with clients. It’s also one of the cornerstones of the APMP accreditation syllabus.
So I’ve put together a “baker’s dozen” thoughts on the essence of a good qualification process, in the interests of helping you test your own approach. It’s not a comprehensive list, by any means, but if you’re doing all of this stuff well, your qualification process is probably in good shape. In the interests of keeping posts here from becoming too long, I’m going to split the comments across this post and my next one, which will appear here next week:
- Be conscious from the outset that to “no bid” runs counter to the instincts of most salespeople. They spend their life trying to hunt out opportunities to win business; they engage the prospect in dialogue about a specific contract; they start to convey your company’s appetite and capabilities for the work. And then they’re expected have to decide – admit, even – that it’s not a good deal for them to pursue? This is an area that needs handling with particular sensitivity.
- Treat every opportunity as “qualified out until it’s qualified in”, rather than the other way round. For too many organisations, “bid” (“qualified in”) is the default setting – causing the proposal centre to be seen by sales as a ‘business prevention’ unit when debates start as to whether or not to pull the plug on the opportunity. But if your role is seen as helping the salesperson to gain support, resources and funding for their bid, you’ll suddenly be “on their side”!
- In the words of the APMP Foundation Level exam: qualify early and certainly well before the customer’s requirements document arrives. Clearly, an RFP (or the equivalent) provides a host of new information about the opportunity and the customer’s specification. But by the time it arrives, you should at least have “in principle” approval to bid, subject to certain assumptions that you’ve made turning out to be true once you’ve reviewed the RFP. And that final post-RFP-receipt endorsement of your qualification decision needs to take place rapidly after the customer’s document has landed – the clock’s ticking, and you don’t want to sit around waiting for approval.
- Involve the right people in the debate. Ever experienced a situation when a qualification forum has agreed on a “no bid”, only for the sales staff to escalate the debate to a more senior level and to succeed in having the decision reversed? If they’re that important to your decision-making, make sure they’re directly involved.
- Make sure that if you do reach a “go” decision, that does result in the definite and timely provision of the resources needed to chase the deal. Particularly, those involved in the qualification decision need to feel a sense of personal commitment to the outcome – if you’re party to saying ‘yes’, there’s an onus on you to make sure that your area of the business then plays its full part in making the bid a success. And if the people who control the necessary resources aren’t involved in the qualification process, it can be tough to then secure their buy-in.
- For too many organisations, qualification is merely a hurdle for the salespeople to overcome: “score 40% or more on the checklist and you can bid”. Guess what? If that’s the game, your typical salesperson will engineer their score to be at least 43% (allowing a small margin of error for decency’s sake, and in case they get challenged on a couple of scoring criteria). Adopt what we term an ‘active qualification’ approach, in which you ask the salesperson not only how they’re currently scoring on an issue (e.g. “strength of relationship with the client’s decision-makers”), but what that score could be by the time the customer reaches the date on which they’ll make their decision – and what actions would need to be undertaken to improve their score, and hence their win probability.
As promised, more next time I post!
Posted by BJ on 15 July, 2010 under Proposal Guys news |
Just what I need, Jon getting even more attention than he already does. As if he needs anymore.
I imagine those of you who receive and have seen/read the latest edition of the “Journal of the Association of Proposal Management” – aka “The Journal” – know to what I’m referring. This edition devotes not one or two but nine full pages to an interview with Jon. (A picture of him lounging poolside at a hotel in Bangalore India is also prominently displayed along side the table of contents.)
The interview, titled “Talk Time with Jon Williams”, was conducted and written by R. Dennis Green, a management consultant, writer, practitioner and fellow APMP Fellow. He’s also the founder of the Proposal Management Journal and a friend.
If you’ve read the article, you’ll know that it provides great insights into how my buddy Jon thinks and his approach to proposals and purchasing. And, as will be know surprise to those of you who know Jon or are regular readers of this blog, Jon is not short of opinions and doesn’t pull any punches.
Dennis gave me a chance to offer some insights into what it’s like to be Jon’s partner ad friend, so for a rare change, I managed to get a word in edgewise.
If you’ve already read the article, I suspect you’ve mentioned it others, especially those who k now Jon or have seen him present. And if you haven’t read the article, I strongly suggest you do. You’re sure to come away with some great tips, new thinking and a greater appreciation for “the other proposal guy”.
Posted by Jon on 13 July, 2010 under Word play & writing |
How about this, for a clause taken from a real-life ITT we reviewed recently:
“10.3 At the end of the Contract all data shall be handed back to the Authority and the Contractor shall be destroyed”
You know, sometimes one probably shouldn’t submit a “fully compliant” response…
