Did they really write that?

Posted by Jon
Thanks to one of our friends, who runs the proposal team for a major financial institution, for emailing us an extract from a recent proposal, which she thought might entertain readers here. Names changed to protect the guilty!​

​“Practically we would see this working as XYZ initially offering all of your ABC business to us as cases come up for renewal and you seek new opportunities, however we know that in today’s dynamic and competitive market place we may not always be able to meet your’s and your clients needs so we believe the preferred partner status gives you the flexibility to work with us but also to benchmark other providers either on specific cases or specific classes of business where the clients demands and needs cannot be satisfied by our programme.”

​Yes, folks, that’s 94 words. As I always say, if you read the sentence aloud and run out of breath, it’s way too long!

And here’s another gem we received recently, again reproduced with permission, this time from a bid to provide roadside breakdown assistance to car manufacturers:

“We have extensive experience in managing large-scale implementations and have accumulated huge learnings over the years. One key learning is that, despite the fact that we are engaged in an implementation, people will continue to to break down on the roads and require our assistance.”

​A key learning? As the friend who sent us the quote commented, “Presumably, before the lightbulb moment, they were working on the assumption that breakdowns would cease to during the implementation.”