Posted by Jon
I’m not that technical. Well, I did start my career in IT, but I’ve made every effort to become less-and-less techie over the years – relying instead on others who do this stuff better.
But a little technical knowledge can go a long way. A Proposal Manager on a course recently bemoaned the fact that readers can un-track the changes on any Microsoft Word document. You can imagine the embarrassment if a client were to do so with your proposal, only to find lower pricing increased at the last moment, a higher-quality solution downgraded for the final version, a sarcastic aside about the quality of the client’s RFP deleted at the last moment.
I’m not that technical. Well, I did start my career in IT, but I’ve made every effort to become less-and-less techie over the years – relying instead on others who do this stuff better.
But a little technical knowledge can go a long way. A Proposal Manager on a course recently bemoaned the fact that readers can un-track the changes on any Microsoft Word document. You can imagine the embarrassment if a client were to do so with your proposal, only to find lower pricing increased at the last moment, a higher-quality solution downgraded for the final version, a sarcastic aside about the quality of the client’s RFP deleted at the last moment.
No wonder most canny proposal teams default to issuing documents PDF. But the customer does still sometimes insist on a Word copy (perish the thought that they might then copy and paste your text into their own internal reports!).
The good news is that there is a fix, and I felt very virtuous being able to share it. For those of you who haven’t stumbled across it, it’s downloadable from Microsoft.
The good news is that there is a fix, and I felt very virtuous being able to share it. For those of you who haven’t stumbled across it, it’s downloadable from Microsoft.
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