You send your draft document out for review. 

Back comes the comment, from a senior exec: "In question 28, we should be saying 'green' not 'purple'." 

Now, as a team, you had extensive, well-informed discussions about this. Shall we do it in green? Or what about purple?
Green? Maybe purple. No: after careful analysis, green's the right thing to say. 

So do you simply capitulate to the demands of the reviewer? 

There's an important principle here, which I always like to set out clearly at the start of the review process - sometimes to the surprise of very senior managers, but rarely provoking disagreement:

"Reviewers are not gods."

We value your suggestions. We'll look at whether they'd enhance our proposal. But, no matter how senior you are, we reserve their right to decide not to act on the recommendation you've offered up. 

Posted by Jon

Many of you will have heard me discuss “unintentional negatives” before. This is where something is presented as being positive, but it instead leaves the reader with a negative impression.

An example of this is the statement: “In this way, there will be no delays or cost overruns.” Rather than leaving the reader with a sense of confidence that the project will be done on time and to budget, in this case, the lingering thought in the readers’ mind would likely be “delays” and “overruns”.

Another favorite example of mine is what a certain politician who found himself in trouble kept repeating. He said, “I did not have relations with that woman.” Unfortunately for him, the thought this leaves is “relations with that woman”. Not what he was hoping for. Had he instead said, “I have always been faithful to my wife,” the lingering thought would be “faithful.” (He’d have still been lying, but at least he wouldn’t have made matters worse.)

I recently saw an ad for a ski area and it caught my eye for having an unintentional negative. The ad read, “Sorry, I’m out of the office. I’ve gone to <name of skiing area>.”

The lingering word in my mind when thinking about this particular ski area was “Sorry”.  I’m certain that is not what the area intended the ad to convey.  Better wording might have been, “I’ll be skiing at <name of ski area> today. Please leave a message.”

Posted by BJ

​I've been overwhelmed by the kind comments I've received from folks who attended my presentation at APMP's Bid & Proposal Con event earlier in the month. 

I've attached a copy of our presentation to this post. In it, I share the findings of our ongoing research using the Proposal Benchmarker, our free online self-assessment tool used to date by some 400 organisations worldwide. 

I explore what most teams do well, where people consistently struggle, and what differentiates the most successful bidding organisations from the run-of-the-mill. And, using data from the tool, I show the direct correlation between proposal capabilities and win rate. 

Feel free to download it and use it to stimulate debate internally. If it sparks any bright improvement ideas, let me know! And, of course, you might also want a go at benchmarking your own capabilities using the tool. 

Posted by Jon
​

I was working last month with a lovely team in Qatar. They’ve designed a great bid and proposal process, and built a hugely enthusiastic team. My job: to help them gain APMP certification, and to evangelise good practice to their sales colleagues and senior management.
 
Now we’ve long advocated the importance of pre-proposal planning – engaging with the sales team well before an RFP lands. To a large extent, this simply boils down to making the following dreams come true: by the time the RFP lands:

1. The customer has a good idea of our capabilities and competitive advantages.
2. We've influenced the customer's requirements, criteria & process towards our strengths.
3. We've established a good relationship with the customer’s key decision makers.
4. We understand the customer's view of our competitive position.
5. We know the timescales for the RFP / proposal.
6. We've built our proposal team & they’ve allocated time.
7. We've pulled together any raw material that we'll need when we come to write the proposal.
8. The customer is looking forward to reading our proposal and expects us to win.

My Qatari friends have one extra phrase, that I really loved. One of their goals for their sales colleagues is as follows:
Be the first to know.
 
I think I’ll use this as a test when qualifying deals in future – along with my old favourite: “what do we know about this deal that our competitors don’t.” If we’re late to the table, and don’t have an inside track, why would we bother?!

Posted by Jon

Posted by Jon

I’m back in the office today after a marvellous week in Sydney, where I had the honour of presenting the opening keynote speech at the ‘Limitless’ conference. Organised by APMP’s ANZ chapter, this is the largest event of the year for bid and proposal specialists in the APAC region – and was outstandingly well organised.

As ever at these events, there were some fascinating quotes from presenters. Here are a couple from Emma Bannister of PresentationStudio: “a good presentation is usually sparse” and “you’re better off having no slides than bad slides”. Both very much echo our approach to pitching.

Belinda Coates of property and construction advisory company Slattery noted that “bid managers are the heartbeat of an organisation”. I enjoyed her provocative challenges on how important it is to keep abreast of industry developments. Complete the following sentences: “I commit to going to at least one networking event per _____” and “I look at my LinkedIn feed at least ___times per day.” (Her answers were ‘week’ and ‘three’).

And there was one stand-out session which I just know I’ll look back on in years to come and think: “That was the first time I heard about that.” Grant Butler gave a fascinating insight into the potential role of Artificial Intelligence in proposals. I hadn’t heard of the likes of Persado, Articoolo or Acrolinx – and I’m not sure from first sight I’d roll them out enterprise-wide just yet. But as indicators of a direction of travel that could bring real benefit, say, five years out, the session was fascinating. I need to read more about these – and, especially, about Salesforce Einstein: potentially a real game-changer.

Amidst the work (which included delivering an APMP Foundation course for a law firm in Hong Kong en route), there was some fun too. I thoroughly enjoyed spending time with our friends from BidWrite, the Aussie equivalent of Strategic Proposals. We share such similar outlooks on the world of bidding – and similar taste in wine. The Penfolds Bin 389 was rather wonderful.

And, perhaps most importantly, I got to stroke a koala…
​

Posted by Jon

"... and then you find that your draft answer's 700 words long, and have to decide which of your points to leave out."
 
So said a salesperson on one of my recent courses. And, sadly, I do fear that that's the reality on most proposals. Do you go into less detail about your solution, chopping out useful material? Spend less time showing you understand the client's needs, creating less empathy? Include fewer proof points or make less attempt to bring your win themes to life?
 
There is, of course, a better way. A professional proposal writer will edit content to say more with less.
 
I discussed this recently with the four specialist writers working in SP's UK team. Their view? The word count on the beautifully polished versions they produce is typically between 25% to 30% lower than that of the drafts they receive from subject matter experts.
 
What's more, the text reads far more fluently and persuasively.
 
Say more within your word count, and say it better. Some sales organisations fail to see the value of proposal writers: to me, they’re totally missing the point. Perhaps this blog entry will help!

 Posted by Jon

I posted here a few days back about Strategic Proposals' latest survey - soliciting bidders' views of buyers. (Have you contributed yet? We've had several hundred responses. It'll only take three minutes via this link. Thanks!)

In writing that post, it struck me that we haven't really spent much time here on The Proposal Guys discussing our other key online tool. We launched the Proposal Benchmarker back in March, seeking to share much of our long-standing benchmarking methodology free, online, with any teams wanting to assess and improve their bid and proposal capabilities.

You can access it here: www.proposalbenchmarker.com . The tool's pretty self-explanatory, although there's a rather neat little video starring our colleague Graham Ablett if you want a little guidance - in itself, a good example of some of the work of our UK design team!

A shade under 100 questions. Making you think honestly about how you fare against best practice and against your peers in the world of winning work. Generating not only a tailored report that you can use internally to celebrate your achievements and seek buy-in for any necessary changes - but also lots of data that we'll use later in the year for a 'state of the nation' report into bid and proposal management.

We're really proud of it - and happen to think there's nothing else like it available in our profession, never mind as a free resource. And we've had wonderful feedback so far from the many people who've completed it. You can do it individually, or it makes a great centrepiece for a team meeting in which you fill it in together.

We'd love to see how you fare. And we hope you'll enjoy completing the questions and seeing the results.

Posted by Jon

You know what happens. Your sales team have just sought feedback on the deal they've just lost. They come back from meeting the client, bearing news that's not as disastrous as they'd feared. "They told us we came a very close second. They said our proposal was really great.” More often or not they add: “It really just came down to price."

It always amazes me how many teams 'come second' in any particular procurement exercise. There must be a lot of silver medals waiting to be handed out in buyers' desk drawers.

It always amazes me how many losing teams submitted proposals that were 'really great'. So great they contributed to losing the deal.

And it always amazes me how many losing teams submitted the best solution, with the top team, but were thwarted 'on price' even though the client had complete faith that their approach was by far the best.

In reality, of course, it's not like that. The customer offering feedback - if indeed they can be bothered doing so - is focused on avoiding challenge, letting the losing team hold their heads a little higher, and hoping that somehow this might result in a better offer next time round. They're offering kind words, not scathing critiques.

There's another challenge, too, very apparent to me when I'm coaching folks through APMP's Foundation Level qualification. There's a detailed checklist in the association's training pack, with eight questions to use in the client debrief. They're all very valid issues, covering ease of evaluation, compliance and more.

Yet my experience when I ask people emerging from client debriefs is that the proposal is last on their list in those discussions. "What did they say about our proposal?" "We were 2.3% out on price."

"And about the document we sent them?"

"They didn't like that we weren't compliant with clause 28.2 of their Ts & Cs. And they thought the project manager we put forward was a bit too junior."

(Me, getting frustrated): "But what about the quality of our document – developed at the expense of so much blood, sweat and tears?" 

"Oh: sorry. I ran out of time to ask them about that."

And, you know, I’d probably agree that in the limited time available, gathering feedback on your proposition is probably more important than on your proposal and pitch. If your products and services, implementation or legal approaches, costs and prices, are consistently out of kilter with the market leaders, it’s critical to understand that. Clients are going to want to discuss that. And, practically, nobody getting a debrief is going to get time to ask all of APMP’s eight proposal-related questions.

My preference in practice therefore is to focus the team seeking feedback on a couple of simple linked questions – such as “how did our proposal documents compare to those from our competitors”, then “…and what about our presentation?”. 

Then, away from the battle, a client audit – with selected recipients of proposals in (say) the past quarter – is the perfect mechanism for a deeper dive. An interview (face-to-face if possible) by someone with a degree of independence from the team involved in the bid might take half an hour of the client’s time.

​And so much the better if that uses a structured form, allowing the buyer to give your documents and presentations a comparative score versus the best of the other bidders – as well as to provide comments. The learning that results from this, done well, is so incredibly useful that I find it amazing that it’s not an approach adopted my more proposal teams – indeed, by all proposal teams.

Posted by Jon

​I spend so many nights in hotels around the world for work that I'm pretty careful in my choices of where to stay. That makes the odd disaster - such as the place I was in in Budapest earlier this week - somewhat surprising, and rather frustrating.
 
Someone had clearly put a lot of careful thought into my room's design. The brown decor. The plastic chairs (inspiring, no doubt, the phrase “Designer chair concept” on my reservation confirmation). The cut-out, numbered footprints on the wall. (Yes, really).
 
The problem was that that careful thought had clearly been around a decade ago - so it all felt incredibly dated, and slightly shabby. My suspicions were confirmed when I looked at the list of prestigious awards the place had won - from the likes of Conde Nast. In 2008.
 
It reminded me of a comment I scribbled on a proposal that a client in London asked me to review recently: "This looks very 2012."
 
"Fabulous," they said, falling into my trap, remembering that most wonderful of British summers. "The Olympics. Gold medals."
 
"No. Just a bit dated."
 
See, proposal design's moved on faster than almost any area of our profession. 
 
In the States, Mike Parkinson's seminal book ('Billion Dollar Business Graphics') was key to pushing people towards higher-impact, more client- & benefits-centric design. On our side of the pond, SP organised and sponsored the first award for proposal design in 2008, in association with APMP UK - trying to trigger the profession here to think differently.
 
Then, for a few years, the Strategic Proposals UK team produced an annual 'black book' - a nicely-bound portfolio of the best work by our designers. These days, it's in a PowerPoint deck: updating it in hard copy once a year would seem too infrequent, such is the pace of change in the level of proposal design needed to keep ahead of the pack. Indeed, I happened to glance the other day at some my team's 2014 work - which gained wonderful plaudits at the time and helped clients capture many big deals - and grimaced at how dated it now looks.
 
As I commented in an APMP conference presentation a few years back: people see what it looks like before they read what it says. And if your documents today look like they did even three years ago, they simply won't look contemporary. 
 
Of course, people argue, more and more proposals have to be submitted via online portals which restrict design creativity. There's not much you can do if it's Arial, 10 point, no illustrations. In fact, all that's meant is an explosion of creativity at the presentation stage (or, when it comes to 'orals', as many in the profession in the US rather, erm, surprisingly call the pitch phase). Those buyers who are incredibly over-prescriptive when it comes to RFP responses offer us virtually free rein when we go in to present.
 
These days, a great proposal not only needs to "superbly articulate a compelling story" - to quote BJ's memorable phrase. It needs to be bring it to life superbly visually, too. And if you don't have the resource and skill in your team to achieve that, you'll almost inevitably be falling behind your competition.