Category: Proposal Guys News

Jon in the Journal

7/15/2010

Posted by BJ
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”.

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Cartoon Caption Contest: And the winner is…

7/1/2010

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Posted by BJ
The results for the Third Annual Strategic Proposals Cartoon Caption Contest are now in. I imagine you’d like to know which entry won, right?

Well, as this is a blog entry related to an APMP event and not a proposal, I’m going to take license and violate the proposal rule that says you should lead with the headline, in this case the headline being the winning entry.

But just announcing the winner without a bit of background, which I hope would create a bit of dramatic tension, wouldn’t be any fun now would it?

I suspect some of you would like to see the cartoon again. So, here it is –

And the finalists’ entries were –

1. “Can’t your family go to Hawaii without you?” (Anita F.)
2. “Who knew a 14:00 deadline meant 2pm?” (Gregg K.)
3. “Just because the client makes computer chips and not potato chips?” (Cynthia M.)

We received a great many entries. Some of these were as simple as “#3”. Others add a little bit of insight, such as “I can really relate to #2, so I vote for that entry.” And quite a few apparently had the need to share their pain, such as “I have experienced the very same thing as alluded to by #1. Here’s what happened to me. I was working on a proposal and … (and then included very specific details as to this person’s experience.)

We tabulated the entries, had the resulted reviewed by an accounting firm (ok, what I really did was ask bookkeeper check my addition) and then sealed the final result in an envelope (not sure why we did that but it seemed the right thing to do.)

The winner of the Third Annual Strategic Proposals Cartoon Caption Contest is (please feel free to provide your own drum roll here), #2 ““Who knew a 14:00 deadline meant 2pm?” submitted by Greg Kulichik.

Please join me in congratulating Greg and the other finalists (In this case, unlike proposals, all three places have their reward – bragging rights for submitting very clever answers.

Jon and I say thanks to everyone who participated. As has been the case for each of the contests, we received some very clever entries, with Greg’s being voted this year’s cleverest!

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The gremlins got us

6/18/2010

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Posted by BJ & Jon
Those of you who’ve met us at conferences or courses will know that we’re not usually the quietest of people… and so you might have been a bit surprised by the lack of posts here since the APMP session in Florida at the start of the month.

We’ve just worked out that although we’ve been posting merrily away, and the control panel for the site was claiming that all was well, our posts haven’t actually been showing up on the site.

Everything’s now fixed, and normal service is resumed – and we’ll now re-publish the entries that should have appeared over the past few weeks. Sorry for the radio silence!

Best wishes

Jon & BJ

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The Third Annual Strategic Proposals Cartoon Caption Contest

6/18/2010

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Posted by BJ

As was the case for the cartoon caption contests* we ran at the annual APMP conferences the past two years, we would have posted the finalists immediately upon returning from the conference. This year I wasn’t able to do so because someone** wasn’t thinking and packed up the responses with the rest of the material from our booth and shipped it back to the Strategic Proposals US offices.

The materials have finally arrived here in our offices and I’m now able to provide the finalist entries and have our readers vote on them.

We received quite a few responses at the conference and, not surprisingly, many of them hit very close to home. Also not surprisingly, many of these (about 20 or so) were related to extensions (I.e. “He didn’t see the notice that they had given us an extension”. John S.) and the turnaround time (“I just asked him to reread the entire thing before we submit it…in 20 minutes.” Tom L.) Another favorite topic was the impending deadline/due date (See one of the finalist entries.) A somewhat surprising topic was pizza (“I just told him they were out of pepperoni.” Submitted by Neil E.). We even had a Disney related entry (see honorable mentions.)

As it is each year, it was tough to come up with the finalists but, after much debate, lobbying and a bit of whining, we were able to come up with an agreed top three entries.

Our two honorable mentions are –

“When did his eyes start bleeding?” (Chris J.)
“He can’t find his Mickey ears.” (Alexandra M-J)

Our three finalists (in alphabetical order of the last name of the submitter) are –

1. “Can’t your family go to Hawaii without you?” (Anita F.)
2. “Who knew a 14:00 deadline meant 2pm?” (Gregg K.)
3. “Just because the client makes computer chips and not potato chips?” (Cynthia M.)

You can cast your vote (one per reader) by sending an e-mail with the subject line “Cartoon Caption Contest” and stating within your mail the number of the entry for which you wish to vote. Please send your mail to bj@strategicproposals.com. We’ll collect votes for one week from the date of this post and then announce the winner.

*We ran our first Cartoon Caption Contest in 2008. This contest is based on and modeled after the long running and very popular cartoon caption contest done by the New Yorker magazine. Entries are submitted, from which three finalists are chosen. The readership then votes for their favorite and a winner is determined based on receiving the largest number of votes.

For each contest, Jon and I come up with an idea for a cartoon and then this is developed and drawn by Mike Parkinson of 24 Hour Company. The cartoon is distributed to conference participants and they then submit their entry (or entries, as participants may submit as many ideas as they wish) and we post it on a board at the conference. Participants at the conference tell us they really enjoy seeing the ideas of their fellow members.
**Okay, I admit it. I was the one to put them in the box. But those supporting me should have known to check to see if I had, yet another, bright idea that wasn’t quite thought through and which needed to be corrected.)

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Going green

5/29/2010

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Posted by BJ & Jon
The theme of this year’s APMP conference – taking place in Florida during the coming week – is “Going green”. In Strategic Proposals (the business of which BJ and I are the principal directors), we decided to take on the APMP challenge and review our own approach to sustainability. As a result, we’ve just published our first corporate environment policy – something we believe to be a first in the proposal training / consultancy market.

We’ve reproduced the policy below, for two reasons – first, because we’d welcome any feedback or views as we strive lead our own operations in a more environmentally-friendly manner, and second to challenge readers here to produce their own policies. Here’s what we’ve committed to doing – and do let us know your plans:

Strategic Proposals Environmental Policy

Strategic Proposals seeks to achieve excellence in every aspect of our business and to champion best practice within the proposal profession.

As such, we are committed to minimising the environmental impact of our operations and to encouraging other proposal teams to do likewise.

To achieve this, we have adopted the following ten step policy across each of our business units worldwide. We will:

1. Seek to off-set the carbon emissions associated with our business travel, embedding this within our standard terms of engagement.
2. Minimise international travel as far as possible whilst meeting our client’s business needs, by working with and promoting local partner companies within the Strategic Proposals International Network.
3. Use public transport rather than private vehicles wherever possible.
4. Use materials from sustainable sources (e.g. FSC-compliant) for all of our printed documentation and training course materials.
5. Reduce paper usage, by adopting and advocating duplex (double-sided) printing for all proposal-related activity and recycling all redundant paper from bidding and training programmes.
6. Promote an environmentally responsible approach to print and production within the training and advice that we provide to clients, and in our written articles and conference presentations.
7. Incorporate a specific section on environmental best practice within the Strategic Proposals Benchmarking Model, by the end of 2010.
8. Sponsor an annual award, to be offered to the proposal centre worldwide that, in our opinion, has done the most to reflect environmental best practice.
9. Communicate the importance of environmental issues to our staff, associates and business partners on a regular basis, encouraging feedback.
10. Annually review our environmental policies and performance, and allocate resources for their effective direction and implementation.
We welcome – and will actively seek – constructive feedback on our policy from our clients and others in the proposal profession.

Strategic Proposals, May 2010.

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500 posts and still going strong!

2/26/2010

1 Comment

Posted by Jon
Today’s post marks something of a milestone, as it’s the 500th post that BJ and I have made here at The Proposal Guys. We’re rather proud of reaching this landmark – and want to say thank you to our readers. We hope you’ve enjoyed our first 500 – and that you’ll stay with us as we head on towards the thousand mark!

We’ll be running a couple of major posts next week, looking at trends past and future in the world of proposals – with input from a number of luminaries in the proposal profession. Watch this space!

In the meantime, something to make you smile… Ever come across clients who behave like this?

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2a8TRSgzZY[/youtube]

(With many thanks to the participant on the APMP Foundation course that I ran in the Netherlands earlier this week, who shared the clip with me. And a quick reminder whilst talking about buyers: our recent white paper discussing how purchasers perceive proposals is still available for free download!)

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Festive greetings

12/21/2009

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Posted by BJ & Jon
You know, it’s a very small step from “Impossible” to “I’m possible“. Here’s wishing you every happiness for the festive season, and hoping that you achieve every “possible” success in 2010.

We’ll be taking a seasonal break from posting for the next couple of weeks. See you back here at the very start of the new decade…

With very best wishes to all of our many readers

Jon and BJ – and Proposal Panda!

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It’s the summer…

8/17/2009

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Posted by BJ & Jon
… not that you’d know that from the torrential rains of the past few weeks here in the UK. We know that many of you are still chained to your desks working on proposals throughout what should be the vacation season – but we’re going to take a short “posting holiday” here at The Proposal Guys.

We’ll be back with our next post on 1 September. In the meantime, hope you get a chance to enjoy some summer sunshine!

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A makeover for ‘The Proposal Guys’

6/8/2009

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Posted by BJ & Jon
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 to navigate the site. So if you’re interested in reading about, for example, “Processes & best practice”, you can click on a link to see all of our past posts in that category. There’s a search bar – on the right hand side of the grey bar at the top of the page. And we love getting comments – links to your recent entries are now in the sidebar, so you can follow and join in the debate.

We hope you like the new look! Do let us know what you think – and if you’ve not posted anything before, feel free to leave a comment on this post saying “hi”: it’s always lovely to know who’s reading the blog and what you like about it.

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Meet Proposal Panda!

3/22/2009

8 Comments

Posted by BJ & Jon
One of the great things about the proposal profession is our sense of community. Whether through attending APMP’s events, gaining professional accreditation, reading and commenting on The Proposal Guys, or participating in other forums – there’s a real feeling of being part of a network of hard-working folks, carrying out similar activities and facing similar issues, all over the world.

So we’d like to introduce you to the newest member of our community. Meet Proposal Panda!

Various of you have asked us for a way to “join in” here at The Proposal Guys. Aside from commenting on our posts (and we always love to hear your views!), here’s a way to do so. We’ll ship Proposal Panda to a proposal team, somewhere in the world. The team can take photos of the panda helping them with their work – and then we’ll let you know where to send Proposal Panda next.

We’ll post your photos – and any commentary you might want to provide – here on the blog (and you’ll also be able to get to it from www.proposalpanda.com). If you want to join in, all we ask is that you send Proposal Panda on within ten days or so, in suitable packaging, and cover the shipping costs to the next destination.

Anyone involved in proposals is welcome to join in – whether you’re in a proposal centre in a major organisation, or you are your company’s proposal centre; whether you’re supplying support services to the proposal community. Hey, even the occasional purchaser evaluating proposals might get a look in sometime!

So – if you’d like to play host to Proposal Panda – email us via panda@theproposalguys.com and let us know!

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BJ Lownie and Jon Williams are the co-founders of Strategic Proposals.

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