​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
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From a bid manager, recently: “The client invited us to the presentation out of pity.”

Needless to say, they didn’t win!

It reminded me of one of my favourite phrases about the presentation stage, from a CEO who's become a great friend as we've worked together over the years in various organisations: "I want to walk into the pitch first of three, not as one of three."

Posted by Jon

I listened with interest to a panel session on virtual teams at APMP's  revent Bid & Proposal Con in San Diego. This has been one of my pet areas of research over the past year. In one recent workshop on the topic, I popped up a slide asking the attendees to define a ‘virtual team’. Much discussion ensued, and then I shared the Harvard Business Review’s perspective from June 2013:

Work groups which (1) have some core members who interact primarily through electronic means, and (2) are engaged in interdependent tasks.

Quickly, though, I just cleared the slide, and replaced it with a new one. It simply read:

Business as usual

You know, when I set up and ran my first bid centre back in 1999 (for Compaq), proposal teams were invariably co-located. Woe betide that salesperson who didn’t think it was important to sit alongside the team in our war rooms for the duration of the battle!

These days are long gone, for the majority of proposal efforts. Sure, the best teamworking, creativity and quality generally result when people are co-located – and, to quote HBR again, “trust needs touch”. But we know that bidding these days combines the skills of colleagues dotted far and wide across the country – or the globe.

The danger, in leadership terms, is that we focus on the task, but not on the individuals or the team. There are a whole set of tactics to deal with this. A few I love:

• A ‘meet the team’ document, circulated at the start: photographs, “on this bid, I’ll be…”, “at the same time, I’m…” and “outside work I like to…”
• Connecting the team at the start of meetings: “what’s happening in your world outside this bid?” / “what’s the weather like in…” / “share something good…”
• Actively sense-checking the mood of the team, at the start of or between meetings – e.g.: “on a scale of 0 to 10, how are you feeling about…” 
• The ‘virtual water cooler’ - set times for the team to talk, without a specific agenda: what HBR  calls “planned spontaneity”.

And then there are the dreaded hours spent on conference calls or on Skype. Everyone’s muted. Literally: their lines are silenced until they want to speak. And figuratively, too: there’s a risk that the discussions are low energy, and don’t engage and involve all those who could and should contribute. 

And when people are (physically) muted, what are they doing? Reading emails. Typing notes. Working on their RFP answers (if only!). Walking the dog. Playing with the kids. Making coffee. Driving. At an airport or on the train, sharing confidential information with anyone nearby.

What are they not doing? Concentrating on the call: giving their all, in an appropriate environment.

So: unmute. Sure, you’ll hear a bit of background noise, just as you do in any conversation: as I write this, in London’s Institute of Directors, I can hear a buzz from discussions at neighbouring tables. And if you’re leading the call, you can always force lines onto mute if there’s a real issue.

But you’ll be amazed at what happens, if your team members know that this is the new house rule. People actually setting time aside for the calls. Concentrating. Contributing. Being creative. 

​Try it! I’ve been using the technique for months now, and it works a dream. I’d love to hear your experiences. 

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

The two banes of my life are technology and admin. The latter, I guess, is a necessary evil. The former...? Well, I'm sure that misbehaving technology has caused me more grey hairs than anything over the years. (At least I still have hair, though, BJ!). 

So it's been with this blog. After valiant attempts to get it up and running again last year, we were again thwarted by the gremlins. This time, amidst their mischief, they decided to take out our email distribution list. Not only did the option to subscribe stop working, but the list of those who had done so over the years vanished too. 

Anyway: it's fixed - writes he, tempting fate. So you can now subscribe to receive copies of all of our new posts direct by email – just click on either of the ‘subscribe’ links, at the top or on the right of the page.

And if you'd subscribed previously: I'm afraid we're going to have to ask you to do so again. Thanks for your forbearance. Blame those gremlins!! 

We’ll get back to sharing thoughts at least weekly. Indeed, we may well have some inspired by the coming week’s big APMP event, Bid & Proposal Con 2018, at which BJ and I are both speaking in San Diego. See some of you there?

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…
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​(Posted by B.J.)
I’ve written here, and spoken in many presentations, about “unintentional negatives”. That is, stating something that would seem to be positive which actually leaves a negative thought in the reader’s mind. An example would be, “There will be no delays and no cost overruns.” Consider the key words that resonate after reading this. For most people, the  words ‘delays’ and ‘overruns’ are what they recall.
Another example of this I’ve used during presentations is the response a certain very highly placed elected official gave when asked about his involvement with a female intern. His response was, “I did not have relations with that individual.” What most of us are left thinking after hearing this is, “relations with that individual.” A better response would have been, “I have always been faithful to my wife.” (He might have still been lying, but at least the word that we’re left with is “faithful”.)
I saw a perfect example of an unintentional negative the other day on the side of a truck advertising construction services. The slogan read, “On Time, On Budget, No Exceptions”. The danger here is that the one word recalled after reading this is “Exceptions”. A slight tweak remedies this. IT could have read, “On Time, On Budget, Every time” or “On Time, On Budget, Always”.
One of the responsibilities of proposal content developers (high-impact proposal content is developed, not merely written and for that reason I don’t use the term “proposal writer”) is to rewrite any unintentional negatives so that the word or phrase recalled delivers a positive message.

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

Friends asking casually how I'm doing - perhaps wondering why I've been somewhat incommunicado -  are used to hearing that life's been crazily busy. But even by my standards, the past month's been ridiculous. My longest spell at home between trips in the past five weeks - weekends included - has been 28 hours. 
 
There's been some non-work stuff. Wonderfully, yet slightly bizarrely, I conducted the wedding ceremony for two dear friends - after they'd done the legal niceties a couple of days before. Other highlights: Richard III in Leicester cathedral, where said king is buried; discovering the wonderful Suffolk town of Southwold, and enjoying some amazing Hungarian wine.
 
But mostly, what's kept me busy has been running 15 courses in a month, for a total of 253 staff - including salespeople, bid / proposal specialists, subject matter experts and senior executives. And each event has been different, with client-specific agendas and case studies. I've presented on numerous different topics: three variants of our award-winning masterclass, for different companies. Sessions on executive summaries and qualification, and a "practical writing skills workshop". An intensive "winning proposals and pitches" event for a global sales team's annual kick-off, at Leeds Business School. A rather lovely new course on "Leading Winning Proposal Teams in a Virtual Environment" (updating some of our existing content to reflect the latest thinking and research). All of this alongside three APMP certification workshops around the UK.
 
I'm exhausted just writing the list. But I'm exhilarated, too - because for those courses on which feedback forms were completed - according to the client's preferences - the average scores have been (in order) 98%, 99%, 93%, 94%, 98%, 95%, 100%, 95%, 96% and 96%. We also had a 100% pass rate for the candidates on the APMP Foundation courses. It’s been a whirlwind month, but amazing to think I’ve inspired so many people to think differently about proposals – and that they’ve rated the events so highly.
 
I'm slightly concerned, though, that so much training has taken me away for a few weeks from working on live deals and running projects to help clients to improve their proposal processes. And our training only works so well because it's not delivered in a vacuum: it's not a theoretical approach but one grounded in our day-to-day experiences of helping teams to win.
 
So although there's a fair amount of course delivery booked into my diary for the rest of the year - as well as the opening keynote at the biggest bid/proposal conference of 2017 in the Asia Pacific region - I'm itching to get my sleeves rolled up. Talking about it and inspiring people is so rewarding. But doing gives me just as much of a kick as discussing.
 
And, in the meantime, I’m taking a few days off to recover – and to spend some time with my wife, son and cats!

 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.