A day aligned with Seth Godin is like a day with sunshine, no?
I’m not sure the word “marketing” means what you think it means.
Later, we will get to the promotion and advertising part.
But right now, this is marketing. All of it.
– “When do we get to the marketing part?”
Long ago in Proposal Land, I had the same thought but expressed it a little more rudely.
Marketing is not aboutToday, Seth is on about what makes a good spec. The basic message is this: Even good providers will interpret a spec differently and deliver different products. If you can live with the differences, then it’s a good spec.
In Proposal Land, the same observation applies in two ways, one of which is way easier to test and fix.
A poor specification of the work wanted (the product, or service, or both) will generate bids based on different understandings of that work: This is Seth’s situation. Some of these bids might stray so far from the (poorly/ambiguously explained/articulated) intention as to be non-compliant. Any bids that survive will still be tough to compare fairly. Not. Good.
Also, Not Easy to test in advance. What, will we ask a bunch of bidders to respond to a draft RFP and SOW to give it a good road test? Good luck with that: Time is money and proposals take a lot of time.
However, it is possible to do these things:
A poor specification of the response instructions will generate bids that are organized differently. Sometimes wildly differently, as on one defense/defence contract where one bidder submitted the plans that were requested and one bidder did what they’d always done before (and what they knew the actual evaluators wanted) and submitted a para-by-para response to the SOW. (Strictly speaking this was not misinterpretation of the instructions, but you get the point: Bids structured completely differently are damnably tough to evaluate fairly.)
Way #2 is easier (faster, cheaper) to test in advance than Way #1. Just ask two (or three) procurement professionals to review your draft instructions:
If the results differ, figure out why and fix it.
Oh, and consider my solution. Don’t give bidders instructions: Give them the Table of Contents you want them to follow, with numbers and everything. If someone can’t follow that, you really don’t want to do business with them anyway.
Oh yes. What Seth said, about detachment and commitment. This, and more:
Emotional detachment helps us remember that we are not our work,
and that feedback is useful, not an attack.
Commitment permits us to keep going
(especially when we’re asked to provide more effort than we planned).
For every proposal team member who has ever held back their section because it “wasn’t ready” for review . . .
You are not your work.
Feedback is useful, not an attack.
For every proposal team member who has ever resented the seemingly endless “asks” but carried on regardless . . .
Some see your professionalism
and those few sometimes remember to honour it.
(But mostly not.)
And with those two categories I expect I’ve covered every proposal team member ever.
Twice over.
Getting better at proposals can seem like a daunting task, yeah? I know whereof you speak.
But here’s the thing with all daunts: Just start.
Zen says so, if I substitute “better” for “happier” and who would not?
Too busy to read it? Here’s the summary.
Start very small.
Do only one change at a time.
Be present and enjoy the activity (don’t focus on results).
Be grateful for every step you take.
Turns out Zen had more than one lesson to teach me.
If Harvard Business Review says it, will you do it?
Here’s their (short, haha) article on writing concise emails.
Here are mine on concise writing in/for Proposal Land:
Useful versus useless redundancy
Over-modified, under-specified
But as folks from John Locke to Mark Twain have noted, less takes time. So schedule it.