Refers primarily to a client not meeting its own promised or forecast date for issuing an RFP, as in “The RFP is slipping to the right.”
Also refers to any schedule deadline being changed to be later than originally advertised.
Note that nothing ever slips to the left.
This week’s oft-confused terms (margin and markup) give me my rant du jour. Do such silly little differences as whether something is calculated as a percentage of selling price or of cost really matter?
Only if your continued employment depends on achieving a certain profitability for company owners.
Only if you’re trying to communicate clearly with executives.
Only if you’re trying to understand important nuances.
Only if you’re trying to respect domain expertise.
Proposals often see us working with people we know not much in areas we know not at all. A good place to start is by learning the basic jargon. Or at least not being impatient of nuances that seem inconsequential to us, whether those nuances are grammatical, technical, managerial, or financial.
Ask, listen, and learn.
An accounting term for the difference between the cost to the producer or supplier and the price at which it is sold; calculated as a percentage of cost.
Erroneously, often used interchangeably with margin by non-accountants.
An accounting term for the difference between the cost to the producer and the price at which it is sold; calculated as a percentage of price.
On proposals, often misused by non-accountants to refer to the percentage markup a bidder will add to its cost to cover, for example, general and administrative costs and profit.
What’s the point of sorting the silverware when you empty the dishwasher–
why not simply put all of it in the drawer in a random order,
and then pick out the cutlery you need when you need it?
It’s the same amount of sorting, after all.
– Seth’s Blog
Oh, look, another typo. And here’s a verb that doesn’t agree with its subject.
Wow. Is that the best way to present that example?
Wait a minute. This doesn’t follow the order of the RFP questions.
What’s this Quality Plan? I think I’ve seen a reference to a Quality Management Plan: Is that the same thing?
Boy, this section is tough to read. Does it need to be reorganized? Broken into smaller paragraphs? Simpler sentences? Bullets?
I think it’s been three pages since I saw a heading/graphic. I’m starting to glaze over.
Oops, this section is about 20% over its page limit. Before I start cutting, what can I shorten?
Oh, and by the way, this section doesn’t actually answer the question.
Welcome to a proposal editor’s day: a scattered mess of what Seth calls mode switching.
We intuitively understand the reason.
If you take a minute to sort the forks, knives and spoons all at once,
you won’t have to spend ten seconds
every single time you want to find a fork.
With never enough time, with always looming deadlines, the understandable editorial impulse is to try to fix everything at once. Grammar. Compliance. Completeness. Marketing. Readability. Length. Consistency. Responsiveness. And repeat, in any order.
The cost of changing gears is higher than we give it credit for.
The web has persuaded us that everything is miscellaneous,
that sorting things carefully and keeping them where they belong
is a waste of time–
because we can simply find them when we need them.
Yes, there is a cost to changing gears — to switching modes. For me, that manifests in two ways:
But switching to ‘find mode’ breaks our rhythm
and eliminates the useful serendipity that happens
when the right things are near each other,
right where we expect them to be.
It might be counterintuitive, but it’s true: compared to one comprehensive (aka scattered) pass, multiple focused editing passes are faster. In an environment where Schedule is King, that would be enough, wouldn’t it? But it’s also easier. And it gives better results.
And if it’s true in editing, for what other proposal activities is it also true?