Proposal Land

Better RFP Responses & Management
 
Proposal Land

Better Clients – The In-House Version

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If you’re working in an in-house proposal group, being paid on time *shouldn’t* be an issue but you can still benefit from better in-house clients. Of course, it’s hard to pick your boss or even to directly tell them what to do, but you can pay attention to who makes proposals better/worse (both at the executive sponsor level and at the proposal manager level), figure out why, and work to propagate the helpful behaviours and to compensate for the less-than-helpful ones. For example . . .

You can support achievable schedules:

  • Giving responsible time estimates for your own tasks (i.e. not sandbagging)
  • Recommending the inclusion of management-reserve time for when things go south, as they will
  • Posting the schedule on a wall (actual or virtual) where it can be seen, understood, adhered to, and changed when necessary

You can support productive processes:

  • Suggesting early executive review of, and sign-off on, proposed solutions/offerings
  • Suggesting interim team reviews of drafts, especially on long proposals
  • Interviewing (other) technical experts early to identify elements that need standard wording and standard approaches

You can support balanced workloads:

  • Managing your own effort at a sustainable level, no matter what the team is doing
  • Talking about proposal standards as the trade-offs they are (What do we have time for? Which improvement will mean more to the client?) rather than mutely or resentfully accepting all the demands anyone can think to load on the team
  • Looking for ways to initiate others to proposal work, creating a trained reserve force for surge support

You can support good personnel management:

  • Appreciating effort in small but public ways
  • Asking others what help they need to meet expectations, especially schedule
  • Checking-in on peers to see how they’re doing

And so on.

We can treat our companies as a given. We can mutter about what we wish managers would do to ease the pain. Or we can change the conversation by modelling new behaviours.

Although Gandhi didn’t say that we can be the change we want to see in Proposal Land (or in the world), apparently he did say this:

“We but mirror the world. All the tendencies present in the outer world are to be found in the world of our body. If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. This is the divine mystery supreme. A wonderful thing it is and the source of our happiness. We need not wait to see what others do.”

So there you have it. We need not wait to see what others do. A wonderful thing it is.

 

Better Clients

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Better clients challenge you. They support you.
They spread the word. They pay on time.
They pay more and expect more.
Everything else will take care of itself
if you focus on getting better clients.
– Seth’s Blog

Better Clients: Getting Some

It’s easy to say and hard to do. I worked as a freelancer in Proposal Land for almost half my career and my highly selective modus operandi was to accept work when it was offered.

Why?  My first concern was always getting enough work. For a long period, I was also unaware of what better looked like. Didn’t it work like this everywhere? Then I was unsure of my ability to get better and still get enough. Maybe unsure of deserving it.

But better clients really *are* a joy forever.

Better clients challenge you. They support you.
They spread the word. They pay on time.
They pay more and expect more.

Even one of those traits would be worth selecting for; the truth seems to be that they often travel together.  I’ll add one more.

Better clients make it easy to do your best work.

And who doesn’t get up in the morning wanting to do that?

Better Clients: Being One

The flip side of all this is the companies that hire Proposal Land freelancers. Maintaining specialized proposal resources in-house just doesn’t make sense if there are long gaps between bids, but hiring them is not like buying a widget. You can’t just pick one off the shelf at random and slot them into a gap. Well, you can, but you can get better help by being a better client.

Challenge them. Support them.
Spread the word. Pay on time.
Pay more and expect more.

 

Term: Proponent

 

Company submitting a bid; used extensively in DB/DBFM contracting.

To be distinguished from “successful proponent,” which is the winner. This distinction can clarify whether work noted in the draft contract (for example, submission of a plan) is part of the response requirement (and, therefore, to be submitted with the proposal), or part of the SOW (and, therefore, to be submitted after contract award).

And no, response instructions should not be in the draft contract, but have been observed there, nonetheless. Sigh.

Two Things

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To do great and important tasks,
two things are necessary:
a plan and not quite enough time.
– Wish I’d Said That, John Robson Online

Hahaha, eh? Every proposal team knows about the “not quite enough time” part. Not every team seems to know about the “plan” part.

Sorry. Had to do it.

Yes, in addition to not-quite-enough time, you also need da plan. Something like this:

  • Scope the work of responding to the RFP.
  • Schedule the work.
  • Assign resources.
  • Assign more resources, including technically conversant people who can supervise/support the work of others but not do any writing themselves. (This step is often missed).
  • Reduce the work by simplifying/standardizing the response before anyone starts writing. (This step is almost always missed.)
  • Go forth and do great and important tasks without damaging any staff.

 

A Man Walks Into a Bar – Riff #3

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An Oxford comma walks into a bar,
where it spends the evening
watching the television getting drunk and smoking cigars.

OK, grammar posts are bad enough, but punctuation? Come on.

Wait just a minute. Punctuation has a purpose: It helps the reader understand what the sentence means. The first time through, dagnab it.

In a proposal context, I’d say that’s it: Anything more than that is misplaced effort. That means any strongly held editorial opinions about colons versus dashes, and semi-colons versus periods should be left at the door. Of course there are legitimate distinctions in the use of these marks, but this is a speed-and-feed environment: We’re not writing literature for the ages. Or punctuating it.

So what’s with the joke? Well, although it purports to be an example of confusion caused by the lack of an Oxford comma, it isn’t really.

The Oxford comma (or serial comma)
is a comma placed between the last two items
in a series of three or more.
– The Write Life

The trouble with this sentence starts earlier, and every editor I know would and should add a comma between “watching television” and “getting drunk” to make it clear who was imbibing to excess.

An Oxford comma walks into a bar,
where it spends the evening
watching the television, getting drunk and smoking cigars.

Good? Well, better. Oxford-comma adherents would also do this:

An Oxford comma walks into a bar,
where it spends the evening
watching the television, getting drunk, and smoking cigars.

Does that make it easier to read quickly? I think so, although maybe just by a hair. If you think so, then add that final comma. Pretty simple, eh?

But.

During planning sessions, I’ve had partner company managers ask intently whether we’re using the Oxford comma and tell me that it’s essential we use it consistently, by which they mean “always” or “never.”

Thppt. In my own writing I use it when, IMHO, it’s needed for clarity, and I don’t bother when it’s not. I use it when I want to signal the reader that another element of a list is coming: when someone might read the last two items as one. I also use it when the elements of said list are a bit, ahem, wordy, and I don’t have time to shorten them.

Here, yes:

Our procurement system uses competitive principles in the bidding process, accessible information sources, transparency in the evaluation of bids, and clear documentation at all stages.

Here, meh:

Our procurement system will deliver grommets, gudgeons, grapples and gribbles.

But.

In a proposal, consistency is part of professional presentation: consistency in colour palette, terminology, writing style and, yes, punctuation. If your executives or reviewers believe in always/never consistency, then you’re pretty much stuck with the Oxford comma everywhere, because never using it is not an option.

Proposal writing tip

Sorry about that.

If you really hate the Oxford comma or resent spending time adding them to someone’s text, consider replacing lists of three or more items with bullets. That takes time, too, but makes list elements even more obvious, and text faster to read/scan.

The afore-referenced writing site cites a case where a contract interpretation turned on the absence of an Oxford comma. Considering that proposals form part of the contract (albeit as the document with the least precedence), clarity matters.