Proposal Land

Better RFP Responses & Management
 
Proposal Land

Term: Project

 

In some industries (including the Canadian military in many instances), “project” refers to the entire body of Work executed under a contract and the contractor’s associated organization and resources. In some industries, however, “project” refers only to small-p projects: time-limited activities to accomplish specific goals (for example, construction or renovation projects, information technology development projects) and executed under a project-management discipline and methodology.

Although the meaning is usually clear from context, the use of “project” to refer to an entire contract’s worth of Work seems to drive small-p project managers crazy. Their objection may stem from the increasingly professionalized understanding of small-p project management, with its formal certifications, training programs, and procedures—much of which seems to have little home in the former type of project.

However, on rare occasions the meaning of “project” in an RFP is not immediately clear from context: People with different assumptions/expectations of standard usage can end up talking at cross-purposes on a proposal team. (Well, arguing, really. Yelling maybe. Not that I’ve ever seen that.) The usual issue is whether reporting and management standards that apply to the whole body of work under the contract also apply to each small-p project. This sort of confusion must be straightened out, soonest, by careful reading of all RFP references to “project” and by a question to the client if necessary.

 

The Entabulator

 

I’ve edited lots of technical-speak that read like gobbledygook to me. Most of it was just poor explaining, but I’ve always had a sneaking suspicion that some really didn’t make any sense.

If some or all of what you sell is highly technical, it’s worth spending some time and money outside the proposal cycle to get a description/explanation of it that a non-expert but non-stupid reader can understand. A reader like an editor. Or an evaluator.

I’m sorry to say that I think Bud Haggert is no longer available. H/t to Jim T. for the link.

“I shot this in the late 70’s at Regan Studios in Detroit on 16mm film. The narrator and writer is Bud Haggert. He was the top voice-over talent on technical films. He wrote the script because he rarely understood the technical copy he was asked to read and felt he shouldn’t be alone.”
– Dave Rondot

 

When?

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I haven’t had a day off in six weeks.

When can we talk about our proposal processes?

Why do we always pull an all-nighter the night before our proposal is due?

When can we talk about our proposal processes?

The technical experts don’t know anything about writing; the writers don’t know anything.

When can we talk about our proposal processes?

Red Team just trashed our whole plan for service delivery. What now?

When can we talk about our proposal processes?

I know we have super examples of this exact same work for other clients. Why don’t we have snappy little write-ups on those? And pictures, dagnab it?

When can we talk about our proposal processes?

We never get useful feedback from our clients.

When can we talk about our proposal processes?

Well, in the middle of a proposal we don’t have time to talk about our proposal processes. And afterwards, we don’t have . . . what? Time? Motivation? Discipline? Imagination? The attention of executives and managers? Any belief that we can make it better?

It’s comfortable to ignore the system,
to assume it is as permanent
as the water surrounding your goldfish.
– Seth Godin

As Seth notes, the systems we work in — including proposal processes — are not permanent. Unless, of course, we never talk about them and how they’re going wrong.

Pick your When, even if it *is* in the middle of a proposal. And then just do it.

 

A Man Walks Into a Bar – Riff #2

 

A synonym strolls into a tavern.

People whose last writing instruction was in Grade 9 are fond of telling me that adding synonyms to their writing makes it more interesting.

I am fond of telling them that our Grade 9 teachers are not working as proposal evaluators.

In Proposal Land, the rule is clear: For every significant concept, choose one word and use it without fail. Well, as close to that as you can get. Humans are not designed to achieve perfect consistency in anything.

Is it a little boring? Maybe. Clear? That too.

 

Read more here about Buddy & Me.

Term: Para-by-Para Response

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A proposal methodology requiring responses to each SOW paragraph, rather than the production of plans and functional descriptions of how the Work will be done.

Excessively tedious to write, edit, review, and evaluate.

Not seen much these days in the sense of a formal requirement, but damnably difficult to get rid of at the informal level. Every executive or proposal-management consultant has a story about having been penalized by evaluators for *not* responding to every SOW line item, even when this was not specified. The low-risk approach is thus seen as responding para-by-para anyway, in addition to meeting the actual response requirement.

Clients have it in their hands to prevent this:

Simple, eh? But I’ve never seen it done . . .