Proposal Land

Better RFP Responses & Management
 
Proposal Land

This Is Your Chance

 , ,

Get the strategy right,
then implement small changes,
repeated with persistence and generosity.

On proposal teams, I never had the chance to determine the strategy of the pursuit: Which business lines? Which opportunities? Which partners? Which pricing strategy?

Did I always think the strategy was right? Hell, no.

But, à la Seth’s blog: Small Adjustments, I did have the chance to make the proposal process right-er by implementing small changes:

  • Designing a fail-safe protocol for handling submission mandatories while respecting the proposal manager’s prerogatives
  • Putting the schedule on a wall where we could all see it
  • Habituating executives to early briefings on the operations concept and to a risk-management focus in reviews
  • Recording outcomes of otherwise free-form meetings
  • Using a variant of the Kanban board to track progress, especially in the latter stages

And so on.

And every other team member had the same chance to implement small changes. And so do you. (I’ve got the persistence covered. Can you look after the generosity?)

 

You Can’t Always Git What You Want

 ,

You’re unlikely to get everything you want.
That’s a good thing,
because wants are part of what define us.
It’s entirely possible
that you’ll get most of what you need, though.

It seems a bit new-agey, no? All self-validation and positivity?

The trick is in being clear
about what you put into each category.

As usual, Seth is headed down a practical track, and here’s where this post touches down in Proposal Land.

Even with all the money in the world, a client can’t have everything they want. And no client *has* all the money in the world. So this post is for people developing RFPs, not for those responding to them, or only incidentally.

Before letting the technical customer specify everything under the sun as a requirement (or worse, as a mandatory requirement), procurement specialists should look at that lovely pile of capabilities and deliverables and features to see whether some wants have snuck into the list of needs.

It’s OK to want things. It’s even OK to ask for them in an RFP. But you’ll get a more-creative solution and a better price if you distinguish the musts from the optionals and let the suppliers figure out how to do the best they can for you, after meeting all your true, no-kidding needs.

 

Buddy & Me: Please Submit . . .

 ,

If you’re a proposal minion, you might want to watch for irrational reactions in yourself, as hard as that is.

If you’re a proposal manager, you might want to keep an eye out for irrational reactions in your team.

They signal overload, and they shouldn’t be ignored.

Not that I was irrational, you understand. Just in case you or those you work with ever get like that.

Term: Operator

 

In business, someone who delivers a product or service to an external client or who manages a group that does.

Most often used to distinguish someone from a “marketer,” who sells products or services but does not create them, or from someone providing an in-house service like accounting.

It has no negative connotations as in, “He’s such a slippery operator.”

Time, Money, Opium and Page Counts

 

Then what is time again?

One of Seth’s recent posts reminded me of this little gem from Volunteers (see the dialogue clip below the fold).

If less is more and more is better then less is better, right? Something about the commutative principle? Actually, that is right, at least in Proposal Land.

The next time you’re trying to stuff 10 pages of response into a 2-page limit (or even just the next time you have 10 pages of response), think of Seth’s rant on lo-fi communication. And then think “better.” Not more.

Because better is better.

As for opium, time, and money, well, you’re going to have to work that one out for yourself.

CHUNG MEE
Opium is my business. The bridge means more traffic. More traffic means more business. More business means more money. More money means more power.

LAWRENCE
Before I commit that to memory, would there be anything in this for me?

CHUNG MEE
Speed is important in business. Time is money.

LAWRENCE
No, you said opium is money.

CHUNG MEE
Money is money. And money is my objective.

LAWRENCE
Then what is time again?