The process, meeting, or decision that finalizes whether an opportunity will be pursued.
Ask Before Helping
The rule
On a proposal team (OK, maybe on any team), don’t jump in to help without first checking on a few things:
- Whether help is, you know, wanted
- What kind of help would be, you know, welcome
- How to provide said help so that you aren’t, you know, causing trouble
The rule applies to everyone, but it applies more the more senior you are, or the more removed you’ve been from the main work stream of the proposal.
The story
The sales guy responsible for the client receiving this proposal was understandably eager to help. As I started to assemble the package for the in-house printing and copying centre, I kept finding him standing behind me, smiling.
That, I could live with, although it was a bit unnerving. Where it started to go south was when he started trying to help. First he reorganized my piles of documents, lining everything up in nice rows with no gaps.
“No,” I said, “those gaps are how I know that I still need something from Production.”
He stopped moving stuff around, but he wasn’t happy.
Then, when we had everything, I started to pile documents together to take them down to the folks who would copy them for us. He jumped in again, happily stacking documents in a way that they hated downstairs, because it cost them another step to realign the piles for input to their humongous copier.
“No,” I said, “they need them stacked like this.” And showed him.
This time, he pouted. “If you don’t want any help,” he huffed, and moved off.
I stopped for a minute and looked at him, wondering whether it was worth my bother.
“I do want help,” I said, “but we’re always asking the copying department for help with a last-minute job – that’s the nature of our business – so we work hard to make it as easy for them as we can. To keep them as happy as we can.”
He came back to the table and watched me closely as I assembled packages of files in a way that would cause the least irritation for those folks who were so necessary to our on-time delivery of “his” proposal.
And then he started doing it the same way.
Hurray.
Term: General and Administrative (G&A)
A markup added to a bidder’s calculated cost of products and services to cover costs not solely attributable to the production of said products and services but nonetheless attributable to them (for example, a percentage of the cost of corporate services, like accounting or marketing, that supports all projects from a central department).
Also referred to as “overhead.”
Acronymized as G&A; pronounced “gee and eh.”
Asking Clearer Questions
Why unclear questions matter
Bidders submitting unclear questions about RFPs to clients risk getting back nonsense answers or not getting what they actually wanted. But as a simple story illustrates, asking clear questions is hard.
The example
“How much do you want to golf when you’re here?”
On the extension, I thought, “Uh oh, there’s a problem.” What might it be? Let me count the ways it might be a problem:
- It will be expensive for our host to rent clubs.
- It will be hard for our host to book tee times.
- It will be rude to leave behind the non-golfers.
In short, I heard this question as this: How badly do you want to golf when you’re here?
The person who responded, however, heard a different question — to wit: How often do you want to golf when you’re here? — and answered accordingly.
Who heard aright? Not me.
How to do better – Tactic #1
Dramatically improve the odds that the client will hear the question aright by giving some context for the question that explains the point of confusion or concern:
Don’t say this: Please clarify requirement A.
Instead, say this: We see requirement A and requirement H as mutually contradictory, because of such-and-so. Therefore, we ask that you either clarify these requirements to remove the potential confusion between them, or eliminate one of them.
How to do better – Tactic #2
Review your question for words with more than one meaning. Consider the situation when the SOW states that the Contractor must perform a given task every week. If you want the client to reduce task frequency, then . . .
Don’t say this: Would you consider dropping requirement X?
Instead, say this: Executing this task weekly will be prohibitively expensive. In our experience, executing this task monthly is sufficient for safety (or whatever purpose). We therefore request that requirement X be changed to reduce the task frequency to once/month.
Term: Fairness Monitor
An independent observer of the client’s evaluation process; used in some Canadian government contracting. Responsible for identifying any infractions of the evaluation methodology specified in the RFP.
Usually under contract to Public Services and Procurement Canada (previously PWGSC).