I’m editing an RFP response in my usual workplace: my home office. The rest of the team is elsewhere: other home offices, regular offices in other cities altogether. Continue reading“Dispersed Proposal Teams: Battling the Isolation”
Keeping the Writing Simple
Writing easy-to-understand and memorable RFP responses isn’t easy. The place to start is to keep things as simple as we can. Continue reading“Keeping the Writing Simple”
Why Diversity Matters on Proposal Teams
Proposal teams need people with diverse skill sets. They also need people who will work their way through new challenges, and not quit. Continue reading“Why Diversity Matters on Proposal Teams”
Style-Manual Travails
RFP responses are supposed to look as if one person wrote them. Everybody says so. This is one reason we use style manuals, to standardize usage, terminology, punctuation. Over the years, I have happily ignored the preferences of proposal team members. “What matters,” I said, “is not that it be ‘right’ in some sense, but that it all be the same.” And that’s true enough, but not always comfortable. Continue reading“Style-Manual Travails”
Signs of Overload
One of my book’s tips for the person managing the proposal team is to watch for signs of stress in the team: signs of overload. It seems obvious enough, right? If they’re working too hard they’ll get cranky.
Well, maybe. Again and again in Proposal Land I’ve seen entire teams bypass the cranky stage altogether and go straight to giddiness. Executives passing through think everyone is having a good time, that everyone is OK. It’s an easy mistake to make. Easy enough to miss the slightly desperate nature of the interactions, to not see the underlying exhaustion. Continue reading“Signs of Overload”