Are you running a proposal sweatshop?

In the two decades I’ve been observing people in selling situations, one thing has always been particularly fascinating to me. It’s the way that we will spend ten times as much effort on a presentation that we know we will have to give in person, when compared to a written proposal or a tender response.

Proposals have become the routine, marginal and painful work that no one really wants to do.

Yet we produce a lot of them. When I speak to people about the volume of proposals they generate, most say that their business, company or division produces anywhere from five to more than 30 proposals a month.

That’s a lot of information going out into the market representing your brand, your work, and your value, and with the potential to open doors for you.

Unfortunately, because proposals are seen as paperwork, rather than as an exciting opportunity to win new business, proposal teams may feel they are working in conditions that have more in common with a sweatshop factory than a modern business. Here are just a few of them:

1.     No choice in what to produce

2.     Inescapable grind; long days turns into long weeks, months and years

3.     Constantly working extra hours to meet deadlines

4.     Disconnected from the rest of the business

5.     Under-appreciated by managers and leaders

6.     Responsibility without authority

7.     Produces output at the lowest possible cost, which is later expected to be sold at a premium price

If there is a disconnection between the conditions in which your proposals are created, and the outcomes you want them to deliver, you have got a problem.

What you get is dull, mass-produced documentation, and not the dazzling, inspirational calls to action that you really need.

A proposal is usually the first piece of work a customer will see from you. It’s the gateway to the opportunity you really want, and the chance to get in front of the customer to do your verbal pitch.

As a business leader, it’s your job to invest in your proposal effort and give it the resources, respect and reward it deserves.

If not, your brand will be damaged, your work will be devalued, and those doors you want to open will remain firmly closed.

Is your proposal really a proposal?

When your proposals aren’t successful, it can be hard to figure out why. Trying to fix this problem on your own is like trying to fix a car when you’re not a mechanic. You can tinker and try things, but it’s hit-and-miss, frustrating and slow.

So let’s start with defining what a proposal really is.

A proposal is a commercial document whose purpose is to influence the customer to say "yes" to you. To achieve this, proposals need a combination of style, substance and relevance.

• Style is the way the proposal looks and sounds, and how it makes the reader feel.
• Substance is the content of the proposal, which outlines the offer that you are making to the buyer.
• Relevance is the “fit” between the offer and the problems and aspirations of the customer.

Problems occur when any one of these elements is missing; the “proposal” becomes a brochure, a report, or a presentation. All of these are interesting in their own right, but none are likely to get you hired.

When there’s style and substance, but no relevance to the customer, your proposal becomes a Brochure. This is a generic document that looks and sounds great, but could apply to anyone. Studies show that brochures are useful in consumer businesses, particularly retail trade and in tourism. If you’re selling to business and government, not so much.

When there’s substance and relevance, but a lack of style, customers read the proposal as if it’s a Report. Proposals are about selling the job; reports are about doing the job.

Customers are trained to read reports as a set of recommendations - not all of which may be adopted.

Where there is style and relevance, you’ve got a Presentation. In his book Pitch Anything, Oren Klaff, a venture capital consultant who pitches multi-million dollar deals for a living, says that customers often see sales presentations as “the morning’s entertainment” - a pleasant enough way to spend an hour, maybe even to learn something new, but probably not to buy anything.

So, is your proposal really a proposal? Or is it something else? Identifying the problem is the start of the solution.

Can you really bid less but win more?

“Sales is a numbers game”. This saying comes from a time when relationship selling was king, deals were done on a handshake, and the more people you got in front of, the luckier you became.

However, it is harmful advice when it comes to competitive tenders.

Submitting competitive tenders is like feeding coins into a slot machine; your chances of winning don’t get any better as your supply of coins goes down.

In fact, the opposite is true.

The more tenders you invest time and effort in, but don’t win, the more discouraged you're likely to get. Buyers don’t give you good feedback – or any feedback. All you’re really doing is depleting your most important currency, the energy, enthusiasm and engagement of your team, for absolutely zero return.

People will try to tell you you’re not winning because you “didn’t write the tender”, meaning the buyer didn’t go to market based on the specifications you gave them. This is baloney too. Buyers are smarter than that; they won’t deliberately favour one vendor. And I've known plenty of people who have won competitive tenders without any prior relationship with the buyer.

Most likely, the problem is that you’re submitting so many tenders that they look like brochures – carbon copies full of cut-and-pasted content. Or, they are simply responses to the tender specification – which is what everyone else is doing too – without any real strategy to win.

Over the years I’ve noticed a marked difference in the way that clear winners approach bids and tender proposals, while others are setting themselves up to lose. It starts with how (and where) we spend our time.

Spend more of your time up front on the thinking work, without jumping straight into the “doing” work, and good things will happen. You’ll get better engagement from your team. You’ll impress buyers. And you’ll win more often. And that’s a win for everyone.

Robyn Haydon is a business development consultant specialising in business that is won through competitive bids and tenders. Her clients have won and retained hundreds of millions of dollars worth of business with many of Australia’s largest corporate and government buyers. Is it time to pimp your proposals? Stop wasting time and money on proposals that go nowhere. The Pimp My Proposals program will give you the feedback, content and structure you need to build compelling proposals that win business. Learn what you’re doing wrong, and how to fix it. Email info@robynhaydon.com or call 03 9557 4585 to find out more.

Is it time to pimp your proposals?

For most people in business, proposals are not a joy – they’re simply a hassle.

Proposals chew up a lot of your time and resources. You spend hours, days or weeks slaving away over them, and when you lose, there are no prizes for second place. Customers don’t give you useful feedback (or any feedback) and it can be impossible to work out what you’re doing wrong.

Imagine your most recent proposal has just been graded, and is sitting in a stack, on a desk, inside your buyer’s office.

On the bottom at level 1 are the proposals that are the most unappealing. If yours is in this part of the pile, we need to do some work on your message – what you are actually selling.

Above this at level 2 are the proposals the buyer found unclear; they didn’t quite “get it”. Here, we need to work on your presentation.

Above the line are the level 3 proposals the buyer sees as competent.  On the surface, these seem okay, but they often lack evidence to support the claims you’re making. Without this, you won’t be winning business as often as you should be.

Where you want to be is at levels 4 and 5. Level 4 proposals are convincing, and show a level of strategy and insight that others don’t. At level 5, you’ve really made it; your proposals are so compelling that buyers simply can’t say no to you. At this level, you’ll be able to leverage more business, at better margins, because you are positioned as the go-to people in your market space.

Compelling and convincing proposals are a combination of style, substance and relevance.  Problems happen when any one of these elements is missing; the “proposal” becomes a brochure, a report, or a presentation, none of which is likely to get you hired.

A proposal effort that isn’t getting you results can leave you feeling stuck and frustrated – like being trapped in the movie Groundhog Day. But no matter where you’re starting out, there is always a way to improve.

Robyn Haydon

14 April 2015

bid strategy, Continual improvement for bids, Proposal strategy, Proposal writing tip, Proposal reviews, Tender responses, Strategies for incumbents, Strategies for challengers

Five ways to write proposals that win business

Robyn Haydon

14 April 2015

bid strategy, Continual improvement for bids, Proposal strategy, Proposal writing tip, Proposal reviews, Tender responses, Strategies for incumbents, Strategies for challengers

For the last few weeks we’ve been looking at what NOT to do if you want to avoid losing a competitive tender. One thing all these behaviours have in common is that they are keeping you inwardly focused – on yourself and your firm.

To leapfrog the line between winning and losing, start to turn your attention outwards, to the customer and the opportunity.

The first thing to focus on is compliance. Achieve this, and you’ll be seen as a thoughtful, competent supplier. There are five hurdles to achieving compliance:

1.     Compliance with threshold requirements. If you need quality accreditations such as ISO9001 or ISO4801 and don’t have them, it’s rare to win against competitors that do.  Non-compliance is an easy reason for a buyer to exclude your bid.

2.  Compliance with any mandatory requirements. In the Request for Tender document, look for the words “must” to indicate what’s mandatory.

3.    Compliance with the specifications or scope of works. Can you do everything that the buyer is asking for? That’s important. As the expert, you may have ideas about how things could be done better (I’d certainly hope so, if you want to win). But always submit a complying bid, even if you think your alternative offer is stronger. By the time they have reached a competitive tender, some buyers have already made up their mind.

4.    Contract compliance. This is one area where buyers definitely prefer no changes. Some will even go so far as to specify that you can’t vary the contract terms.

5.  Finally, make sure your tender responses (written answers) are compliant. Analyse the questions properly to make sure that you’re answering every part, and understand why the buyer is asking each question. Include enough qualitative and quantitative evidence to give you a high evaluation score.

While the first four are usually OK, the last can be a challenge without advice and guidance. If you need a leg up and over the final hurdle, my Master Class Program will get your team compliant and see you landing on the "yes" list more often.

Robyn Haydon is a business development consultant specialising in business that is won through competitive bids and tenders. Her clients have won and retained hundreds of millions of dollars worth of business with many of Australia’s largest corporate and government buyers. Is it time to pimp your proposals? Stop wasting time and money on proposals that go nowhere. The Pimp My Proposals program will give you the feedback, content and structure you need to build compelling proposals that win business. Learn what you’re doing wrong, and how to fix it. Email info@robynhaydon.com or call 03 9557 4585 to find out more.

Robyn Haydon is a business development consultant specialising in business won through formal bids, tenders and proposals. She is the author of two books on proposals and sales, including Winning Again: a retention game plan for your most important contracts and customers. Read more about it here.

Five ways to write proposals that win business

For the last few weeks we’ve been looking at what NOT to do if you want to avoid losing a competitive tender. One thing all these behaviours have in common is that they are keeping you inwardly focused – on yourself and your firm.

To leapfrog the line between winning and losing, start to turn your attention outwards, to the customer and the opportunity.

The first thing to focus on is compliance. Achieve this, and you’ll be seen as a thoughtful, competent supplier. There are five hurdles to achieving compliance:

1.     Compliance with threshold requirements. If you need quality accreditations such as ISO9001 or ISO4801 and don’t have them, it’s rare to win against competitors that do.  Non-compliance is an easy reason for a buyer to exclude your bid.

2.  Compliance with any mandatory requirements. In the Request for Tender document, look for the words “must” to indicate what’s mandatory.

3.    Compliance with the specifications or scope of works. Can you do everything that the buyer is asking for? That’s important. As the expert, you may have ideas about how things could be done better (I’d certainly hope so, if you want to win). But always submit a complying bid, even if you think your alternative offer is stronger. By the time they have reached a competitive tender, some buyers have already made up their mind.

4.    Contract compliance. This is one area where buyers definitely prefer no changes. Some will even go so far as to specify that you can’t vary the contract terms.

5.  Finally, make sure your tender responses (written answers) are compliant. Analyse the questions properly to make sure that you’re answering every part, and understand why the buyer is asking each question. Include enough qualitative and quantitative evidence to give you a high evaluation score.

While the first four are usually OK, the last can be a challenge without advice and guidance. If you need a leg up and over the final hurdle, my Master Class Program will get your team compliant and see you landing on the "yes" list more often.

Proposal Reviews — Can We Make Them Better, Faster, and Less Prone to Going Off the Rails?

Proposal reviews are the bane of most bid managers’ lives. The stress factor ratchets up exponentially when you have multiple people involved, spread across multiple sites in multiple time zones. And that assumes you are just making one submission! Combine dozens of version changes with deadline pressure and you have a recipe for mistakes, frustration and a process that gets harder to manage by the minute.

I recently came across a terrific article on the topic of proposal reviews by American proposal specialist Joe Latta, who has clearly given this issue a great deal of thought.

Joe shows how we can leverage technology to make the process better, faster and less prone to going off the rails. His article centres around the capabilities of Adobe Acrobat products, including how to annotate comments in PDF; export comments to Word; keep track of everything in SharePoint; and use new features of Acrobat such as EchoSign to get electronic signatures on PDF documents.

There are some great tools and techniques in Joe's article for anyone who manages complex bids.