Laura’s Winning Ideas

A young woman works with me part-time, helping with house and yard work. She’s saving money for college and has been a willing helpmate as I’ve been painting, staining, planting, and all the heavy lifting involved in moving into a large home and getting a large yard prettied up.

A neighbor asked her to come over and do some work, and she agreed. After a full day of weeding, the neighbor paid her $30 for her time. She was surprised. Her mother was furious.

This is a great lesson for her, and one that applies to proposal teams in guiding the strategy for your managers. You need to be asking lots of pesky questions to be sure there are NO SURPRISES in your proposal when it arrives.

The mistake here was one of communication and negotiation. The young woman did not communicate to the neighbor how much work was involved in the project, and what she expected to be paid. She probably was silent on the issue of payment when they spoke.

The neighbor didn’t enter into a negotiation, and offered a sum which was the value to him of the weeding, not realizing how long and hard the work had been while he was away at work.

Your customers are the same as my neighbor. Your customers have no idea of the costs associated with your solution, and left to their imagination can only come up with a figure lower than your costs.

The neighbor is not evil; he just doesn’t realize the amount of work required. If he’d understood that, he either would re-scope the project to suit his budget, or realize he was mistaken and agree to a reasonable fee.

You need to be communicating and negotiating BEFORE the proposal, ideally, before your customer issues an RFP.

This is a huge issue for smallish firms because they are so anxious to avoid confrontation and somehow believe that if they begin the work, the client will be thrilled and have no problem when the invoice arrives. That big assumption generally blows up in their face. Moreover, it’s unnecessary.

Your customers are not evil; they just don’t realize the amount of work required. If they’d understood that, they would have negotiated a smaller scope (taking out those “extras” they were day-dreaming about) or re-visit their budget and agree to go ahead. If you don’t communicate the details to them, there is no opportunity to begin negotiations so you both can be happy.

Large firms face this problem as well. Less often work is begun without a contract. However, large firms often write proposals without negotiation or “meeting of the minds” so all heck breaks out when the proposal arrives and it fails. Considering that a large firm will spend from $13,000 to $300,000 on a proposal, this is an expensive mistake.

During strategy sessions, you should be going over all the terms of the proposal (which will become part of the contract) and asking whether your representative discussed each item with the decision-makers in the customer’s organization. If not, the account manager needs to make some phone calls right away.

One of my favorite clients went through this exercise with me for every proposal. He was willing to have me grill him because his hit rate was so much higher than before I’d grilled him. He became quite fond of writing proposals that won, and not wasting time writing proposals that would lose.

Occasionally, he’d have a fabulous idea that would really help his client, but had not yet talked it over with the client. When we found these items, he’d get on the phone or call for an appointment before he left my office.

Be sure there are NO SURPRISES in your proposals.