Laura's Winning Ideas

Proposals are expensive. Writing losing proposals is more expensive than gambling in a casino.

As Richard White of FedMarket.com says, “Don’t write it if you haven’t sold it.” He’s a man after my own heart.

They just posted their 20 Questions game on-line, and you don’t need to stop at the window first to buy chips to play!

Richard White is the author of “Rolling the Dice in DC” and the firm offers training courses to help firms write proposals to federal agencies, especially GSA procurements. For firms needing a foothold, they also offer federal information: decision-maker lists, historical information on agencies and individuals, purchase histories. A Hoover’s(tm) on the Federal Government.

Richard and I had a nice chat about their firm and he said, “My staff get sick of hearing me say it, but the biggest improvement any firm can have instantly is to make better choices about which proposals they write.”

When Richard started his career at Booz-Allen, he was assigned to a partner of the firm. He was taught never to respond to an RFP without pre-sale activity. That advice was a big help when he founded his own firm. He didn’t waste money writing losers.

After he sold that firm, he entertained his love of fly fishing…for three years. The boredom set in and he decided the greatest good he could offer was to help businesses trying to navigate the federal goverment casino, learn the odds, and spend their chips where they had better odds.

In preparation for Orals, you may want to add a few practice questions to help your Program/Project Manager develop a strategy for dealing with questions about his/her personal life.

The Wall Street Journal just published a story about research into the personal life of CEOs affecting success of the firms they lead. The research compared personal events such as deaths among family members, and purchase of McMansions to the succeeding change in profits of the firms over the following few years. This is not a single research study, but several, all coming to the conclusion that “personal” issues impact the success of the team.

If you work on Federal Procurements, especially DOE, you are accustomed to having the Project Manager and/or your corporate executives participate in Oral interviews. The research findings in this report may cause the Q & A to get somewhat more personal.

This research is being conducted by Business Finance Professors, rather than Social Scientists. That makes the results more interesting to a contracting officer. The research focused exclusively on the leadership, so there is quantifiable justification for prying into the personal life of the leadership, not the rest of the management team. In my opinion, personal questions of the Program Manager will pass DFARS review, especially in light of these research results.

The article is, Scholars Link Success of Firms to Lives of CEOs. and if you are interested, please click on the link to read/print/email the article by September 13 when this link expires for non-subscribers.

When I prepare a team for Orals, I check to see where the temper point is. That is, how much does it take to push the person from reasoned to emotional response. Then I know how thoroughly they need to be prepared for Q&A. Personal questions can trip you up more easily. Now, those personal questions might be coming from the Selection Board, not just a nosy Orals Coach!

Office supplies:

Proposal folks often harbor office supply fetishes. Just ask and you’ll find out that Don only uses Pilot G-2 pens with an 05 tip. We usually have to buy our own since the company often doesn’t carry our current favorite.

Two dozen of these are much appreciated. Now we don’t have to fret if someone carries one away from our desk.

Come to think about it, a proposal person who doesn’t have a pen fetish is unusual.

Food:

Real food is a treat for proposal folks. Some teams work without hot meals. A gift certificate for a restaurant that delivers to the office in the evening is much appreciated. (hint: Marie Callendar’s does this in some cities.)

Skip the cake and brownies. Everyone sends these, and the smart proposal teams avoid eating them until the proposal is out the door. Devils food cake at 1 AM anyone?

A basket of unusual and appealing fruit is a good gift. Deliver perishables on Monday so they get used before the weekend.

Massage:

A gift certificate for a massage may get lost in the back of the desk drawer until it expires. Instead, send a masseuse into the office. I’ve used both the seated massages in the office and also turned an office into a private massage room for a half day for the team to each lie down for an hour and get pummeled.

Flowers:

I’ve always liked a gift of flowers. In Austin, I was a regular at a shop that would make up a set of small bouquets, one for each member of the team. However, if you have someone with allergies, this might not be so well appreciated. I had to stop bringing flowers when a new member was pretty allergic to the blooms.