Laura’s Winning Ideas

I regularly rail about the folly of violating copyright.

Look at the Other Side of the Coin

However, I have an alternative viewpoint when my own copyright is violated. When folks “borrow” my materials, I am thrilled so long as they attribute the work to me and/or my website.

I was not born with this enlightened perspective.

Back in 1996, I was writing my training manual, The Magic of Winning Proposals. Friends were subcontracted to help me write and edit the manual. I threw all the pages up on the web, so everyone would have one source for the latest version of each page. I knew the search engine spiders would eventually find these pages, and made a note to myself to remove them as soon as possible. (This was before a small operator could easily firewall portions of their website, and FTP was too slow for our purposes.)

At the same time, I was new in my consulting practice. I was tracking my time carefully so I could figure out my split of of hours spent on billable, marketing, and administrative tasks. Because I was tracking my hours, I knew exactly how much time I spent responding to freeloaders. Freeloaders are the folks who called and snowed me as to their actual ability to pay for my advice. They would talk about hiring me, pick my brains, ask for a full blown proposal and then disappear. I knew I had to get better at screening freeloaders so I could spend my time in a fashion that would pay the mortgage.

After a few weeks work on my training manual, the search engines found my pages. I was surprised to see that these draft pages rose in the search engines over my carefully written home page and website pages. I was determined to wrap things up in the next 3 weeks and take those pages down.

However, I noticed something that didn’t make sense. The hours I spent on freeloaders dropped off to almost nothing. And, I’d started getting thank you notes from people who couldn’t afford to hire a consultant or trainer, but who needed some tidbit of information about my areas of expertise, Winning Proposals and Building Virtual Teams.

I’m a sociologist by training, and figured out what was happening. Some folks needing help couldn’t afford to hire me. They would find my website, and knew I had knowledge they needed but could not afford. When they were unsuccessful finding answers to their questions, they would begin to justify their “need” against my “fees.” Then, they would approach me to get the help they needed without paying me, and justified a dishonest approach because I was “withholding” from them.

Without realizing it, I’d created a negative vortex that was costing me hours of wasted effort, PLUS eliminating any positive impression that might result in work for me in the future. With this mindset, these people would never come back to hire me when their firm got bigger. With this mindset, they couldn’t regard me well. With this mindset, they wouldn’t remember me and call when they’d moved on to a larger firm where my services would be helpful.

This stopped when I “gave away” my training manual.

And I’ve been given contracts by people who found my manual, used it, and later were in a position to expand their expertise, and hired me to help them.

Funny thing is, I’ve never lost a contract because my manual is available on-line for free. Larger firms who can afford my services realize there are lots of books on my topic. They aren’t buying my manual, they are buying my expertise and ability to motivate their staff.

My competitors were sure I was nuts.They can’t believe I have my training manual on-line, though some of them are catching on to the profitability of “giving it away.”

My clients regularly get the pitch to cut costs by giving away data. One of my clients, a fortune 50 company, realized they’d wasted thousands on sales calls because they had a database they’d locked behind their firewall that non-customers needed to query. Once they unlocked the database and “leaked” the URL to the query page, they dropped a nice percent of sales calls (costing $5,000 each) and got thank you notes instead.

What valuable materials are you keeping locked away that are costing you money by witholding them from the wild?

Rent a Reviewer: might be a good idea to get some fresh eyes on your proposals!

It is inexpensive to hire me to review a proposal for you. I can travel to review with your review panel, or work remotely on comments for your proposal team.

I also am available to come manage a review meeting, helping coax actionable, helpful, comments from your review team. In one instance, I was asked to moderate a review team of 20 executives from six firms, with a Senior Vice President with a reputation for gutting proposals at the last minute. The proposal team was worried about what reasonably could be done if the review became a drubbing of this large, important proposal.

In that case, we brought sucinct comments to the team, which could be implemented in the time remaining, and resulted in short-listing the team.

Call me to schedule a review of your proposal!

Your fortune may be changing.

If you sell to the Federal Government, your firm may have been rebuffed in the past with ideas to help the agency.

However, the time to polish up those new ideas is upon us. The new administration has made it clear they will reward new ideas and encourage change. I expect this is not the usual political rhetoric and will be backed up with funding.

Times are ripe for change. Goodness knows, we are in some trouble and need to find new ways to do many things if we are to succeed. Agencies willing, but suffering from lack of an environment to entertain change, now have their chance.

Even the folks reluctant to consider new ideas will feel pressure to build a political cover for themselves as a change agent. You may be surprised by who is willing to hear you out, and help you.

State and Local government agencies may feel this wave later, and it may be less strong, but infrastructure will see increased funding as the federal government prints money to get people moving and back to work.

If you chair or attend your business development meetings, consider whether your firm should re-consider promoting new ideas NOW to your clients and customers.

This will be the fourth time I’ve made myself available to help job searchers. When layoffs, RIF, downsizing, or closings happen, folks get jolted from their desk and exposed to the harsh elements of job hunting. As a proposal expert, we have skills to offer our friends and associates during these times.

Most often, my team has put out our shingle and spread the word that we would help with resumes. If your team has the ability, and your organization is going through change, you might consider doing the same.

Here’s the first steps I recommend:

1. Suggest they get a book to help

My favorite is The Damn Good Resume Guide by Yana Parker. This book is short, has lots of examples, and guides you through the process of writing a great resume. The resume and cover letter are simply a proposal, and getting an interview is the same as making the shortlist. In this book, the page of action verbs is worth the price of the entire book.

2. Suggest they start a master resume file

The goal is to look like you’ve been preparing for the specific opportunity at hand for years. The goal is not to work hard on the perfect resume and then make 200 copies to send out.

Sigh. Everyone should update their resume regularly in your proposal database, but not everyone does this. Sigh. Your corporate resume database should include career long activities so you have lots of fodder to customize resumes for proposals, but many organizations only maintain the latest version of each person’s resume.

Therefore, most folks will need a list of everything they’ve accomplished in their career, not just their latest activities. As they remember brilliant things they’ve done, these should be added first to the master resume file before using them in a current resume.

Most job searches will take longer than hoped for. You’ll need to create custom resumes on the fly, responding to opportunities within a day. With a career long master resume file, you have a checklist of your experiences from which to quickly build a responsive resume.

As a consultant, I’m always looking for work. I often find an opportunity in another industry, one with which I’m familiar only because I worked with that industry many years ago. My master resume file jogs my memory for those less recent activities.

A master resume file is just a list of all your previous activities. You’ll edit the ones you use for a resume, and update this file every time you create a new resume. I keep mine in MS Word, and any software will work.

3. Order personal business cards

If possible, they’ll want to hand out new business cards to everyone as they depart. And they’ll want to have them handy to give to everyone they meet along the job hunt.

Don’t be cute. Just have name, address, phone and email on a professionally printed card with a blank back so folks can note where they met and how impressed they were!

My favorite printer is VistaPrint. Pick a style from the FREE BUSINESS CARDS and then pay ($9.99) to leave off their logo on the back. Don’t use the microperf business card stock you print at home. It looks unprofessional, and costs more.

4. Bring in their sample resume for editing

Finally, you can edit their resumes. Fresh eyes and a professional writer are valuable gifts you can offer. Sometimes outplacement is offered, and you may be just an extra option. Sometimes placement doesn’t cover resumes right away and your offer may calm nerves. If no placement assistance is offered, you will be most welcome.