Laura's Winning Ideas

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.

The news ain’t good about the general economy.

However, the good news is that the weak economic news will likely result in federal funds being released for a variety of projects your firm can perform. Your Local and State agencies will see an influx of funds with requirements for public spending. Therefore, you’ll want to stay in touch with your local and state agencies.

Mini Marketing Plan

The GO / NO GO worksheet is a great guideline for the tasks you’ll want to work on now. Get positioned to win your next contract!

Visit The Magic of Winning Proposals to plan your Business Development

Call a team meeting now, go through the GO/NO GO worksheet, and then make a list of the things you can be doing now to get ready to assess RFPs.

Get Ready to Write Proposals

You will have some decisions to make about which RFPs you should respond to. Be sure to evaluate each RFP and select the best candidates to win. You don’t want to waste time writing loser proposals and lack the energy and dedication to write the proposals you should WIN.

GO /NO GO

The quickest way to improve your hit rate is to focus on the opportunities you are ready to win. Frankly assess each opportunity before committing resources to write a proposal. Then kill the losers before you spend time and money needlessly. Winners have the discipline to pass by losers and get ready to work hard for the contracts you WILL WIN.

Black Hole Report

Some organizations have the GO / NO GO process mastered. In your case, take a few minutes to review the Black Hole Report and see whether there are some gaps here you can help your team evaluate to improve their intelligence for the next opportunities.

Be ready!

Sometimes you have to wonder just what these executives are thinking when they cook up stupid stunts like this. . .

Adidas won a Trademark suit this week as covered in The Wall Street Journal here. (available for 7 days from this post, thereafter you’ll have to register in order to access the story)

It seems that Payless Shoe Stores purchased Adidas shoes, sent them to a Chinese manufacturer with instructions to copy but change the three strips to either two or four stripes. They sold approximately $400 million of these knock-offs.

The jury agreed with Adidas, that Payless had infringed the trademark of Adidas with the intention to benefit from knocking off the Adidas shoes. The award of $305 million drove down the stock price by over 16% with the news.

The formula for the award was as follows:

Actual damages = $31 million
Disgorged profits because the jury found willfulness in the defendant’s actions = $135 million
Punitive damages (equal to the disgorged profits) = $135 million
TOTAL VERDICT = $305 million (figures above were all approximate and added up to $305 million)

Payless says they plan to appeal, but they might want to rethink this strategy. The attorney for Adidas acknowledged that the verdict might be reduced on appeal, but it is possible it could be increased because the judge could add plaintiff’s attorney’s fees and may also triple the actual damages portion of the verdict. Add the plunge in stock price to the mix, and this was a very expensive stunt to pull.

Food for Thought

Copyrights and Trademarks are protected property. Next time someone delivers a nifty photo they found on the internet for a proposal, you might want to ask a few more questions before inserting it into your document. And don’t think a quick photoshop “editing” of an image makes it your own, it is merely proof of “willfulness” and expensive when discovered.

If you’ve heard me speak on the topic you know that photographs are exceptionally well protected by copyright law, so don’t think you’ll even get as much grace as the music industry has extended to folks caught downloading music files illegally. (which ain’t much grace if you’ve followed the news.)