The problem with organizations is that it is easier to focus on internal politics because the culprits are right in front of you. Of course, this mires the organization in a zero progress game. Everyone is poised to prevent internal disruption of their carefully balanced power base. The bigger the organization, the bigger the problem of internal politics constraining and consuming the creative resources of the organization.

Some analysts think that a fanatical focus on the competition is the difference between Microsoft and Apple. They are wrong.

Focus on the Competition Does Not Improve Results

If you shift the focus to the competition, you are plotting for small advantages in a world where the competitors are one step ahead of you. This will not lead to breakthroughs, and IMHO will spiral down a rabbit hole to mediocrity and “me too-ism.”

Focus on the Customer Renders Breakthrough

However, if you shift the focus to the customer, you have the opportunity to notice something overlooked by the competition. If you focus on the customer, you will be examining the root of the purchase decision, not your competitors interpretation of that purchase decision. You prevent being misguided by a competitors false interpretation if you stay focused on the customer and only monitor the competitor’s responses.

Apple demonstrates this beautifully, with offerings no competitor had invented. Microsoft, well, not so much. They seem to weigh down products with a clear offering, layering on “inventions” from other parts of the organization so that the final product is hard to distinguish from previous offerings and just too muddled to be amazing. Too bad, because the brains at Microsoft are no less brilliant than the brains at Apple. But the environments are very different.

Proposals are Opportunities for Breakthrough Invention

When I’m working on a proposal, I spend little or no time gathering competitor intelligence. Most of it is gossip and innuendo, some of it is just plain incorrect. Instead, we spend time focused on the customer. What keeps them up at night? What part of their mission can we improve? How does our work move the customer forward?

The breakthroughs always come during these discussions. The creative twist that attracts the customer to our proposal comes out in these brainstorming sessions.

The only thing generated by competitor analysis is fear and trepidation, so I avoid it.

My hit rate is solid at 85 percent and going up with this last year’s wins. I’ve kept this level of performance ever since I started using this approach. Might be worth a try.

A few weeks ago I responded to questions about whether we handled an interview properly.

IMHO we did, and thankfully did not get the contract. The client had very unrealistic expectations. He wanted us to write a loser proposal with his start-up firm. I balked.

The proposal would be expensive for us because they don’t have any support staff at all. The process would be grueling because they have a tight deadline. And they’ve never done a proposal before, so it would be a training exercise under pressure, and it would be tricky to manage all the moving parts. They had very little knowledge of the agency, had never worked with them, and not even met with any representative of the agency. Finally, the client could not convince us that they had a compelling offering for the agency. In other words, they had nothing to go on, and just heard that we have a great hit rate, so he wanted us to help.

The shortsighted goal is to get work. The long term goal is to partner with firms so we are the go-to consultant for proposals. In order to accomplish the long term goal, we must have enthusiastic clients, who are thrilled by our performance and have confidence in us.

How do you “thrill” clients?

1. First, you set the expectations with a frank discussion (and back it up in writing) about what their chance of success is, what will be required in order to proceed: how much time from the Subject Matter Experts (SMEs), how much it will cost. Then repeat again your estimate of their chance of success.
2. Second, you do a great job.

You cannot “thrill” the client if you skip Step 1. Their expectations are not meshed with the actual capabilities of the team. Their expectations aren’t specific, so they tend to slide around during the project.

Begin with a Go/NoGo worksheet to estimate their chance of success, and then go from there.

This is from GE Ecomagination group. That’s me, holding a hologram that moves as I move the frame. To create this 3D hologram, I’ve printed out a frame and then held it up to my webcam, push the button and magic is in my hands. The sun rotates as I move my paper “frame.”

Too Cool to Miss Technology

Do this yourself by clicking on the picture, or going to the website here.

Most proposal folks I know are fascinated by technology. After all, who else could do what we do, bringing science and technology to life under the constraints of a typical proposal RFP?

If you have a webcam, this is a cinch. Now, for the serious part.

Could your next proposal deliver a working model?

How can your firm use this technology to deliver demonstrations of your work? Would it help to send working models  with a proposal? In this screenshot, you can’t see the moving elements: sun, solar panels, birds, etc.

What will happen if your competition adopts this first?

Check out the website for information about the code required for this animation. Inspire someone at your firm to take a look at this and wonder about whether it can be used to help demonstrate a project in a sales call, or help decision-makers get comfortable with your recommendations.

The code for this hologram is open source. My favorite price, free. However, as Professor Dave Clark says, “That’s free as in free speech, not free beer.”

In Part 3 of this series we described the importance of providing discriminating proof for theme features and benefits to substantiate your claims and to give your customers the reasons to believe. In Part 4 we describe a proven methodology for developing winning proposal themes that are compliant, compelling, and position your company to win.

Most experts agree that you need to think about (and write down) your proposal themes BEFORE you start the proposal drafting process. Failing to follow this simple idea causes proposal teams to fall into a number of common proposal development traps.

1. Drafting proposal prose before themes are identified and vetted.
2. Placing too much emphasis on the wrong features and benefits.
3. Lacking a common vision and thematic threads throughout the proposal.
4. Playing into the hands of your competition with a ‘me too’ response.

What can proposal teams do to avoid these common pitfalls?

The Recipe for Success
There are a number of established ways to develop proposal themes and discriminators. The best recipes for theme development all have common elements that include a few simple ingredients that come from the RFP, the capture plan, and the collective intelligence of your capture and business development teams. (Exact measurements may very depending on the type and quality of the RFP.)

• 2 ounces of proposal evaluation criteria (Section M)
• 1 ounce of proposal instructions (Section L)
• 4 ounces of requirements (Section C, SOW)
• 2 dashes of customer hot buttons
• A pinch of competitive intelligence

Your proposed solutions are also key theme development ingredients. Most recipes for great proposal themes require at least 1 scoop of solutions for each of the following areas (technical, management, past performance, and business/pricing).

Use a Method…Any Method
Although the proposal theme recipe sounds simple, most proposal themes end up being…well…half baked. The problem is many proposal teams fail to invest the appropriate time and resources developing proposal solutions and themes. Many proposal teams bolt for the boilerplate and forget about themes altogether – hoping that they will miraculously emerge in the Executive Summary the night before the proposal is due.

There are scores of proposal development methodologies that include some form of theme development process. I recommend a 3-step process that starts with the RFP and leverages information that should be documented in the capture plan.

Example: The technical volume of a five volume proposal is worth 60 percent of the points and the other four volumes are of equal weight (10 percent each).

Step 1: Develop high-level themes (starting with features and benefits) that are roughly proportional with how the customer will weight (and score) your proposal. Detailed evaluation sub-factors (in Section M) are an excellent place to start and literally tell you what the benefits should be. For this example, consider 5-8 high level technical themes and 1-2 themes for the other four volumes to represent the relative (6 to 1) ratio between the weighting of technical volume and the other volumes.

This approach obviously depends on the wording of the evaluation factors and the real weighting of the price factor. The main point is that placing too much emphasis on anything but the technical solution in this example is likely to yield a number of themes that are not as important to the customer resulting in lower evaluation scores.

Step 2: Once the high-level features and benefits are developed, list the proof-points and discriminators for each theme. Define as many proof statements for each theme as you can, using quantifiable metrics. Be creative and get as many of your ideas down on paper. A good starting point is 5-6 proof statements for each theme. Use a template (PowerPoint or Word) that highlights the volume, theme statement (feature and benefit) in a highlighted box. List the supporting proof statements (in order of importance to the customer) for each theme underneath the theme statement in a separate box. Use the capture plan as the basis for integrating customer hot buttons and competitive information into the themes and proof statements to create powerful discriminators that set you apart from the competition.

The resulting high-level proposal theme deck (approximately 10-15 slides) should be included in the proposal management plan, uploaded to your document management or backup server, and posted on the proposal room wall. The theme deck also serves as the basis for the development of the executive summary.

Step 3: Develop more detailed themes (features, benefits, and proof) to support the high-level themes at the volume, section, and requirement levels in accordance with the proposal instructions, evaluation criteria, and the requirements (SOW). Incorporate these lower level themes into the storyboard, module plan, content plan, or whatever pre-proposal planning deliverable you use. Now you are really ready to write the proposal.

Even the companies that have established proposal development organizations, processes, and tools in place often fail because they either lack the discipline to follow standard theme and proposal developments procedures or they simply don’t have the right people on the team. Part 5 highlights some of the most common theme development challenges and provides some practical recommendations you can use to create great proposal themes.

Chris Simmons is the founder and principal member of Rainmakerz Consulting—a business development solutions company specializing in proposal management, writing, and review.

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?

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!

Isn’t this the question on everyone’s mind when they are putting the finishing touches on a proposal you hope will win that big contract?

There are three types of people on the selection panel for your proposal (this applies to private sector proposal submissions as well as government selection panels).

• Lead People -  A portion of the selection panel who will be involved with project. These folks will be working with your firm when you win the project. They have a strong vested interest in the outcome of the selection. One or more of the panel will be lead people. Hopefully your contract officer will be one of these. They may or may not be technically familiar with your expertise, but they are the people you should have met when you were marketing yourself to the agency for this opportunity.
• Specialists – These folks are on the selection panel because they are reviewing the proposals for specific issues, unique to their department. They may or may not be technically proficient in the topics in your proposal. Risk Assessment, Logistics, Legal and other departments may be on the selection panel. You will be unlikely to have met with these people during your business development phase.
• Appointees – Believe it or not, there will be a few people on the panel who were recruited to review proposals for political reasons. They may or may not be technically proficient in the subject area. They may have been recruited simply as an extra set of eyes. In some cases, the project leader will have recruited like-minded folks to help out. In other cases, appointees are on the panel to appease a political situation having nothing to do with your proposal (“Be sure we have Western Division represented and someone from the Dirigible Command.”)

The majority of the players will not be working on the project once awarded. The majority of the players may have only a passing familiarity with your technology. However, they all have something in common. They know and understand the stated and unstated needs and issues of their own organization.

This is why it is critical to know the issues of the key decision-makers (BUGS) and their organization before you write your proposal.

One more point. Notice that these three types bear little or no resemblance to your own managers. Be sure to cover your bases on White Team and Red Team reviews with parties who can help you identify gaps of logic and failure to communicate to someone who is less than expert in your technology.

Call me so I can help you with your proposal review. (414) 807-3669.

“In any market, no matter how strong the competition, the opportunity exists to attack competitor Lock-ins and introduce a new Success Formula which can grow. . .

“Now, in this soft economy, the tendency is to focus on what you always did.  But it is during this kind of economy that weaknesses in competitors become more apparent.  Opportunities to change competition can become clearer.  Customers are more willing to try alternative solutions, giving new competitors a better chance of success.  Suppliers are willing to take greater risks to develop new business, making new business launch easier.”
- Adam Hartung, The Phoenix Principle

Adam Hartung wrote an great piece this week about how FOX overtook CNN, in a market created by CNN, 24 hour news. And then, the story continues with how MSNBC rose as a competitor to them both.

The principles he exposes will work for your firm:

1. Look into the future and imagine / predict what your market will look like.

2. Obsessively study the competition. What are their weaknesses and what can you copy from them?

3. Be disruptive. What can you do differently to take advantage of gaps you see?

4. Use White Space to be creative and willing to try out new ideas and discard the ones that don’t work.

Read the entire article here to see how these firms succeeded. And then figure out how you can do this for your own firm. Do it now. There’s no better time!

Who is important?

Writers craft an email for distribution to their mailing list, and then send it around for comments and suggestions. Edits are made, the letter is still within a reasonable length and ready to go.

Everyone who reviews the very last version is under 26 years old, and your audience of customers averages 50+ years old.

The new logo is prominent. The letter is tweaked to fit, and the font is squeezed down just a smidge. The merge file is tested, and everyone will be greeted by their first name.

The message is sent out and folks wait for the phone to ring.

Some days I’m not in the mood for squinting to read email, and this is one of those days. If someone wants my attention, they are competing with the other 200 messages I get each day. If I have to stop and monkey around to enlarge the font on a message, it had better be from someone paying me, not someone soliciting me.

And if the font is less than 8 points, they are toast. In this letter the font of the message renders between 6 and 7.

The legible parts of this letter are the logos at the top, and the author’s very important name, title, address, phone, email. Oh yes, and then there’s the Mission Statement at the bottom in nice large text. I get the message, and I didn’t even have to squint to read the letter.

Don’t do this.

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.