Light the Candles
I’ve been thinking about teaching 
Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) proposal writing skills lately.
The first assumption technical experts bring with them is that, what is obvious to them should be obvious to others. This isn’t correct, and loser proposals prove this. In many cases, your competitors are technically as qualified as your team. However, the winning proposal communicates value in a more illuminating way.
Chris Witt at Life after Powerpoint! said it best yesterday:
– Knowing something without acting on it is like having a candle without lighting it.
– Acting on what you know is like lighting the candle.
– Communicating what you know so others can use it is like using your lit candle to light other people’s candles.That’s why “presentation and communication” skills are so highly rated, even for technical experts. The better able you are to share what you know so that other people can understand and use it, the more valuable you are.
This is a perfect analogy for proposal professionals. We tip the candles of our SMEs to light the candles of our clients.
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