A procurement tool used to identify probable level of competition in a planned procurement, by requesting non-binding expressions of interest on the opportunity as defined.
Sometimes called Request for Letter of Interest.
If Expression and Letter of Interest are meaningfully different, the distinction escapes me.
Date certain
That was the title on Seth’s blog today. Even nose deep (and sinking) as I am in my last last proposal — or maybe exactly because of that — the title catches my eye. Is he talking about what I think he’s talking about?
This is very different from “someday.”
Choose any date you like, as far in the future as you like.
But a date, circled on the calendar.
Yup, it sure ’nuff looks like it. A hard, drop-dead, date-certain deadline.
By that date, what will you have implemented?
What will be in place?
Where will you be, what will you be doing?
Well, in Proposal Land, by that pesky date we will have implemented a proposal.
A small miracle (*Can* miracles be small?) of creativity, teamwork, sticktoitiveness, and plain willingness to work too hard will be in place.
And we’ll be at the finish line, doing exhausted, giddy, relieved, too tired to be proud, really, and justalittlesaditwasn’tasgoodonpaperasitwasinourheads (pretty sure that should be a word) (and pretty sure it is, in German).
Date certain.
Way more powerful than someday.
Well, he’s right, comme d’habitude. And it’s true: assigning a date to an activity is *way* more powerful than not. That’s why no customer ever released an RFP that said this: “I tell you what. You know what we want. You know what you have done and what you can do. Put together a little something on how those fit together in your minds, send it over, and we’ll take a look.”
If it weren’t for the last minute,
nothing would ever get done.
– Another citizen of Proposal Land
It continues to amaze me what proposal teams can get done, given those dagnabbed deadlines. So feel free to sing along with Seth, and grab a little piece of that magic for yourself in another application. Give yourself the gift of a last minute.
And if you’d like to read Seth on deadlines, check this out: How not to miss a deadline.
And this interesting companion piece on how to handle it you do: How to miss a deadline.
The applications to Proposal Land are obvious.
Dear Dizzy Izzy:
I’m reviewing a proposal and it is nowhere near
what it needs to be for submission. Nowhere. Near.
Is the team stupid, do you think, or just lazy?
Red Teamer
Oh my.
Dear Too-Typical:
What I think is that the proposal team needs your help.
Izzy Dizzy
In the human resources world there are training and motivation problems, and it’s important to know which one it is when performance is sub-par.
In Proposal Land, teams don’t usually lack either training or motivation: What they usually lack is time. Shortcomings in the document are almost always an indication of too little time, too few resources assigned, or both.
What that means for Red Teamers is this: The proposal team needs your help. What that looks like is this:
Things we want the client to conclude about us and our solution; marketing messages threaded through our proposal.
Ideally, used to differentiate us from those pesky competitors.
When they’re done well, they’re fabulous: articulating the value of what you’re offering in terms that resonate for your client.
When done badly, they feel like hustle.
hus•tle (verb)
1. force (someone) to move hurriedly or unceremoniously in a specified direction
2. obtain by forceful action or persuasion (informal North American)
3. to try to persuade someone, especially to buy something, often illegally
That definition is itself a bit of a hus•tle (noun; a fraud or swindle) because it combines entries from two online dictionaries: this one and this one. The pressure is the general pejorative meaning that Seth had in mind today.
No one wants to be hustled.
To be pitched and pushed and, most of all,
pressured into buying something.
The fraud is more what I had in mind when I read his post. It brought back a memory of someone I did not strangle.
Can we lie about our experience?
The hapless team member was now blanching under The Look: the “Is-it-a-joke-or-do-I-need-to-slap-him-one?” one. He seemed to be in genuine-enquiry mode so I played it straight.
No.
Lying is wrong.
And besides, they’ll find out.
I eschewed the slap. Hitting is wrong, too.
It’s wrong to hustle a customer. And besides, they’ll find out. Winning the contract and then failing to deliver on what you yourself told them to expect, dagnab it, is not smart business. Not honest business. Not a lasting business. And not a business you can feel good about at the end of the day, not to mention a career.
So save your hustle for the other kind.
hus•tle (noun) (mainly US)
energetic action: “The team showed a lot of determination and hustle.”
That kind is always welcome in Proposal Land.