Proposal Land

Better RFP Responses & Management
 
Proposal Land

A Man Walks Into a Bar: Riff #8

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Two quotation marks walk into a “bar.”

OK, this is a “picky” point. I “admit” it. I certainly don’t intend for anyone to “take offence” from this “rule.”

There are many valid uses for quotation marks, and you can check them out, here. In proposals, other than direct quotes from people (as in, for example, a kudo) . . .

Good job, buddy.

. . . the most-common valid use would be to indicate that the words within the quotes are to be read as the words themselves.

We will enter “Does not comply”
for any task where this applies.

The next would be to indicate that you’re using a term to which the RFP or SOW has assigned a specific meaning and that might (could, maybe) be misinterpreted or misunderstood otherwise.

We clean floors thoroughly,
but we don’t “strip” floors (as prohibited by SOW 4.5.2)
because it would pose a health-and-safety risk.

This latter usage is likely not needed for clarity anywhere near as often as it’s used, but it ain’t wrong.

The usage being demonstrated or railed against here is using quotation marks to put some distance between the writer and the word, to lessen its validity in some way. To make the reader question what the word means. There are no valid proposal uses for using the written equivalent of scare quotes.

That’s a bit “sweeping”, isn’t it?

No. It’s sweeping.

In conversation, scare quotes are cutesy. (Or maybe passive aggressive.) In proposal writing they’re just wrong. Say what you mean, dagnab it. Don’t dodge around it. If this isn’t the right word, find one that’s better. More accurate. More precise. More complete. Less emotive.

OK, this is a picky point. I admit it. I certainly don’t intend for anyone to take offence from this rule.

 

Is and Is Not

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A proposal is not a glossy brochure.

Writers! Don’t use icky brochure-speak.

A proposal is not a technical specification.

Writers! Don’t use opaque, inert jargon.

A proposal is something between a brochure and a tech spec. It’s a document that must sell a technical solution while specifying it precisely enough that it can be costed accurately as well as litigated successfully if it ever comes to a contract-interpretation dispute.

Writers! We can’t tell you what to do
but we’ll know it when we see it.

But let’s not put all of this on the put-upon writers, because a proposal is not, primarily, a marketing-communications exercise either.

A proposal is a product-creation exercise, in the broad sense of product: something you offer a customer for money. It is a vision of How you’re going to deliver something to the client, and Why that How will be great. Really Why it will be great: not a made-up or meaning-free Why like “integrated, seamless, collaborative, or state-of-the-art.”

What’s a real Why?

More reliable. More effective. More accurate. More stable. Faster to respond. Easier to change. Harder to break. Or, oh yeah, cheaper.

Some folks call this a value proposition. Some folks even capitalize it. That’s OK, but it’s not necessary to use high-falutin’ language. In terms everyone can understand, it’s just the Why.

So, a proposal doesn’t start with the writers: It starts with the people designing the solution. When that’s done, and done well, the marketing-communications aspect is a dream: demanding but eminently satisfying work. When it’s not done, or done badly, the marketing-communications aspect is a nightmare: demoralizing and completely frustrating work.

Start with the How. And the Why.

I’m pretty sure I’ve said it before. It turns out not everyone was listening.

 

Term: Red Team Review

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Traditionally, the executive and (one hopes!) senior technical review of the completed proposal. Generally shortened to Red Team.

In this usage, Red Team is the final review that can amend content before the proposal is submitted to the client. Subsequent reviews and changes should be limited to presentation niceties.

Postscript: This definition, and the associated one for Red Team, are from my book “Proposals: Getting Started, Getting Better.” I still concur with that 2014 view of my world, but see it as a wee bit messier than I did then.

Term: Red Team

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Technically, the group of people conducting the Red Team Review, but used just as often to mean the review itself, as in, “When’s Red Team?” This terminological sloppiness is common in Proposal Land; in this case, there’s really no harm because it’s always obvious from context whether the reference is to the players or the game.

Postscript: This definition, and the associated one for Red Team Review, are from my book “Proposals: Getting Started, Getting Better.” I still concur with that 2014 view of my world, but see it as a wee bit messier than I did then.

The Cost of Distance

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Doing proposals from home was my new normal long before COVID-19. It sort of snuck up on me. One year I was staying in worn Toronto hotels for weeks at a time, eating room-service meals at 8PM, and the next I was tip-tapping away in my home office, jumping up to move the laundry over when the buzzer went.

I like working from home, mostly. I even turned down a contract last year mostly because it would have required me to work from a downtown office for information-security reasons.

At home, I can work my own schedule, as long as I meet deadlines. I save time and money and wear-and-tear in the commute, whether that’s by car or by bus. I save money in lunches out. I avoid most interpersonal conflicts. I can concentrate better, with fewer interruptions and no disruptions. All good, right?

Not quite.

Whether it’s just me or the whole team that’s working remotely, there is an administrative cost to working at a distance. It’s hard to quantify but it’s real nevertheless. It’s the cost of communicating with people I never see.

It’s the time to develop detailed but clear spreadsheets to track and communicate the status of each proposal section, rather than just maintaining a sheet on the wall. It’s the time to check in with everyone by email or phone or video conference rather than just catching them when they walk by. It’s the delay in getting an answer on a simple point — a clarification on the operations concept, the latest title for a given position — when the person you need to connect with is not sitting on their phone or email. It’s the time to untangle miscommunications and misinterpretations that would never have happened in person — and the delay in even realizing that they’ve occurred — when you can’t see that glazed look on someone’s face.

On one distance proposal where I was coordinating a gaggle of writers and editors, I figured that extra communication took an hour or two out of every day. That’s a whack of lost productivity.

But even in the absence of a global pandemic, there’s no going back to full on-site proposals. The measurable costs are too high: office space, computer infrastructure, travel, and accommodations. As businesses re-jig their space and their processes to enable work-from-home (WFH, the newest acronym I know) for public-health purposes, they could do worse than to check with their proposal teams to get a realistic assessment of what it’s going to cost.