Proposal Land

Better RFP Responses & Management
 
Proposal Land

A Man Walks Into a Bar – Riff #5

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A run-on sentence walks into
a bar it starts flirting.
With a cute little sentence fragment.

If you don’t see what’s wrong with the first line of this joke, you’re in good company.

Run-ons are a common type of error. Among college students in the United States, run-on sentences are the eighteenth most frequent error made by native English speaker . . .
– grammarlyblog

(That’s from a post titled, “How do you correct run-on sentences it’s not as easy as it seems.” Hahaha.)

Run-on sentence:
Two complete ideas stuck together
without adequate punctuation.

That’s It. Don’t do It.

Do this instead:

A run-on sentence walks into
a bar, and it starts flirting.

Or this:

A run-on sentence walks into
a bar. It starts flirting.

Feeling daring? Try this:

A run-on sentence walks into
a bar: It starts flirting.

How does this happen in Proposal Land? The running-on, not the flirting. Quite often the culprit is writers jamming together existing text from more than one source, or cutting out extraneous text, and not carefully reading the result. That’s it.

As for the sentence fragment (as above & below), it’s just a sentence missing a subject or a verb or (gadzooks) both. They can be effective in small doses, but in large quantities they’re annoying. Choppy.

Often the easy fix for fragments is to attach them to the previous sentence:

They can be effective in small doses,
but in large quantities they’re annoying and choppy.

If that’s awkward to do, then add words to make a complete sentence:

How does this happen in Proposal Land?
By “this” I mean the running-on, not the flirting.

Run-on sentences have been used to interesting effect in literature but have no place in technical writing. Nope, not even one.

Sentence fragments have been used to excellent effect in blogs (ahem) but have little place in technical writing. You can consider using them if you’re writing a summary or introduction that wants some punch.

Just remember: Clarity trumps style.

 

The Work

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When written or said with a capital “W,” the Work in Proposal Land is the sum of the products, services, and data that the client wants to buy. Obviously that’s important to know when deciding whether to bid and when making a plan to deliver the Work. But its use goes beyond that.

What’s the Work?

In many situations this is the first question to ask because the answer forms the basis of *any* plan to do, you know, some work:

  • Putting together a response to an RFP
  • Reviewing a proposal section
  • Agreeing to a contract to “edit” a proposal

What’s the scope? What-all has to be done? What shouldn’t I do? What things are optional?

What’s the standard? Am I targeting quick-and-dirty, good-enough, or damn-near-perfect? Does it vary by task? By section?

Who do I work with? Who sends me work, who helps/interferes with my work, and who approves what I’ve done?

What’s the schedule? ASAP?  Date (and time) certain? (In Proposal Land, “Whenever I get to it”never seems to be an option.)

What’s. The. Work.

If I don’t know this, I don’t know nuthin’.

 

Term: Procurement Methodology/Model

 

The sum of the client’s decisions on how to contract the Work:

  • How the Work will be bundled
  • How the Work will be paid for (cost-plus or firm price; milestone or scheduled payments)
  • How risk will be allocated (which party provides any necessary capital; which party is subject to the risk of rising costs through the contract term)
  • The contract duration (the base term and any option periods)

A Man Walks Into a Bar – Riff #4

 

At the end of the day, a cliché walks into a bar —
fresh as a daisy, cute as a button,
and sharp as a tack.

We don’t have much occasion to use similes in proposals, but clichés go well beyond that.

Cliche, also spelled cliché, is a 19th-century borrowed word from the French which refers to a saying or expression that has been so overused that it has become boring and unoriginal. – Vocabulary.com

In Proposal Land all technology is leading edge, cutting edge, or state-of-the-art. All transitions are seamless. All reporting is real-time and transparent. All services are high quality, superior, or excellent. All training is just-in-time, all standards are met or exceeded, all results are bottom-line. All management? Responsive. All relationships? Collaborative.

Yup. Boring and unoriginal.

Worse, even when the actual claims are true, these words slide off the reader like water off a duck’s back. I mean, like ice cream off a toddler’s cone. Splat.

Instead, tell them what systems and equipment you’re going to use, what you’re going to do, and how. Specifically. To pick one example from the mush above, let’s look at collaboration:

  • How often will you meet with the client, and who is “you” by position title? What will you talk about and why? How open will you be about impediments to good performance in your shop and in theirs?
  • How will you balance rigorous contract-management processes with a problem-solving approach focused on getting work done?
  • What decisions will you take jointly with them and why?
  • Which (if any) of your contract-management prerogatives will you waive?
  • Which (if any) of their contract-management obligations are you prepared to waive?
  • How will you identify their priorities and preferences and respond to them?
  • How will you ensure that your service delivery doesn’t interfere with their services?
  • How will you ensure that your delivery of equipment or systems meets their operational needs?
  • How will you ensure a quick turnaround on decisions by on-site personnel and by off-site corporate honchos when needed?

Is this more work? Uh, yeah. Will it get better marks? Yup.  And that’s why we’re here, right? Well, that and being cute as a button.

 

Better Clients – The In-House Version

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If you’re working in an in-house proposal group, being paid on time *shouldn’t* be an issue but you can still benefit from better in-house clients. Of course, it’s hard to pick your boss or even to directly tell them what to do, but you can pay attention to who makes proposals better/worse (both at the executive sponsor level and at the proposal manager level), figure out why, and work to propagate the helpful behaviours and to compensate for the less-than-helpful ones. For example . . .

You can support achievable schedules:

  • Giving responsible time estimates for your own tasks (i.e. not sandbagging)
  • Recommending the inclusion of management-reserve time for when things go south, as they will
  • Posting the schedule on a wall (actual or virtual) where it can be seen, understood, adhered to, and changed when necessary

You can support productive processes:

  • Suggesting early executive review of, and sign-off on, proposed solutions/offerings
  • Suggesting interim team reviews of drafts, especially on long proposals
  • Interviewing (other) technical experts early to identify elements that need standard wording and standard approaches

You can support balanced workloads:

  • Managing your own effort at a sustainable level, no matter what the team is doing
  • Talking about proposal standards as the trade-offs they are (What do we have time for? Which improvement will mean more to the client?) rather than mutely or resentfully accepting all the demands anyone can think to load on the team
  • Looking for ways to initiate others to proposal work, creating a trained reserve force for surge support

You can support good personnel management:

  • Appreciating effort in small but public ways
  • Asking others what help they need to meet expectations, especially schedule
  • Checking-in on peers to see how they’re doing

And so on.

We can treat our companies as a given. We can mutter about what we wish managers would do to ease the pain. Or we can change the conversation by modelling new behaviours.

Although Gandhi didn’t say that we can be the change we want to see in Proposal Land (or in the world), apparently he did say this:

“We but mirror the world. All the tendencies present in the outer world are to be found in the world of our body. If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. This is the divine mystery supreme. A wonderful thing it is and the source of our happiness. We need not wait to see what others do.”

So there you have it. We need not wait to see what others do. A wonderful thing it is.