Winning bids and proposals
Winning bids and proposals
Six ways to reach bid and proposal Nirvana in quiet periods!
Now is the right time to look at areas where you can save time during the next proposal preparation. I like to think of this as aspiring to reach ‘Bid Nirvana’, where time is always on your side and everything goes to plan!
This episode addresses six areas that always cause tremendous anxiety during proposal preparation, all adding up to a loss of vital time during the process.
The six areas are: Case studies development; Graphics planning and preparation; Picture planning and preparation; Reviewing the bid process is in your organisation; Statistics and data to support past performance; Style guides.
I will be dealing with some of these topics in more depth in later episodes. Download the full fact sheet and notes for this episode here.
Let me know what other areas you would like me to cover by contacting me at www.willsconsultants.co.uk
Hello, my name is Jack Wills and welcome to creating winning proposals, a podcast series designed to give you hints and tips on ways to improve your bids and proposals so that you can win more business. In this edition, I thought it would be really useful to look at some hints and tips on things that you could do now, while you're still perhaps in a period of lockdown, or for those of you not listening to this during the Coronavirus lock down, some things that you could think about doing during a quiet period. If there is such a thing as quiet period in bids and proposal writing! And I guess that's what this edition is all about really. It's all about saving time in the future, when you've got time on your hands now. Those of us who are involved in the frenetic world of bids and proposals know only too well that when the pressure comes back on again, there are times when we often sit back and think, if only I'd done something about some of these things before, I could have saved a lot of time. In fact, those of you who have had any contact with me in the past, know that I refer to this aspiration, this desire to create more time, where everything goes to plan during a proposal development period as Bid Nirvana. Now, you and I both know that Bid Nirvana doesn't exist. But what you can do is think about some bits and pieces that you can do now, so that the next time you get a formal proposal to develop, you've got some of this stuff already available. Now the list of things I'm about to give you, they're not exhaustive. And you will look at this list and think to yourself, well, actually, there are some other things I can do. But, if I can get you to think about those things now, you will save time in the future. As always, I put together some notes to accompany this podcast and they're available in the normal And I've also put together a fact sheet, which you should be able to download. If you can't get it from the podcast service, then go to www.willsconsultants.co.uk. and you should be able to download it from there. So, let's get started with number one. Case studies. Perhaps out of all of the things we will be looking at in this edition, it's case studies that cause the most angst amongst contributors to a proposal preparation. Now, that said, I never really understand why this is so, because in every proposal that I've put together in response to any formal invitation to tender, I've always been asked to produce some case studies. And you know, these things always take time to produce and, if you think about it, case studies are all about what we've done in the past to demonstrate our capability to a new customer. Evidence of what we can do, and these things all take time to produce. So preparing a series of case studies upfront is perhaps the most obvious way to prepare for the next proposal preparation, and to save time, and to try and get to bit Nirvana. Now the key to producing relevant and sensible case studies is to look at your overall business offer and the previous work that you've done. And then try to predict areas where you recognise a potential customer might have some interest relating to your capability. In other words, think of the examples in your business operation and previous delivery that you believe will give a future customer great confidence in you, so that they will choose you for the task! After all, you want to win! The best way by far of producing case studies is to follow the STAR model. The STAR model; situation, task, action result. Briefly describe the background situation. Then what you were tasked to do, what action you took and what the result to the customer was of you taking that action. Keep things really simple and to the point. Punctuate the text with relevant pictures or graphics is necessary, remembering to give each an action caption of a figure number and informative heading and the key message in a few sentences. If you can get a quote from the previous customer that you did the work for then so much the better. A tip here is that you can often get customers to agree a set of words that you write for them in the first place. So, if you produce a half a dozen of these case studies now, this is going to save you a fantastic amount of time during the next proposal preparation period. On to number two. Graphics preparation. You'll often find, when you're putting together a proposal, that the same graphics come up time and time again, in some sections. For example, things like production flow, management process, complaints, resolution process, quality control processes, and so on, they'll all come up quite regularly. And so, if you can produce some of these now, you'll save a huge amount of time when it comes to the next proposal development. Remember, of course, complex graphics take up to about six hours plus to produce and even the simpler graphics can take some two or three hours. So, they just can't be thrown together. You have to think about them in some detail. I think probably the best way to approach this is to, first of all, have a look at your past proposals that you've put in. then have a look at some of the requests for proposals and the invitation to tenders you've had in the past and by doing this over all three things, make a list of the graphics that have previously been used, and the key points that they were trying to put over. In fact, what you could do, is produce a small table with some of this in so that you just get a feel for what sort of things come up time and time again. After that, I would also look at some of the text that you've put together in your previous proposals to see where a graphic might have replaced some of that text. Remember, of course, that using graphics can save you quite a lot of text. In fact, you'll be really surprised to see what does come up regularly, and how often text could have been saved by using a graphic in some of the proposals. Now, once you have a list, then work out which graphics will definitely not change. The reason for making this point, is that some may change quite subtly from proposal to proposal and standard responses could creep into future proposals without being really fit for purpose. Now, that's something, as we all know, you must guard against at all costs. And believe me, I've had some spectacular failures in that area myself, putting in graphics, which were nothing to do with the proposal, that I'd used previously. In fairness to me, of course, that was during a time previous to computers where we couldn't do a search and replace and just make sure that we didn't make those sort of mistakes! Now, once I've done that, and I've got my list of graphic contenders, as I call them, what I then do is spend time drafting them out in a rough format. I always do this for my new graphics in rough using simply a paper and pencil. I try to draft an action caption too, although I do realise that sometimes that's not always possible. And then, if I can, I try to share my ideas with the rest of the team and get input from a wide range of colleagues. I've been doing this recently via Dropbox and online discussion groups such as Teams, Zoom, and so on, and I must say it really does work. So, having compiled some good drafts of graphics, try to then get the finished article produced, complete with an action caption, test it out. And, if it seems to work, store it for future use. Let's get on to number three. Picture planning and preparation. Now, many of the same principles apply to the creation of pictures as they do to the preparation of graphics. When you look at your previous proposals, ITTs and RFPs, you may end up with a feel of where the use of a picture could have enhanced your submission, where a visual interpretation could have made your position a lot stronger, or could have saved you text. Visuals of course, are particularly useful in any case studies that you may have planned. Now, the crucial thing about picture creation is that they should never just be eye candy, something that's just pleasing to the eye. The picture, with its action caption, should put across a key message and, just like a graphic, stand alone on putting the message across. If I had a pound for every time I'd seen a picture of the Managing Director's Tesla, parked outside the production facility, well, then I'd be a really rich man! It just doesn't work. So, once you've identified some main areas where you think a picture could be used, or might be used next time, in your proposal, spend time interpreting the main message visually. Ask yourself, what's the message I'm trying to put across here? What am I try to show to an evaluator? And then, what picture could I use to show this? Now, this process isn't as easy as it sounds. But, if you discuss your ideas with colleagues, you'll be surprised how many good ideas will come up. Now, once you've got a list of ideas, you may find that the capture of the images will need to be stage managed. Take particular care with things like professionalism of people being photographed. corporate branding, overall health and safety issues, correct PPE usage, and so on. There's nothing worse than seeing a fantastic image, showing a key message, being undermined by someone in the picture not following proper health and safety procedure. I'll give you an example of this. We were putting together a proposal for some new radar installations and it was decided that there should be some visuals to support a previous job that we'd done in a case study. I was horrified by what I actually saw; someone hanging off the edge of a 200 foot tower, no safety harness and, indeed, no crash helmet! Think about how that would have appeared to an evaluator! It would have been a complete disaster. Let's go on to number four. Reviewing the bid processes you use in your organisation. Now, most of you will have some form of process to follow when you're putting bids together. And, this will follow a set procedure from identifying what the opportunity is, the receipt of the ITT, and other processes to take you right through to the delivery of the completed proposal. You'll probably have some gates and reviews already planned into the process to ensure that the proposal has been put together in a way that achieves maximum success. Now, some of you, of course, may not have any of this in place. And some of you that do, might feel that the process isn't working correctly. So, now is a really great time to either develop a bid process, or review and update the current one. If you don't have one, think about how you might plan a process to take into account all of the things that occurred during the preparation of a proposal, I would suggest that you sit down and write a list of all the activities that you know will occur during the process, and then try to develop some form of flow that takes into account all of the activities. Try to put a timescale against this process too. Now, I've got to tell you, that's easier said than done. But, if you play around with the list of tasks, and allocate time to complete against each, then you can start to think about when these activities might take place during a normal proposal development process. What you're after achieving, is to create a process that will develop a proposal along a planned timeline. Those of you who do have a process in place, take some time to review it thoroughly; Did it work last time? Are there any times along the process where you know things always cause an issue during the development of the proposal? If you can come up with a list of things that need to be changed or refined, then now is a good time to do it. For example, a lot of organisations find the final document review process to be fraught with complications. Senior management always seem to want to become involved right at the end of the process, and they never seem to be available when you want to do that review. Could it be therefore, that the process is wrong? These are the sort of areas that you can spend time now on refining. Once you've either put a new process together, or you've reviewed the current process, take some time to share your ideas with your colleagues, to ensure that they buy into the new process or the changes, or they see things that you might have missed. Let's go on to number five. The development of statistics and data to support past performance. Another area that takes a huge amount of time to put together during proposal preparation, is the development of statistics or data to support your past performance. It's a bit like doing those case studies. If you can spend time doing this now, you're going to save an awful lot of time for the next proposal that you put together. The sort of things we're looking at here, are those statistics, and other data, that show how effective your organisation is in a particular process or a production cycle. For example, you might have implemented a solution that made a huge impact on one of your previous customers. If you can quantify this impact, and I mean here quantify that impact numerically, giving statistical evidence of what difference your solution made, then I have to tell you, this becomes a very powerful tool to use in the next proposal. Now, the way to approach this is to look at all of the previous solutions you've executed, particularly around things like production and implementation programmes, and make a list of where you think statistical evidence would have put your case over better to evaluators, making it more compelling. You may find that once you've started the process, more ideas will come to mind that can be treated in the same way. Once you've come up with some data, you might find that some of the evidence that you've produced would lend itself to being used in a graphic, and we talked about graphics earlier. One last point, is that you might consider using a third party such as an academic or an academic institution to help you develop the data. This has two really good things going for it. First of all, an academic will probably think of different ways to research, collect, collate, and produce data. And secondly, a third party, particularly from an academic institution, will add great credibility to the information that you're showing in future proposals. So, what have we got at number six? Well, it's style guides. Again, those of you who know me know that I have a particular thing about style guides. Using style guides will literally save hours of work in a proposal preparation. Think about the times that you have produced a proposal and how many people have been involved in authoring it. I have to tell you that harsh experience tells me that me every author will have their own idiosyncratic way of dealing with things like punctuation, abbreviations, acronyms, layouts and so on. All this has to be put right. Someone has to examine the document meticulously, and standardise all of the dissimilarities. In short, this can be an absolute nightmare. If you can produce a guide that will tell future authors how they should approach these areas, and then you can encourage everyone to follow the conventions, you'll be amazed at how much time you will save during, and towards the end of, the proposal development process. Of course, this is normally the time when that particular resource seems to disappear really, very quickly. You're trying to save time, you're trying to get to Bid Nirvana! One small thing to be aware of, of course, is that some conventions will change from proposal to proposal. For example, obviously customers names will always be different and some customers will follow different conventions. Naturally, it's imperative to use the correct customers name! Although, I have to tell you I've had some spectacular failures in that area too. But it's always good practice to try and mirror the customer's writing and style conventions in the proposal that they're reading. It makes them feel as if it's something familiar. Hence, you may need to tweak your standard style guide from proposal to proposal. Nobody likes to be in a quiet period in the business world, and now is no exception. That said, if you do find yourself in any quiet period, it's got to make sense to make best use of the time available to improve your proposal development processes. That's very easy for me to say, of course. But remember, in the bidding process, time is always against us. And anything you can do to make that situation better has to be a good thing. Now the list of things I've given you here today isn't exhaustive, and some of you will have other ideas to look at on your journey to reach Bid Nirvana. However, the aim of this podcast has been to stimulate you into thinking about those areas that can be worked on now, so that bidding life might be easier in the future. Keep a lookout for my next six tips that are coming up by subscribing. I'm Jack Wills and thank you very much for listening. Remember, there are some notes attached to this podcast and you can always get back to me via www.willsconsultants co.uk or, you can leave any comments in the usual way. You can also reach me on LinkedIn at any time and I'd be happy to get back to you. Thank you again for listening, and I hope you'll join me again for the next in the podcast series creating winning proposals.