Proposal War Stories

Every marketer has stories of their worst proposal disasters.  Here's a couple that I hope you find amusing.

In the early 90’s, wanting to keep pace with the quality of our competitors’ proposals, our firm bought one of the first color printers. It used specially coated paper and colored cellophane on three cylinders. It was a thrill to have the ability to produce color documents in-house.

A short time later, I was working on a particularly large document. I decided to use three-ring binders, because of the size of the document, and because I thought the client would be so impressed by our proposal that they would want to keep it on their bookshelf (really!?!).

After we reproduced the sets, we used a drill press in the repro room to bore holes in them for the three-ring binding. By the time we bored through the sixth stack of paper, the drill bit was getting quite hot. Suddenly, we began to smell an odor that you never want to encounter during production of your proposal: smoke!

Smoke equals fire. The proposal was on fire. The hot drill bit had ignited the chemical coating on the color pages. Cut to the end; the proposals arrived on time to the client, but they were a little charred around the binding and smelled a little smoky.

And if you think you’re out of the woods when your proposal is successfully printed, bound, and boxed for delivery, an awful lot can happen between your office and your client’s office. There was another proposal for a project that we had been chasing for over a year. We worked in an office across the street from the City’s contracts department, so when the proposal was finished early, I figured it would be no sweat to deliver; all I had to do was carry the box across the street. I thought to myself, “What could possibly happen?” I’ll tell you what can happen, you can get hit by a car, while crossing the street.

Again, the proposal was delivered on time, a little blood on the box, but still intact.

For every proposal, there’s a story. That’s what makes them memorable and what makes the life of a marketer an adventure. You learn from every one.

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When should you pursue a project that you did not know about?

I just spent a day writing a proposal for a project that we did not know existed two weeks ago. “The client loves us," said the client manager. "They want us to submit." I find myself in this situation often.

Will we win? Who knows. Should we have submitted? We are asked every day to support pursuits that we did not anticipate. It's always a hard decision.

In general, we are opposed to submitting proposals for unanticipated RFPs, because we know we would not be positioned to win. However, in reality, most professional services firms chase RFPs more often than they admit. And so do we. So, when should it be considered?

1. Someone in the client’s organization coaches you. Or you have a superior relationship with the client and you’re asked to submit a proposal.

2. You are truly uniquely qualified. This may include having a terrific idea for a solution to the client’s problem or expertise only your firm possesses or, better yet, both.

3. You and the competition are all caught by surprise, and the playing field is truly level.

The presence of all of these conditions improves your chances of being successful. But you must be ultra-critical of your strengths to overcome the severe weakness of not knowing the RFP would show up in the mail.  Rationalization is an inherent weakness of technical professionals, so you must be ruthlessly objective about your chances of winning.

 

How often would we chase a "flier?"  If it were up to us, we would allow our staff one “get-out-of-jail free” card per year.  That’s all.

Client Service

Most technical professionals believe that getting to the right answer on an assignment constitutes having done a “good job.” unfortunately, delivering a correct technical answer became the expected norm in the business long ago.

The right answer is necessary, but often insufficient for satisfying a client. How you treat a client can be as important – if not more important – than what you do for them.

Achieving sales and developing technical skills are critical to success, but superior client service is what makes a business long-lived.