Friday, October 4, 2013

On top of the world

I recently flew to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro with one of nFold's best proposal champions, KK Diaz of Rekopane.biz. What a lovely young man! And so clever too.


KK decided to treat his climb as a business venture and create a documentary about the experience to inspire other entrepreneurs to succeed. Now that's the kind of project that nFold is proud to support. Sandy spent some time on candid camera to explain proposal basics. And nFold made our first ever cash donation to the project. In the past, we've donated our time to worthy projects like this, but at last we can afford to put some money towards growing the future. Keep on walking KK.

Meanwhile, back at the proverbial ranch, Team nFold continues to sparkle. Dheshnee, Graham and Janet all passed their APMP Foundation exam this week, bringing the total number of bid network members to achieve this global badge of honour to 14 of the 30 consultants in our network and almost one fifth of the total in SA. Plus, Sandy Pullinger has now trained 37% of all local members certified at foundation level and ALL of them passed. WOW!!! I stand on my broomstick amazed. Onward and upward. Sandy tells me she's decided that nFold people sparkle. And if they don't sparkle then they're probably not nFold people.
 
As we gallop towards the end of the year, nFold has planned so spend a day at the pool in early December to celebrate a big year. We're growing fast and have the scars to prove it. Rather than buying tacky gifts for our top customers, our plan for year-end is to pack a Santa's shoebox for each of them, take a photo and make a beautiful card for each one. Shhhhhhhhh! Don't spoil the surprise.
 
Maybe you want to put a smile on a poor child's face too this year. If you want to join the fun, be sure to pledge a shoebox here: http://site.santashoebox.co.za/. There are 100,000 kids in the mix and almost 7,000 still without a shoebox. Show you care. I know we do.  

Friday, August 16, 2013

You can teach an old dog new tricks!

It’s always a good thing when you get a chance to visit an old friend that you haven’t seen in a while.  So what a treat when I got a surprise invitation to visit Scylla Gardiner at her new home-away-from-home, Paracon.  I flew in and parked my broomstick next door in the Nicolway shopping centre. Handy, very handy!

Scylla tells me she joined Paracon (part of the Adcorp group) in February this year to formalise a bid management function for the company and several of its subsidiaries.She's been learning a heap of new tricks, even if she seems to be quite a young rascal.

So, there we were, sitting chatting about the challenges (and fun) of setting up processes, creating new proposal templates and guidelines, getting to know many new brands and the general excitement of starting something new when all of a sudden Scylla pulled a rather strange face…

Why the face, you may ask yourself? I know I did! The realisation had suddenly hit Scylla that, even though she’s been in the proposal writing game since before the continents drifted apart (I personally didn’t realise she was THAT old), she is still learning something new about bids and proposals every day. I assured her that this is a very good thing and I’m sure you would all agree. That put her mind and her face at rest.

After the four compulsory cups of ‘bid management fuel’ (also known as coffee) and lots of talk about concentrating on improving both proposal quality and our own skills in the proposal profession, I had to unfortunately take wing.  Us witches have quite the social calendar. Until the next time...let’s remember to keep on learning those new tricks. Woof!  Wag! Pant!

Thursday, June 27, 2013

The winds of change are blowing

Someone's moved my cheese again. I do wish it would stay in the same place for just five minutes!

The great philosophers say that the only constant is change, but they also say that the more things change the more they stay the same.

So which is it? For us at nFold, change has become a habit now. But I now want to leave my broomstick in the same place for a while, to gather a nice bit of dust.

"So what is all this change" I hear you ask, "and how does it affect the wonderful world of proposals?" Well here are the big 5 changes of 2013 so far...stop the world I want to get off!
  1. Next Generation - In April, Anastasia Bizos was born, so Fiona is on maternity leave - with chicken pox, as bad luck has it. Kalli Manitsa has taken over public training co-ordination and Janet Ward has picked up the onsite training.
  2. So long Theresa - In May, nFold director Theresa Monoyoudis succumbed to a 7 year itch and went on sabattical to help her son through matric next year by accepting a marketing job at his school. We miss her, but I do have an excuse to see her at board meetings once a month.
  3. Hello Network - Our new Theresa is called Dheshnee Naidoo. She's doing a great job so far of filling a very big pair of high-heeled shoes. The nFold network has grown to 30 people now, and we welcome new consultants Madi, Florence and Eric.
  4. New Digs - In June, nFold moved into new offices. We now have 10 floating desks and a humming bid back-office. Reminds me of bedknobs and broomsticks. More space has brought our team closer together. We're in the groove! Onward and upward.
  5. Buds of May - May Bradshaw has become a director of nFold. In the last 18 months she's been moving and shaking things up for us, big time. Congratulations May, and welcome to the little boy melon due to arrive in September. Another son of nFold is on the horizon.



Life is a peach in Georgia, as Sandy discovered when she went to the US APMP conference in Atlanta at the end of May. We're rather proud of her for being the first African to serve as a global board member in 2013/2014. Sandy had dinner with proposal star Jon Williams one night and with her all time hero Tom Sant another night. Lucky fish! I'm miffed that she forgot to take me along. But I guess I'll get over it. She bumped into 3 other South Africans at the conference, so at least she had company from someone who could understand her accent. She says that she learned a LOT, hooked up with old friends and made some new friends. What could be better?

I recommend that anyone who wants to learn more about proposals should come along to the local APMP conference in July. Visit www.apmp.org.za to find out more. Sandy will be putting a fresh spin on the time-honoured traditional topic of writing executive summaries, as only she can. Seats are selling fast, so hurry to book before you miss out on all the fun.




Talking about fun, here are some of the 19 people who achieved the fun fun fun Foundation Level APMP certification with Sandy's help this year. As a Strategic Proposals trainer, Sandy still has a perfect pass record. I can't believe they cut me out of the photo. At least I was comfy on Reshma's lap. The total number of people in South Africa who have achieved one of the 3 levels of internationally recognized certification has now reached a whopping 71. Proposal people rock! I really enjoy hanging out with them. Even if they won't let me appear on their photos. Sniff.

nFold's new stratgy seems to be on track. To improve teamwork we now have Training Tigers with Tiger Mother Annatjie Jonker leading the way - spreading the proposal gospel according to Saint Tom. We have Skills Scorpions headed up by Janet Ward finding jobs in our brand new business venture called Bid Skills for Africa. Dheshnee Naidoo is taking on the Software Swans to grow our Qvidian customer base and Sandy is keeping an eye on the Consulting Chameleons to make sure they don't fade into the background.

Never a dull moment at nFold. I think I'll start up my own business unit and call it the Wicked Witchy Wordsmith Wombats or something. Just so that there's a place for little old me. Watch this space as I insert myself into the next photo to appear on this blog. Mwa-ha-ha-ha-ha.

Monday, March 11, 2013

Flying off the handle

I'm not angry, but I literally flew off the handle of a camera stand at the Executive Summaries master class that nFold hosted in February. Here I am with global proposal star Jon Williams who presented the session. Glowing praise flew in as fast as my broomstick.



"The energy was great. Content was relevant and plain excellent."
"Straight to the point.  Lots of passion."
"Jon was fantastic. Content was relevant."

Jon taught us all about the role of executive summaries, how to structure a good one, and touched on the sections of proposal related to the executive summary. He used some great examples and stories to bring the show to life. If the executive summaries in your company suck, it's a pity you missed out on this one.

nFold really made the most of Jon's time in sunny SA. He presented on the topic of "Auditing Proposal Quality" to the local chapter of APMP. The benchmarking technique he showed us is easy to implement and very effective.

Jon also mentored Sandy to become an accredited trainer for APMP Foundation level under the banner of Strategic Proposals. 6 more people passed the foundation exam, bringing the total number of local APMP members to achieve this globally recognized standard, up to more than 50.

Jon had lunch with a bunch of people from the nFold bid network before heading back to snowy London. Brrr! I bet he misses the sunshine.


And now for something completely different, to quote Monty Python. I haven't seen much of Sandy or Theresa lately. They've been up to all sorts of mischief. nFold has projects waltzing in so quickly that Johan Strauss would have a hard time keeping up with them. They were even too busy to move into new offices. So I never got a chance to paint those walls. Sigh. Maybe sometime soon...

I finally caught up with Sandy helping new customers use Qvidian. She took me along to her latest Qvidian training session. Here I am, getting up close and personal with some of the delegates. I bet their proposals are whizzing out of Qvidian as fast as you can say Wendy Word.