Thursday, November 6, 2014

If it's worth doing...it's worth doing a spell

My mom told me that if something is worth doing then it's worth doing well. Larissa Cornelius must have had the same advice because she has now won nFold's proposal award for excellence no less than THREE years in a row. Our judges are UK Proposal Rock Star Jon Williams, US Proposal Guru Tom Sant, and our own Proposal Queen Sandy Pullinger. They unanimously agree that Larissa has what it takes to win. So this year nFold gave her a cheezy trophy to recognize her outstanding achievement. I asked her to take a selfie for my blog. I'm sure she's hiding a magic wand somewhere, because this is the best selfie I've seen in a long while - plus both her hands are showing.

 
 
nFold announced the results of the local proposal manager salary survey at the APMP event in September. Can you believe that the average proposal manager is female, 43 years old, with 9 years of proposal experience, and is highly likely to live in Gauteng and be permanently employed? At the ripe old age of 314, I guess I may bring up the average age a bit...which reminds me.
 
Hooray, I finally made it out of my box on my birthday. I took this picture of the Standard Bank proposal team at nFold's story board master class. This year's finalist in nFold's proposal award, Tracy-Ann Damons is on the far left, toasting my health with the team. Happy Birthday to me!
 
In the middle of the picture is Sandy's new mentee, Alicia Sibanda. She's the very first learner to take part in the job creation programme that nFold, EOH and APMP have started. She went along with Sandy to the book launch for 'The Climb' by KK Diaz, now safely returned from Mt Kilimanjaro. He says he climbed the mountain with no money and no experience to rob people of their excuses. Hence the hash tags.
Sandy loved the book so much that she got KK to share his lessons learned as the guest speaker at nFold's breakfast, in aid of his charity E4+C (entrepreneurs for positive change). She bought 100 books for KK to donate to a school so that he could share his message with the entrepreneurs of tomorrow, and he matched her donation by speaking at another school too. What a wonderful person...KK doesn't need a wand to make magic.
 
At the Spring Breakfast, Sandy spoke about how proposals create jobs. It was a sparkling event with scintillating company. So, alas Sandy had no excuse to dress up as the archer queen from Clash of Clans like she did for the APMP Conference. Her topic was 'strategies that win' and her analogy relating it back to the addictive online game kept everyone awake after lunch.

She re-used the costume to go trick-or-treating at Halloween. I bet she got a lot of candy. I love that purple hair!
 
 
 

Sunday, July 20, 2014

Hocus pocus in the Absa tender team

 
When I visited the Absa tender team I told them we would create magic with words and cast my opening spell on them......Cistem Pandorum!!! They told me that they plan to improve their proposals by focusing on five things:

  • Executive Summary
  • Persuasiveness
  • Effectiveness
  • Language and
  • Overall Impact 
I picked up a few problems in their proposals and I thought the Wendy Word magic would help them to remember, so I cast another spell ....Magicus Mordus. We agreed that they needed to make some changes. I told them:

"Your Proposals are too lengthy and too technical. We need to simplify and write in “client language”. Your Table of Contents needs to be shorter with Heading levels clearly indicated. You need to focus on the Customer’s needs/requirements rather than including too much product specific content. You need to mention the customer’s name more than yours. You need to make the proposal more personalised with the names of consultants rather than just talking about a team. You need to include a conclusion or summary section. Include Case Studies. Because the Executive Summary is the introduction to the proposal it needs to be eye catching and makes you want to read further. Include a value proposition. Use Strong creative titles."

At first they were flabbergasted but soon rolled up their sleeves to fix the problems. I told the Absa team that being more persuasive in their proposals is like making a brush scrub the floor all on its own. My spell words are Auto Rubbum.


Their tips to my readers based on their proposal experience are great:
  1. Don’t change the order of the questions and do not rewrite them. Follow instructions in the RFP.
  2. Repeat the questions as written in your response, and thenanswer it in a different format. Use bold or a different colour.
  3. Include a compliance matrix at start of response or for each section.  Rate yourself in terms of “exceed”, “fully complies”, and “partially complies”. Evaluators love this compliance.
  4. Do not send your reader off to another part of your proposal to find the answer. Never answer” answered above” or see section 3 for the answer.  You come across as lazy and inconsiderate.
  5. Answer the question and answer it each time they ask it.
  6. Focus on what the client cares about first, not on your product or service details.
  7. Clients are interested in what our products do for them not how they work.  The text can be too technical and too product focused.  We need to engage them immediately.
  8. Use Tom Sant's A-P-S format for important answers
    A= Acknowledge that the question is significant
    P= Make a persuasive statement about what you have done in this area
    S= Substantiate with details
  9. Weave your value proposition into your answers and include key differentiators. Tie the business or technical need to the value or outcome you are delivering in explicit language.
  10. Keep the writing simple and clear. Average sentence should be around 15 – 18 words.
  11. Provide time to edit answers written by subject matter experts. The problem with product experts is that they use product names and in house jargon.  They don’t realise they are confusing customers.
  12. Watch your tone. Keep it friendly and avoid answers of “yes”, “no”. Give more information.
  13. Simplify. Simplify. Simplify.
Lucky 13. The list gets my vote! The Absa team said they really enjoyed my proposal magic. I told them I will visit again soon and then blew myself away with the wind using my magic words...Veni Veni, see you soon.

Working on Workers Day

Time flies like an arrow and fruit flies like a banana. I blinked and 6 months flew by on my broomstick. Christmas came and New Year went. The Easter bunny hopped, the tooth fairy did her stuff and April fooled none of us. And yet, the more things change the more they stay the same. Here I am, working on workers day - if you can call writing work.

Yet, life in the proposal world still rocks. nFold's clients won some big bids lately. One of the deals in the banking industry involved the transfer of 738 people with zero jobs lost. nFold helped our client to turn around a likely loss into a winning bid.

“You went the extra mile. Big bidding is a specialized field and without expertise in this area you setting yourself up for failure - in any battle you need a strong team. I would prefer to have you on my team than my competitors.”

So the mood of celebration is in the air. Bring on more big bids and we'll be ready to sparkle!

Talking about sparkling, nFold recently hosted an event to announce the results of a sales execution survey and launch the latest release of Qvidian proposal automation. As autumn blossoms in SA, the spring release from Qvidian in the US promises even more time saved with a brand new interface that's even easier to use. Come along to our online demos and live lab session in the coming weeks to learn more. Be there or be square. Click on one of these links to register...


Online Demos:



 

Live Lab at nFold Office:


Sandy got her beach fix last week but she left me behind. How rude! I do hope she lets me out to play again sometime soon. The local APMP chapter is hosting an all Africa round table event on 13 May at Aurecon's offices in Pretoria. Maybe if she takes me along I'll be adopted into a bid team again. Who knows, I might even get to go on an African safari. Watch this space while I brew my magic.


SPACE


Okay you can stop watching the space and come back again later. Still working on getting out of this pesky box. I seriously need a new wand or some more newts for the potion. Bye for now.