Re: Proposals

Subject: Re: Proposals
From: John Posada <posada -at- FAXSAV -dot- COM>
Date: Thu, 8 Jan 1998 10:21:02 -0500

OHboy!!!

Gina...some background. I have about 20 years of proposal background...15 in sales doing my own (and other people's proposals), and 5 years as a "proposal writer". I've done this service for companies such as Minolta Corporation, Bell Communications Research (Bellcore), Ernst & Young LLP, AT&T, and a few others.

The first thought that came to mind was "Run away, run away!!!"

Question...what is a proposal in your company. Is it a dynamic selling document designed to sell to customer and sell against the competition or is it a brochure?

If it is the former, give it a try.

However, if it is the latter...One of the companies I worked at above tried to do the same thing. They brought is an MBA (who left in frustration to take a position at McKinsey) and 6 months later, had a beta. Three months after that had another beta. Three months after that, another beta. Nine months later, it is still a beta, not used, sitting on some diskettes somewhere. (I'm somewhere else).

Why did it fail?

90% of the effort in writing a proposal is not the writing the proposal. It is the face-to-face, the digging, the analysis, the discussions, the kicking_and_fighting_and_screaming_and_yelling to come up with the best solution. It is this process performed each time that 1) makes them better each time, 2) forces the company to evolve, 3) makes the customer feel that they are worth more than the same effort it takes to change the station on their TV remote.

The concept is attractive to upper management (UM). Make a call, go back to the hotel room, press a button, enter a series of variables, zippity_do_da, deliver the document the next day weeks ahead of your competition, no muss, no fuss.

However, over time, the content gets stale, the content that didn't work the first time gets used over again, etc.

Suggestion...there are lots of companies that have done what you want to do and are selling the programs to do it. Some standalone, some inside of your favorite word processor, etc. Contact APMP, the association for proposal writers (they are on the web) and they can give you a list of companies in that business.

I've been doing this for a long time, and have never seen it work and I successfully won contracts from other more qualified vendors because they employed this process.

Good luck

John Posada, Technical Writer (and proud of the title)
The world's premier Internet fax service company: The FaxSav Global Network
-work http://www.faxsav.com -personal http://www.tdandw.com
-work mailto:posada -at- faxsav -dot- com -personal mailto:john -at- tdandw -dot- com
-work phone: 732-906-2000 X2296 -home phone: 732-291-7811
My opinions are mine, and neither you nor my company can take credit for them.
-----------------------

Senior Management has told me that they want proposal production to be a
"push button" process.

I have made proposal templates for each of our service offerings, and I
am in the process of writing a VBA program which will allow the user of
the template to fill in company specific info (e.g., the prospective
client's name) in one shot. Then, once any customized info has been
added, I plan to store these proposals in soft copy for purposes of
recycling. I also want to buy a binding machine, so the doc team can
bind these proposals in house.

Is there anything else I can do????
I'd appreciate any suggestions.




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