2009 September

RFPs are Like Arranged Marriages, and This Is a Good Thing

Let’s Go Forth and Win Some Contracts, Baby

RFPs are like arranged marriages, which is why, oh ye gods of certainty, I worship Requests for Proposals. They’re so freakin’ easy. There is no seduction; no wondering; no suspending of disbelief; no hopin’ and a-wishin‘ for honesty and pure intentions. An RFP tells you that a company is ready to commit. In fact, an RFP really is like an arranged marriage: a need has been identified, a partnership is required, and the solicitation very clearly tells you the grounds for acceptance or rejection. An RFP tells you how to get what you want: the contract. The business. The revenue, baby.

Oh. Wow. I meant to sell you on the joy of RFPs but I think I just sold myself on arranged marriage.

How to Succeed at Bidding on RFPs and (Not) Dating

I could tell you all kinds of complicated ways to break proposals into manageable pieces, assign tasks, make compliance tables to ensure that every requirement is addressed, but those are just hacks. They’re useful but they’re not essential. They help you complete your work effectively, but what you really need to know are the three prescriptions that give you an 83% chance of winning the contract.

[Yes, dear reader, in fact this figure IS based on super-comprehensive and objective research. In the last 12 months, I submitted 18 proposals, won 15 contracts, and captured $4.2 million in revenue. My proposal writing success rate is 83%.]

Ok, so my empirical claims are actually anecdotal and therefore not objective evidence at all, but I started this essay by comparing my dating life to proposal writing, so what did you expect? Before you get uppity, let me repeat: EIGHTY-THREE PERCENT. You should listen to me.]

Here are the three romance-free essentials that will help you respond to RFPs and win contracts:

1. Aim low.
Compliance and competence are not sexy but they win contracts. Awards aren’t necessarily made to the qualitative, creative ‘best’ company or proposal. Instead, contracts are most often awarded to the company who puts together a proposal that can’t be rejected. You don’t have to aim to win, you have to aim not to fail. Do not give the evaluator or evaluating committee a reason to reject your proposal. Address every requirement right down to the seemingly picky stuff on font size and length and bid due date.

If you cannot deliver what the RFP is looking for, either screen yourself out, and don’t bid, or start working with the client directly to clarify the requirements and steer (I mean inform) the process. Kyle Bailey, for example, told me to “assume the client is an idiot”. Bailey is Da Big Cheez (not the ‘president’, he refuses to be called the president to satisfy The Establishment) of E-cubed Media Synthesis, a web development company in Vancouver, BC. He hates RFPs but he regularly responds to them and wins contracts, so he might know what he is talking about. I think in nice words he means educate the client.

If what you’re offering does not fit the opportunity, walk away. Taking a project that you cannot deliver on costs everyone time and money and will destroy your reputation. Bailey, for example, says that his competitors are often his best salespeople because they overpromise and underdeliver. As a result, his company gets an ‘an ungodly amount of work’ cleaning up contracts gone awry. Learn from this: if you agree to the terms of an RFP, win the contract, and then can’t deliver, you won’t win any more RFPs or make money and your clients will get in bed with your competition. This is bad.

2. Follow instructions.
The most important section of the RFP is the lighthearted section with a whimsical title that goes something like this: EVALUATION PROCEDURES AND BASIS OF SELECTION. And yes, it is almost always capitalized and bolded and that’s because the RFP is textually shouting “Yes! Pay attention! This is it! This marks the spot!”

[I was tempted to use and abuse another dating metaphor but I restrained myself. Nobody wants to get excited by salacious innuendo when they're reading about non-sexy but super awesome things like RFPs.]

In essence, the basis-of-selection section tells you how to win the opportunity: if the basis of selection is price, then you need to offer the cheapest bid. If it is technical, then you need to provide the most comprehensive, elegant solution. If it is lowest price and technical requirements, then your potential client/mate is a lunatic. FYI. You’ve been warned.

3. Be boring.
Do not write your proposals like I am writing this piece. Do not have fun, do not get personal or creative, and do not take a long time to make your point. The fun, convincing, seductive stuff is for concept pitches and marketing and first dates, not responding to RFPs.

Kiss Your Contract Hello

Writing a response to an RFP is easy if you treat it like an arranged marriage: agree to the terms of the partnership, or negotiate changes before you seal the deal, and then meet your obligations. The writing is just the story, and it doesn’t have to be pretty, have great cleavage and spout amusing bon mots, or even be compelling. You don’t have to be the best at what you do or even provide the most elegant solution to win contracts. You simply have to be the least risky suitor – exactly like my hypothetical husband-to-be.

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[Why you should believe me and behave accordingly when I say an RFP is like an arranged marriage: because in addition to spilling my secrets on this site, I am a proposal writing opinion-aire, and winning contracts is my secret super power.

By night, I blog furtively and by day, I write proposals and manage contracts for a Vancouver manufacturing company. This fiscal year, I won 83% of the contracts I bid on and exceeded my revenue target by $300,000. I'm exceptionally proud of this achievement because it was achieved from September 2008 to September 2009, which, if you haven't heard, was a time when even Warren Buffet contemplated getting off the grid. I know because he told me on Twitter. Okay, no he didn't, but it was fun to say.

If you'd like to me to write or guide a proposal for you, please e-mail me at kelly at kellydiels dot com. My hungry children thank you. P.S. I also write features, marketing copy and website content.

If you'd like to set me up with a blind date or an arranged marriage, I WAS JUST KIDDING and you canNOT reach me at kelly at kellydiels dot com. My mother and my blog-readers thank you.]

September 4, 2009 | filed under: Love, Money, Work | tweet it, baby

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On Harm, Healing, Ceilings and How Absent Apologies are the Pits – The Sorry Series, #1

When I was eight or nine, my mother grievously injured my fragile soul.

She may have asked me to clean my room. Possibly she made me put down my Nancy Drew to wash dishes. In all likelihood, she gave me grief for sassing her.

[Note to self: there is a lesson here. This dynamic - my unrepentant, inevitable and perennial backtalk and my mother's attempt to curb it - was the mainstay of our relationship, I believe, and a lesson in the frustration and futility of attempting to alter another's temperament and inclination.

Her efforts to de-sassify me were for naught.

This is why parenting sucks. We're supposed to shape and smooth and socialize small wild animals with pointy teeth and even more pointed wills and we're supposed to enjoy it.]

[Note to self's note: The sins you commit are the sins you will suffer. My mother endured snide comments and outright challenge from me from the time I spoke my first word to the the time I moved out. I now know her delicious pain. I'm three years into it. Her name is Lola.]

[Note to my dearerst of dear readers: If you really love me, you will babysit the little political one. The one who, when the choice to behave or not behave and the attendant consequences are outlined to her, tells me: "No, that's YOUR choice. I'M taking the power."]

Whatever happened, what ultimately happened was that I was banished to my room where I cried hot, insulted, evidently wholly unloved tears into my frilly pillow. I cried myself through the afternoon and into a sweaty sleep.

When I awoke, my questioning heart was heavy and needed answers and as every slighted child knows, the best replies are found in the heavens, or at least the ceiling, or if you’re the girliest of girls, in the ruffled canopy that arches over your bed. So I did that.

I contemplated the injustice inscribed in winding lines of flowering vines on the fabric of my bed’s canopy – the bed I had received for my birthday after earmarking years of editions of the Sears catalogue. I wanted a pink canopy bed but I received a burgandy one. Clearly That Woman hated me.

And I needed her to love me, more than ever, because she was mad at me. Because she hurt me. Because I knew then, and I know now, that the one who makes the cut should bind the wound.

If I am a nectarine – and I am – then this bit of knowledge is the pit that I carry. Hard, inedible, necessary, generative.

Je m’excuse. I am sorry. The words don’t matter but the hunger must be fed.

My children know this, too. When I have wounded them, and exiled them to their rooms to contemplate their ceilings – and they are even more oppressed than I was, as they lack canopied beds – their hearts break loudly open.

They protest. They protest me. They grieve their pain. They blame me for their wounds. And when the protesting and sobbing subsides, they need me to kiss them and their boo-boos better.

This is what I remembered, this weekend, when life was an archer and launched arrows of outraged misfortune at me and forced me to contemplate my own ceiling. Meditating on the intricacies of the fifth wall yielded these conclusions:

The developer who built this house had the good sense not to spray texture on the ceilings of the first two levels of the house, but somehow that sense departed him on the third story. This is unfortunate. Textured ceilings are a crime against design.
Life doesn’t have very good aim because no actual organs – including my heart – were irreparably harmed in the making of this misfortune. But pride has poor circulation and bruises vividly. It is almost satisfying to behold.
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is woefully incomplete and should be updated, preferably by me. I’ve mentioned this before.
Aggrieved souls need apologies.

So, yes, dearest perceptive readers, someone hurt my feelings, and hurt my feelings in a way that was almost masterly: I endured – oh the agony, oh the woe, oh oh oh – a snub that was successful, effective, essential, repetitive, and, I think, remorseless.

Still, despite my suspicion that the villain in this story is not sorry and never will be, I crave a conversation, an explanation, an apology.

Apologies are magic. They are the play button when a relationship has been paused. Interrupted. Broken. An apology can bridge that distance, span that cleavage, heal that break, and start that song, again.

But only when they are real. And offered. And neither of these words captured the absence dancing across my ceiling.

So what to do with my truth, my stone fruit, that only the person who harms you can heal you?

_________________

this essay is part of The Sorry Series – How To Apologize, How NOT to Apologize, and the Power of Forgiveness:

On Harm, Healing, Ceilings and How Absent Apologies are the Pits – The Sorry Series, #1

A Child’s How-To Guide for Heart-felt Apologies and Chris Brown’s Example of How-Not-To-Apologize. OOPS. – The Sorry Series, #2

Guest Post by Josh Hanagarne: Three Lame Types Of Apologies – The Sorry Series, #3

How To Receive an Apology. How To Accept an Apology. How To Forgive. Or Maybe Not. – The Sorry Series, #4

The Forgiven, The Sorry Series #5

It is okay NOT to teach people how to treat you. Unless they were raised by wolves. Then Cold Play or a quick exit is in order. Your call. *

*not really part of the series but I do make a wildly necessary apology in it