Make Sure You Mention The Client
By Dan Safford

In this issue and the next, I'll talk about sections in your proposals that often seem tailor-made for waving the company flag and trumpeting how excellent your firm is. In fact, the client often seems to invite you to do that. But beware; dangers lurk in those woods. 

A Cautionary Tale

A firm I work with was about to submit a proposal to do the some design work on the new corporate headquarters for a large company. One of the principals of the firm, a woman I had worked with in the past, told the proposal team, "Before you send the proposal in, let's give it to Dan, and see what he says." So they FedExed it to me, and I spent the weekend reading it.

The first 50 pages comprised sections such as Firm History, Firm Background, Project Team and Resumes. In these pages the client's name was mentioned FOUR (4) times, and the firm's name over 50 times. In the last 20 pages (boilerplate project approach sections) the client's name appeared 18 times, in what was obviously a search-and-replace exercise, and the firm's name showed up another 32 times. That's right; I counted them all.

The next day I had a conference call with the team. I asked them if they were still working on the proposal. I was going to tell them they might want to reconsider. They said, "We just couried it over to the client."

I sighed a big sigh. I told them about my tallying exercise.

"That's okay," they said. "The client's RFP specifically asked for these sections. They want us to tell them about ourselves."

I held my tongue about that. But I did say that I had tallied zero benefits to the client. I suggested that perhaps the client would get the message that we thought we were more important than we thought the client was.

"Oh, no," they protested. "We know this client. We have worked with them. They asked us to submit. They can read between the lines."

Again, I didn't argue with them; they'd committed themselves, the proposal was out the door, and I saw no reason to second-guess them. At least not over the phone. Then they asked if I could fly out to help them prepare for the short-list interview the client had said would be phase two of the procurement. I did.

We worked on the shortlist interview for a couple of days. It turned out they DID know a lot about the client, and DID have a competitive edge. I was beginning to feel some hope; maybe we could pull a win out this after all. Then the client emailed the shortlist to all who proposed.

We were not on the list.

"This must be a mistake," my team cried, and we rang the client, on a speakerphone in a conference room. When the client got on the phone, he informed us that, indeed, we did not make the shortlist.

"But," our team leader spluttered, "but you asked us to submit."

The client replied, "Yes, and that's what disappointed us the most. We know you know us and what we want, but your proposal didn't reflect that at all." 

When the call was over, the team leader broke the silence by saying, "Damn. It was wired against us from the start!"

I was fresh out of sighs.

The moral of the story

Experienced proposal folks know this story well; it happens all the time in proposals. The team trots out all its strengths and all the nifty things they can do and seems to forget completely about the client. Or they feel that the intrinsic value of those nifty things simply must be evident. 

You simply can't take it for granted that the client will read between the lines and search out the benefits; you have to make them as clear as you can.

PS Associates Article Archives, January 2003.
Copyright © 2005 by PS Associates Group, Inc. All rights reserved.