The Southern California chapter

of the Association of Proposal

Management Professionals

 

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News

 

APMP invites your nominations for Procurement Best Practices

APMP has created a new award this year to honor government or private-sector entities that demonstrate best practices to provide clarity, fair competition, and efficiency in the bidding and evaluation process. Any APMP member can make a nomination for this award. This is an opportunity for you to call attention to customers who do things right and make the process of buying and selling an effective one. Nominations are due January 31, 2012.

 

 

 

  

 

In recognition of Jim Costell and Ruth Belanger

Chapter Chair Steve Koger took a moment at the October 2011 conference to recognize Jim Costell and Ruth Belanger for their years of work on behalf of the Southern California chapter. Jim is a previous chapter Chair, and Ruth was Vice Chair. Both have put in substantial effort to make the Socal chapter one of the largest and most active in APMP. We salute them for all of their hard work!

 

We also send special thanks to Xait and Shipley Associates for their sponsorship of Training Day.

 

Training Day 2011

The Proposal Process: Start to Finish

 

Click here for many more pictures

 

Click here for copies of the presentations

 

How to reviewers react emotionally to a proposal? How do people really see a graphic? How do you create a Microsoft Word template that your subject matter experts can’t mess up? Experts in all aspects of the capture and proposal process shared answers to these questions at the APMP Southern California chapter’s ninth Training Day Symposium, The Proposal Process, from Start to Finish, on October 21.

More than 60 proposal professionals took part in the event in Anaheim. The symposium was designed to provide insights for proposal professionals at all levels, from beginner to expert.

Shawn Johnson (left, with Steve Koger) of the consulting firm Awakened Influence began the day with a discussion of Leadership Must-Haves for the New Economy. He said the new paradigm in sales and marketing should not be us versus them, but rather us and them versus the economy. In stressful times, buyers are more risk-averse, so establishing trust is essential. Our proposals must demonstrate that we understand the customer’s needs and priorities, and that we care about fulfilling them, he said.

APMP Fellow Tom Sant (below left) followed with The Art and Science of Compelling Value. A value proposition is not just pretty words and “fluffy pink clouds,” he noted. Echoing Mr. Johnson, his former employee, Dr. Sant said that a value proposing must boil down to “you get more of what you want with us.” How? First, make sure the client cares about what you are writing about. Or, to put that another way, write about what the customer cares about. Second, measure it: quantify the benefit that you are pitching. Third, picture it – graphic presentations increase the effectiveness of a message by 47%, he said. And finally, link your value proposition to your differentiators. By doing this, you craft a compelling message, establish expectations, and connect the customer’s priorities with your strengths.

 

    

Consultant Dana Spears (above right), also an APMP Fellow, concluded the morning’s sessions with a discussion of the proper use of color teams in reviews. You can get maximum value from color team reviews by defining a limited set of expectations for the reviews, maybe two or three objectives each. The reviewers should be asked yes/no questions and given room to comment; this prevents well-intentioned but not-especially-useful feedback about overall impressions. Placing the review process on-line improves immediacy and usefulness, too.

Mike Parkinson (below), a principal of The24 Hour Company and also an APMP Fellow, began the afternoon with his characteristic understated and sober presentation on the importance  of graphics and images in proposals. The best way to get top-quality graphics, he said, is to get a top-quality graphic artist. But when time or budget do not permit, he recommended using commercial stock photo repositories, military photos (typically, government-owned pictures are in the public domain), and pre-packaged diagrams that can be adapted for specific purposes, such as hierarchy, process, comparison, and synergy. By downloading and modifying well-prepared graphics in PowerPoint or the Adobe suite, a proposal writer can generate meaningful and professional-looking materials rapidly and at low cost. He emphasized that graphics communicate far more effectively than text, and they must be a well-thought-out part of any successful proposal.

    

Next, former APMP CEO Dick Eassom (below left) hared the nuts and bolts of building proposal templates and style sheets. Mr. Eassom, an APMP Fellow known to many as WordMan, showed how to make document templates and style sheets that facilitate the proposal manager’s job of merging content from multiple authors. One tip: base new styles on “no style” rather than “Normal,” and you won’t get corruption if you import material from someone whose Normal style is different from yours.

 

    

Howard Nutt (above right), a charter member of APMP and also a Fellow, concluded the day with a study of best practices for post-submittal proposal activities. The post-submittal process is still something of an orphan in management practices, he said. There is far more to it than just responding to customer questions. A good post-submittal process will include updating your position by keeping up with competitive intelligence; marketing and advertising; political advocacy; and demonstrating key technologies. A good team begins working on the assumption that it has won, so the next step should be getting ready to begin performing on day 1.

Copies of the presentations are available on the Library page. These presentations are copyrighted by the authors.

APMP-Socal members can discuss and comment on the presentations and the conference on the APMP web site, www.apmp.org, under the Chapter Communities Socal page.

The chapter thanks Steve Koger, Anita Wright, Ruth Belanger, Michelle Meyer, and Mitch Boretz for their efforts in organizing the conference, and we thank the presenters for their insightful contributions.

 

 

The Best of Denver, right here in Southern California

More than 50 APMP’ers from Southern California and guests from other chapters in Colorado, Northern California, and Canada gathered on June 30 to hear about some of the best presentations from the recent APMP international conference in Denver.

Michelle Meyer presented a summary of BJ Lownie’s talked titled “Rapid Team Development.” To build an effective team under the tight schedules of a proposal effort, five steps are necessary: Gather information about the team members, establish roles, establish ground rules, define a communication plan, and institute a conflict resolution plan. Knowing the strengths and personalities of the team members and having a strong framework results in an effective team.

Mitch Boretz summarized Larry Newman’s “Words that Work” discussion. The key message is that you must connect with your audience before you can attempt to communicate a message to the audience. This requires an understanding of values and context. Drawing largely from research in political communication, Larry’s presentation highlighted how differently people will respond to an issue depending on how it is framed. For example, a poll found that 42% of people agree that the government spends too much on welfare, but only 7% of people think the government provides enough assistance to the poor (in other words, welfare). The presentation included lists of 21st century vocabulary that can help a message get around cultural or perceptual barriers.

Finally, Steve Koger gave a briefing on Brad Douglas’s “Win (Change) or Go Home,” which describes how individuals and organizations adapt to change – or don’t. Individuals and organizations have little control over the changes occurring around them. But they can anticipate changes, and they can use change as an opportunity to innovate and thrive. The presentation included a framework for identifying how team members respond to change and how to correct counterproductive behaviors.

APMP members can get copies of all of the Denver presentations through the main APMP web site, under link for Conference>Past Conferences>2011.

 

 

Last revised 12/13/2011