 Great photo by Antoni Shkraba. Boy do the months ever sail past. Time, already, for our annual round-up of our top posts for consultants from 2024. Here’s your chance to catch any you may have missed, or to brush up on others you may want to re-visit:
As we start working on next year’s articles, we’d like to take this time to thank you for tuning in to our 2024 entries. We love sharing the love, and your comments make our day. Have suggestions for an upcoming post? Contact us. We’d love to hear from you!
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 Great photo by Andrea Piacquadio. RFPs—that is, Requests for Proposals—come in all shapes and sizes. Broadly, there are the ubiquitous ones that populate the world of government services contracting. There are plenty of private-sector RFPs out there, too.
In this article, we’re going to address the tipping point that must inform all of your RFP pursuits: the notorious “go/no-go decision.” We’re looking out for your best interests here, trust us. All-American competition A little background first. Why would a company (or the government) issue an RFP? The bigger question could be: Why wouldn’t they? Think about it. If you’re an entity that needs to spend money on services (or products, but we’ll focus on the former here), it’s entirely safe to assume that 1) you want the best possible services at 2) the lowest possible price. And what’s fairer, what’s more American, than level-playing-field competition? So. You issue an RFP. And you let all these suitors compete against each other. You get exactly what you’d wanted. It’s a beautiful thing. Or is it? The race to the bottom Let’s get real jaded, real quick. How well does the government do things, compared to private industry? By and large, not nearly as well. There’s no profit motivation. There’s no “Government 2” that they’re competing against. There’s a baked-in complacency and a literal ability to print more money if they need it. This shows in their work. Think of all the shoddy government services you’ve had to suffer through—IRS, DMV, U.S. Postal Service, Amtrak, you name it. Think of how many times you’ve said, “If only Amazon were running this!” And the crazy thing is, tons of these shoddy government services are actually provided by private-sector contractors! Why? Because they came in with the lowest bid. We’re over-simplifying here—there are other ways that the government procures things, and even in the private sector, there are SLAs or “service-level agreements” which stipulate a minimum required level of performance—but, as we’d intimated, nice and jaded, RFPs often represent a race to the bottom. Cheapest possible—and just passable. Now pivot this scenario to your business. Would you want to willingly join in, in this death spiral? To RFP or not to RFP The upside, for you, of competing on an RFP, is that it’s typically a pretty big contract. And it’s all or nothing. You either win it, or you don’t. And either way, you’re putting in a ton of work. Hmmm. This gets to the very core of the go/no-go decision. We were told, years ago, about an NFL coach who had a plaque in his office. It read: “Winning isn’t everything. It’s the only thing, Coming in second is un-American.” Yowch. Painful. Brutal. But refreshingly similar to your RFP go/no-go decision. It boils down to this: Only respond if you can, and will, crush it. Partial measures are a total waste of time; expend that energy on other biz-dev. Assess your capabilities and those of your likeliest competitors. Can you crush the competition? If you can almost crush them, what would it take to push you over the top? Here’s a little anecdote for you. We were recently invited to compete on an RFP for a slate of marketing services. We could see, right away, that it wasn’t a great fit. We knew we could crush a certain part of what this company was requesting, but there were other parts that weren’t our specialty. We were just about to pass on this one when--hmmm—we learned, through the grapevine, that a few other companies, which we know and have worked with before, were also invited to respond to this exact same RFP. Know where this is going? Imagine where it went? Of course. We reached out to those other entities, and said, “Let’s consolidate!” And that’s exactly what happened. Working with the others, we created a veritable Dream Team… and crushed the RFP. By the way, there are interesting and creative ways to craft the actual RFP response itself, to help you win it, which go beyond the scope of this article. We’d love to help you in this realm. Contact us and let’s talk.  Boy the year goes by fast. It doesn’t seem like it’s really been that long since we wrote a year-end roundup, but the calendar doesn’t lie.
Sure, we at Copel Communications would love it if you read every single one of our blog posts the minute it came out. But we also know you’re busy, so here, in convenient compendium form, is an overview of our posts for consultants from the year. (We alternate between posts for consultants and what we call our “creative clients,” i.e., ad agencies and others that directly contract us for creative services. So we annually do separate year-end posts, both in December, for each audience.) Each summary/tease below has a link to the full article, so feel free to binge away!
Do you have a topic you’d like us to cover? Or a marketing challenge you’d like us to help you with? Contact us today. We’d be delighted to hear from you.  Do you know the “Tupperware trick”?
A proposal, by its nature, is something you do on spec. You’re taking a gamble. You’re risking the time and effort you put into it, on the hopes that you’ll win and bring in new business. You knew that. But what you might not know is that there are ways to boost your proposal-writing efficiency and effectiveness, at the same time. And yes, Tupperware (a.k.a. little plastic containers for kitchen leftovers) will help you with this challenge. Step 1: Make the go/no-go decision You’re not always asked to submit a business proposal. Sometimes, you’re responding to an RFP. Other times, you may be asked, but not be so sure you want to respond. This all leads to the crucial go/no-go decision. Here, you must decide whether to even draft your proposal in the first place. You must decide if the investment of time and effort will produce what you believe to be acceptable odds of winning. When we talk about “odds,” that’s necessarily squishy. But here’s what isn’t: The quality of the proposal you create. It’s got to be a stunner. Second-best won’t do. It won’t win. It won’t reflect well on you. It won’t get you invited back for future projects in case you don’t win this one. So the quality of your proposal is non-negotiable. It’s got to be great. That becomes a real factor in your go/no-go decision. Fortunately, as we’ll explain below, you can actually respond to more opportunities than you do now if you can cut the time and effort required for a stunning proposal. It’s simple math. Step 2: Define the challenge Naturally, what the client needs will vary. That said, the challenge will fall within your wheelhouse. So you’ll need to define it in terms of discrete jobs and outcomes. Will it take five steps, or 50? How many resources are required? How long will it take? Will you need to bring in partners? Vendors? The answers to all of these questions will factor into your pricing. But don’t worry about that part right now. It’s easy to plug in the numbers when you’re almost done. Step 3: Search your library Here is where we will—finally—uncover ways for you to become more efficient and effective; it’s also where we’ll reveal the “Tupperware trick.” Ready? We’re going to assume that you’ve already written lots of proposals before, so you have plenty of material to work from. We can also assume, pretty safely, that this is how you’ve been going about the task of generating new proposals, too: You start by scouring your files for proposals that are similar, and then cobble together a new one based on the relevant portions of the others. That is fine. It’s a good way to start. But it’s only a start. It needs to be optimized. We were recently called in to help a client develop a modular proposal library. “Modular proposal library” is exactly what it sounds like. It’s a nicely polished collection of proposal elements that you can assemble, Lego-like, with minimum time, effort, and customization required. Done right, it yields really sharp proposals that you can crank out with surprising speed. Of course, you say, that’s what you’d like to have. You’d certainly thought of doing it before. But then again, of course, you haven’t. It’s a challenge unto itself. It’s, frankly, why we were called in on this recent assignment. The client didn’t want to do it themselves. But you can. Just imagine: If you had a killer modular proposal library at your disposal right now, you could go after—and win—that much more business. Why not do it? The trick is knowing how. And thus the Tupperware solution. Step 4: Pare and consolidate It’s really more of a Tupperware analogy than a solution. It goes like this: Think of the finite cabinet space in your kitchen. Think of the leftovers you need to pop into the fridge every night after dinner. Now think of your inventory of Tupperware: Odds are, it’s a motley collection. Some pieces were originally part of a matching set. Others were scavenged from deli-counter purchases or Chinese take-out. You may have a total of, say, 25 pieces. And those 25 pieces may span about eight or nine different sizes and shapes. Naturally, your inventory of lids will not total 25. It will be higher or lower, leaving you with orphaned containers, or orphaned lids. But that’s the least of your worries. The biggest problem here is inefficiency. Let’s say your average container holds 10 ounces. So, with 25 pieces, you’ve got a total capacity of 250 ounces. But since all of these pieces of Tupperware are different sizes and shapes, none of them nest within each other. They thus sprawl across a couple different cupboards, unnecessarily. What’s worse, when it’s time to save some leftovers after dinner, you need to hunt. You have to go through all 25 pieces to find one that’s an appropriate size. And then you have to hunt again through all your lids to find the one that fits the container you chose—assuming you have that lid in the first place. If you don’t, you need to start over. Hunting. Twice. Again. See how closely this compares to your business-proposal challenge? Incidentally, here’s the actual-kitchen-Tupperware solution: Decide on the minimum number of sizes you need, which would probably be: small, medium, and large (the last of which you shouldn’t really need many of, because “large” assumes that no one ate anything in the first place). Then go out and buy, say, ten apiece of each size. What will this give you? Well, let’s assign some numbers here. If the small’s hold five ounces apiece, the medium’s hold ten, and the large’s hold 15, that’s (10 x 5) + (10 x 10) + (10 x 15) = 300 ounces of total capacity. So now your capacity has increased by 20 percent. Sure, it requires five more pieces than you’d had before—but here’s the important part—it now takes up a small fraction of the volume in your cupboard. Each size nests perfectly, so you only have three stacks: Small, Medium, and Large. And assuming they’re the same shape, you can nest the small’s within the medium’s, which in turn nest within the large’s. Meaning that you’re down to one stack. That’s 300 ounces of storage in a tiny, tiny amount of space. You can stack the three sizes of lids the same way. More importantly, this ends all of the “hunting” when it’s time to save leftovers. You simply need to decide which size you need, and then use it. Done. Just like that. And there’s one other big thing you need to do, which may be difficult or easy for you, depending upon your personality: You need to discard all of those old pieces of Tupperware. They served their purpose. They now are done. Don’t get sentimental. Chuck ‘em. The similarities between the Tupperware exercise and the creation of a killer modular proposal library are both manifold and stunning. You need to throw out what’s less than perfect. You want to cull the best of the best. You want to organize it so it’s ready for easy assembly at a moment’s notice, with zero “hunting.” All of these activities have very straightforward computer-based analogs. “Organizing” is simply clearly-named folders and sub-folders. The “best of the best” is basically just an assembly of Word docs—the fewer, the better. “Discarding the old Tupperware” means dragging outdated docs to an “Archive” folder. (You thought we’d say “Trash,” didn’t you? Nah. We’re not that radical. You never know when one of those old files might help.) When we created the modular proposal library for our client recently, we purposely created an oversized Word doc, with modules within it. It worked like this: When the client gets a new opportunity, they do a “Save as…” on that Word doc, and then go through it and simply delete the sections that aren’t applicable to that particular proposal challenge. All that’s left is some customizing at the beginning and the end, and determining (and plugging in) the appropriate price. What used to take hours, now takes minutes. Serve up a winner Does all of the above require effort? You bet it does. This won’t happen on its own. But once it’s done, it pays for itself again and again and again. Now you know how to do it. So get started! And just in case you’d rather offload this challenge to a pro, contact us. We’d be delighted to help.  How to keep your next creative challenge on track
We know a woman who was expecting her first child, and was obsessing over what to name that kid. There’s nothing unusual, or wrong, about that. Thing is, she was just as concerned about the middle name as the first name. And that’s dead wrong. This story can help you with design layouts, writing assignments, proposals, and RFP responses. Don’t believe it? Read on. What are you really doing? That’s the big question. What are you really doing? What is your assignment, in essence? It’s so easy to get distracted by, and mired in, the details, that you can lose your perspective on the big-picture issues that matter. (Heck, we wrote an entire article about this—one of our most popular, by the way—entitled “Squint to See Clearer.”) And that’s a shame. Because—and here’s the big takeaway--the big-picture elements will dictate the details to you, easily and organically. Yup. If you start on details too early, not only do you lose the thread of the assignment, but you actually do extra work. It’s, in a word, harder. When you start with the broader requirements (the “first name”), they’ll guide you along—assuming you’ve put the proper care and effort into developing them. Sketching it out We recently were called upon to design a big wall poster that would be the centerpiece of a direct-mail campaign. This poses some interesting challenges. Our client, naturally, wanted every recipient of this thing to proudly hang it on his or her office wall. So did we. But the tricky line to walk was “How much value” vs. “How much sell.” If you receive one of these posters in the mail—unsolicited, of course—what’s going to impel you to take the time and effort to hang it in your office? What, to put it another way, would ever prevent you from simply tossing it in the trash as so much expensive junk mail? This is the “first-name first” challenge. The poster provides three chunks of really valuable information: exactly the kind of stuff you’d love to have on your office wall, ready to help you at a glance. It also contains “sell” copy for our client, along the lines of “If you find this information interesting, contact us to learn more about how we can put this information to use for you.” If you’ve been keeping track, we’re now up to four “chunks” of information for this poster: Three chunks of useful info, and one chunk of “sell.” Much as the client would love to divvy this poster up in half, with the three chunks of useful info crammed into one half, and all the sell copy sprawled across the other half, we argued that that approach would be counter-productive. We felt that it should basically be divided into thirds, with one third for each chunk of useful info, and just a smidgen left over for the elegantly-presented “sell.” This way, recipients would be more likely to trade off a tiny bit of “being sold to” in exchange for “a lot of value, worth hanging on the wall.” Thence the sketch. You don’t have to be a great artist to do this yourself. Simply draw a little rectangle in the proportions of the poster (in this case, it was to be horizontal), and divide it into three equal columns. Then “cheat” a little extra room on one side. That’s what we did. The “sell” amounted to about ten percent of the entire real estate. After sketching out that poster shape and the little guidelines in it—which took all of about 15 seconds—we roughed in areas for the “umbrella” headline which would cover the three chunks of info, the subheads for each info-chunk and the “sell” chunk, and so on. Within a couple minutes, we had a nicely rendered sketch which we scanned and sent along to the client and their talented graphic artist, who had no problem transforming it into a tight layout with minimal rework required. It was just a matter of first-name first. The name game Think of naming a baby again. What is the name that people will use to refer that person, every day for the rest of his or her life? The first name. Of course. So you want to put all the effort in the world into that first name. How does it sound when reduced to, say, two syllables? Is there any possible interplay between the first and last names that might invite nasty nicknames? (We can’t help but think of the real race car driver with the unfortunate name of Richard Trickle. You guessed right: He’s better known as Dick Trickle, and we don’t think that’s the nicest thing to do to your kid.) Once you have the first name you’re happy with, then work on the middle name. It will simply drop into place. It’s how “John Astor” just naturally becomes “John Jacob Astor.” For the poster we described above, “Jacob” is the subheads. It just fell into place nicely, without any work or hardly even thinking about it. Now think about the next creative challenge that’s awaiting you. Step back. Look at it from a distance. What part of it is the “first name”? Choose only one element; that’s where your initial discipline is required. Then focus all your energy on developing just that element, and holding off on the others until you’re done. That’s the second burst of discipline you’ll need. The rest is easy. Need help wrapping your head around that next creative challenge? Contact us. We tackle these kinds of assignments all the time, and certainly practice what we preach. That translates to strong results, not to mention competitive pricing, for you.  There are ways to make both parties happy
It’s happened to you more times than you’d care to recall: You submit a quote for your services, and the client comes back to you, asking you to cut your price, when you haven’t even done anything yet. Not fun. There are ways to deal with this. Some are a matter of degrees; others are a matter of proper preparation. You want me to what? Oftentimes, a client (or prospect) will seek—sometimes subtly, sometimes not—to change the scope of what you’d bid on. In other words, they’ll want you to do more work, for the same price: “Can you throw in a…?” This is, on its surface, a request for you to lower your price. Beneath the surface, it’s a slight: it suggests that your work simply isn’t worth all that much. Thicken your skin, ignore the unintended insult, and proceed professionally. Actually, of all the situations we’ll discuss in this article, this one is the most straightforward. It requires your calling a spade a spade. But take the high road. Be cheerful: “I would love to do some extra projects for you! Let me bid on those for you separately.” They’ll get the message. Instantly. Want to look like a hero? Bid on the new project, and toss in a little discount. They’ll appreciate the gesture. They come away with extra stuff from you; you come away with more work, and income, than you’d originally anticipated. It’s a win-win. “Is that your best price?” Ever been asked that one? It’s another way for clients to probe if there’s any “fat” in your pricing. Again, if you’re thin-skinned, you’ll perceive a subtle insult in that question. It says, “I know you’re trying to gouge me; perhaps you could gouge me less.” Don your thick skin again. And think of the times when you’ve been the client, perhaps buying a car. Did you simply go with the asking price? Of course not. So appreciate that the client is simply doing their job, negotiating. Now, the answer to “Is that your best price?” may vary. It, honestly, depends on how you’ve priced the project in the first place. We don’t advocate “fattening” up any pricing. You’ll get called on it, especially if it’s out of line with industry norms. And once you concede on the “fat” issue, all of your subsequent pricing will be suspect. It’s a lousy path to embark upon. What’s the payback? Sometimes you might have a long-term client with whom you have a strong working relationship. They may toss you lots of good, lucrative projects. So ask yourself this—and ask them, too: “Is this business development for this client?” That is, if you help them win a new account, would there be more work in it for you when they do? If that’s the case, consider discounting the work. They’re effectively acting as your agent, bringing you work that you might not otherwise get. Agents typically get ten percent. Use that as a starting point for your discount. But you can go deeper—much deeper—depending upon the size of the prize, the odds of your client’s winning it with your help, and the strength of your relationship with that client. Prepare in advance Many times, a client will ask you to bid on a project with insufficient information for you to bid on it. Again, don’t get mad. Put yourself in their shoes: They’re not trying to withhold information from you. They simply don’t know it yet. They probably are trying to get that exact information from their client, but haven’t been able yet. Not a problem. Simply craft your bid appropriately. Here are three approaches to consider:
When you work this way, no one—neither you nor your client—will be surprised when the detailed specs arrive. You can simply go about your business, do your work, and get paid appropriately. When to walk Sure, you can negotiate, and you can give, but there are times when you need to do neither. If you can’t make a profit on a proposed price, or if it would set a dangerous precedent for you, or if it simply under-values your services to the point where it’s untenable, say no. Politely. It’s the right thing to do. A good client (or prospect) will take no offense, and respect you for holding your ground. And quite often, that same client (or prospect) will come back to you before long, because you’ve boosted their professional respect for you. And that’s something that money can’t buy. Need help with a proposal, RFP response, or anything else that requires pricing of your services? Contact us. We’d love to help.  Tips and tricks for “reading between the lines”
We recently helped an ad agency respond to an RFP for marketing services. It’s not the first time we’ve been tapped in that capacity. We’ve also served, in the past, as a judge at the Clio Awards and film festivals. There’s a big connection here. The latter paves the way to the former. An RFP—whether for marketing services or whatever—will outline just what is required to respond. It’s basically a huge list of boxes to be checked. But if you only see it in that light, be prepared to lose. Winning the RFP game RFPs are hopelessly impersonal documents. Which sets up the expectation of hopelessly impersonal responses. But that’s a fallacy of perception you need to overcome immediately. First off, that zillion-page, eye-glazing RFP PDF that’s consuming half your hard drive was—surprise—written by an actual person. It sure doesn’t feel that way. But it was. And therein lies your first opportunity to best your competitors. Find out who wrote the thing. It won’t be signed, but it will list a contact person/head of procurement. So look them up on LinkedIn. Find out about their background. Read between the lines of their experience to get a feel for the kinds of things they’re comfortable with and uncomfortable with. Dive deeper. Check out their connections. Do the same for them. Because there’s a good chance you’re looking at other members of the selection committee right there, even though none of them have been named in the RFP. An RFP winning lesson from a parallel universe The reason we mentioned our background as a creative competition judge is because there are lots of parallels to the RFP-judging world. When you examine them, they suddenly become very useful in the crafting of your response. Judging entries is boring. It’s a big and thankless task. You get a huge stack of submissions, you’ve got a zillion criteria by which to judge them, and you’re up against a looming deadline to get it done—with the tacit threat of defending your decisions afterward, adding to the pressure. So think about that. You’re submitting your RFP response to someone who, we can safely say, will not enjoy looking at it. Is that an opportunity, or what? We were privileged to judge the Clios for the category of U.S. Radio. The process involved sitting in a room with other judges, clipboard in hand, and listening to hour after hour of radio spots, marking our scores as they played. And you thought commercials were annoying during rush hour. Here’s the thing. Many of these radio spots were highly creative. Many took an innovative approach to the challenge at hand. Some employed novel production techniques to craft a unique aural texture. Call us jaded, but none of that mattered. Know which radio spots advanced in the competition? The funny ones. It was all too obvious, sitting there in the room. All of the judges were bored. The radio spots played on. But every once in a while, a funny one would come along. It would get laughs—even more than normal, since it was playing to a crowd. And scratch, scratch, scratch went the judging pencils. You just knew that that spot had scored well. What, then, is the lesson here? And how can you apply this to your RFP response efforts? It doesn’t mean “make your RFP response funny.” If only it were that simple. But it does imply that your response should be as enjoyable to judge as possible. How do you do that? Crafting a winning RFP response Start big, and work your way down. By “big,” we mean “theme.” In our marketing-services example, this meant coming up with a creative theme for the RFP response itself, which reflected the overarching goals of the marketing campaign, while reflecting nicely on the ad agency for their inherent creativity. The details? How about “all of them.” Make the prose sing. The verbiage of the RFP didn’t, but yours should. Include an executive summary that builds, Declaration-of-Independence-like, to a clarion call to action. Get them excited. Make them think about the killer results you’ll be delivering, and how that will help advance their cause—and their career—because of it. Make it easy on the eyes. Be lavish with your white space. (Here’s an entire article we wrote about that very subject.) Include captivating illustrations; really work to find great ones. Make the layout reader-friendly. Use incremental, style-sheet-constrained subhead fonts to give it an “outline” degree of clarity, without looking like a boring… outline. Use color. And use it to set off disparate elements (sidebars, success story call-outs, etc.) so the reader knows, instinctively, what’s part of the main narrative vs. what’s parenthetical. What’s the right structure for an RFP response? Here’s something else to consider. The recipient of your RFP response will not be reading your document in one hand, while holding the original RFP in the other, comparing them side-by-side and trying to scan back and forth between them as if following a tennis match. To the contrary: Your document will be the only thing they’ll read at the time. (Why? Because it’s easier and faster. That’s why.) So take them by the hand and lead them through the narrative that you create, even if you need to re-order some of the elements in the original RFP in the process to make it clearer/more logical. As long as you can go through your draft, when you’re done, and see that you’ve checked all the boxes in the RFP, then you’re fine. Define “winning” RFP in the right context An RFP is traditionally a gated competition. Meaning, you cannot win the RFP by your written response alone. Think about that. If you look at the vetting schedule, typically published at the very front of the RFP, you’ll see a list of dates: deadlines, responses, etc. Certainly, you’ll be obsessing over the “submission deadline” for your written response. But what’s the next item on that mini-calendar? Is it “conferences with finalists”? Aha! If that’s the case, then bear in mind that the goal of your written RFP response is not to win the competition. Rather, it’s to advance you to the conference stage. That’s a subtle, but significant, difference. It lets you tease, rather than fully answer, various questions. It transforms your job from “explaining” to “qualifying and impressing.” You need to prove that you’re good enough to be in that room. And it’s an opportunity to bullet-list “sexy” examples of the types of solutions you might advance for the client if you win… just to whet their appetite and let them appreciate the caliber of competitor you represent. There are plenty of other ways to win the RFP game which your rivals might overlook. Contact us and let us help you nail that next one. |