BuiltEnvironment

Always write to win!

When the pack of leaders crosses the finish line at the end of the race, do you want to be among that pack or do you want to be leading it?

This is an important question, because one answer indicates an attitude that can put you among the leaders but not necessarily give you the contract.

Following are two examples from my own experience. In both cases, I was an inside marketing staff member with the same employer, and the same person was the principal on both efforts.

The first effort was a municipal public works department annual rotation list for civil engineering services. The Request for Qualifications (RFQ) said that multiple teams would be selected.

The principal gave me the RFQ and said, "They're going to select five or six teams, so they will most likely short-list 10. So just get us a top 10 position. Get us on the short list and I'll win in the interview."

I asked him which projects he wanted to present, who he wanted on the organization chart, and in what role(s). Then I started assembling the draft Statement of Qualifications (SOQ).

I sent the managers of each exemplary project a copy of the scope and the current project description, and asked if they had any additional details relevant to the scope. I also located and sent them a project image and asked if there were any better pictures that never got to the marketing files.

I sent each person on the organization chart a copy of the scope and asked if they had any other relevant projects that had not yet gotten onto their resumes.

I gave the completed draft to the principal, then took care of his mark-ups, printed and packaged the SOQ and had it delivered. Two weeks later we found that we weren't short-listed. Apparently, I had gotten us 8th place, but the city only short-listed 7 teams.

The second example was for a regional transit agency. We were already working on the conceptual design. But the agency decided to resolicit for the detailed design, thinking that might bring some new minority-owned firms into the mix. However, many firms didn't know how politically-motivated that client was, and we didn't want other firms to think we had lost the project for technical reasons, so the detailed design became a "must win" project.

The principal said I shouldn't work on anything else until the submittal was delivered. So for the next 30 days, I worked on that SOQ—nothing else. I updated resumes and project descriptions, wrote new text about M/WBE utilization on our projects, tracked down letters of praise for other transit system projects, some letters in their entirety and pulled quotes from others. I got hold of a system map and indicated every location in the system where we had led or participated in a project.

The client had intended to go from SOQs to technical proposals and interviews. But when the SOQs were evaluated, the client announced that it was selecting from the SOQs because the highest ranked team was 400 points ahead of the second ranked team.

We were the selected team!

The moral of the story:

When you participate in team sports, you play to win. When you set out to win work, you have to write to win. You won't come in first if you plan on coming in second or third.

Proposals — who's in charge?

Who's running the show? The principal-in-charge (PIC), the proposed project manager (PM), or the marketing person who is trained and most experienced in managing proposals?

In "Fiddler on the Roof," in the song, "If I Were a Rich Man," Tevye observes that "when you're rich, they think you really know."

The corollary in proposal writing would be, "when you have the highest title, YOU think you really know!" or "when you have the highest title, you believe EVERYBODY ELSE thinks you really know!"

Take it from me, NEITHER IS TRUE ! !

Let's assume the PIC is not simply a control freak. The PIC wants to be in charge because he or she is an owner, and so has the most at risk. This is true, but it doesn't make the PIC a good proposal manager.

Having the biggest risk does not guarantee knowledge about managing a proposal. And it is certainly not the highest and best use of the PIC's time—at a six-figure salary—to be calling subconsultants with writing and graphic assignments and deadlines, font and format requirements for resumes, distribution of forms required in the submittal, or enforcing deadlines.

The PIC's two main jobs are to identify the technical champion (the proposed PM) and then support the efforts of the proposal manager to get the job done.

The PM wants to be in charge because he or she will be in charge of the project when it is won. This sounds reasonable, but managing a proposal, a writing assignment which has to be completed with 30 days at most, can be startlingly different from managing a project, a design assignment that generally has a much longer timeframe.

See the above PIC discussion of why this is not the highest and best use of time for the PM's time. Add to this the fact that the PM still has high direct labor goals that might preclude his/her giving full focus to the proposal.

A marketing manager or senior coordinator, on the other hand, has strong experience in proposal management, and might have actual training for this. In addition, a marketing person will also have relationships with the marketing staff of other firms who might be team members, which will ensure faster and more complete responses to requests for information relative to the proposal.

To begin with, the trained, experienced proposal manager knows what he/she needs from each subconsultant, and will create templates for resumes and project descriptions for the subconsultants to use. He/she knows how to get a subconsultant to supply only one resume per discipline instead of having them "be helpful" and give you five resumes to consider for each when you don't have time to assess them and the subconsultant already knows which one is the best for the submittal.

The same is true for relevant projects. He/she knows how to ask for three projects and get three instead of six or eight. And he/she knows how to get appropriate references for each of those projects.

Finally, the chances are that the marketing staff in a proposal manager role will be in the office every day, available to work on the submittal all day every day if necessary. The same cannot be said for the PIC or PM.

All this makes the marketing person a much more effective proposal manager at a much lower cost than having the PIC or PM spend what might have been billable hours on the administrative chores of proposal management.

By the way, in case you were wondering, that first picture is me as Tevye in the mid 1980s.

Defining the scope — what WON'T you do?

 

Many years ago, I worked in an A/E firm marketing and public relations department that pursued clients and work on its own, in addition to the work we did for our parent company. On one of our direct client projects, we had an interesting situation occur.

We were retained by a land developer putting together a single-family residential community. Our approved scope of work was to present five alternate names for his project based on the renderings of the model homes he would be offering.

Once a name was selected, we were to draft three alternative logos for that name, refine and produce a final logo for the selected alternative, produce logo slicks and color separations that could be used in printing, develop a list of potential names for the streets in the project, develop a brochure for the community, design a presentation envelope for the brochure and other hand-outs, and design the letterhead, second sheets, and mailing envelopes and labels.

When all this was finished and all products had been delivered, we sent the client a final invoice and thought we were done.

Two weeks later, the client called to ask when he could expect to have his letterhead, second sheets, labels and envelopes. Apparently, he expected that the printing of the first batch of stationery would be part of the design scope. We had never mentioned printing in our proposal scope and he had never told us of his expectation.

However, considering the fee we had achieved on the rest of the project scope, we went ahead with the printing job and satisfied the client.

A few weeks later, our department had a session with the firm VP tasked with looking at all contracts before they were signed. He told us that the majority of lawsuits in the A/E industry had nothing to do with the quality of the work or specific performance based on the contract. Almost two-thirds of industry lawsuits, he told us, had to do with unfulfilled expectations, and the great majority of those suits involved instances where the unfulfilled expectations were about items that were assumed rather than spelled out in detail or even discussed in general.

So he gave us a piece of advice: in addition to our proposals being specific about what we would do, we should also be as specific as possible about what we would not do as part of that project scope.

I was smart enough to know that I didn't want to present a list of things our group would not do. So, on the next proposal, I created a list of services that might be assumed as part of the detailed written scope, and presented it as a list of related services that could be provided for an additional negotiated fee.

This told the client that such services were not currently included in the scope, but were available from us should he/she so desire.

I made it a habit to present such a list as the final section of the proposed scope of work in every proposal for that point on.

This was a great "lessons learned" for me. In fact, I still do this on A/E proposals as well. I ask A/E clients what they think might be assumed by the owner so we can present such items as an "additional services for additional fee" listing in proposals.

Strategic planning — questions from a reader

My readers range from coordinators to principals in planning, architecture, engineering, surveying, landscape architecture, environmental and construction management firms, as well as general contractors. One reader, an engineering firm senior principal, had some questions about my May 8th post regarding which people to include in strategic planning sessions.

Following are his questions and my answers.

Based on your experience, is there a “sweet spot” for the size of the strategic planning group?

I don’t believe there is a “sweet spot.” I believe the firm’s lead marketing person and the CEO establish the invitee list together. You don’t want too many people — that would result in too many overhead hours

A lot depends on your process. For example, you can send questions to anyone you think would have good input — up to the entire staff. Then, the lead marketing person or outside consultant drafts a plan for the group to consider. The actual meeting can be a smaller group, charging less time. Think of a proposal where every sentence “earns its place." Now think of every person “earning his/her place” at the planning table. People only get invited if the marketing lead and CEO believe that person can make a valuable contribution.

I realize that there is not a “one-size fits all” answer for my first question. For our firm (~400 employees), if we included all owners, officers, division managers, project managers, newcomers and under 30’s, that might be half the company! Would you pick only selected people from each category?

Generally, every owner wants to be involved in the planning. But if a 400-person firm has 35 owners, and many have a 1% or smaller stake, you might cut the list at an arbitrary minimum percentage stake. Nobody gets invited just because he/she is a project manager — project managers may be great production leaders with no strategic bones in their bodies. This recognition cuts out a bunch of people.

Then divide the "under 30s" into two categories. The first is “generic under 30.” Give each person on the list a copy. Ask them which 2 or 3 people they would like to represent their demographic in the planning session. Invite the 2 or 3 with the most votes.

The second "under 30" group is people you have identified as future firm leaders. If you have more than 4 or 5 people in this group, you need to set the bar higher. By the way, you don’t publicly announce that these are future leaders, but you can tell those individuals privately and ask them not to spread the word.

Other than owners, officers and division or department managers, and market sector leads, only invite people known to be strategic thinkers. Also include all senior marketing/BD and financial/accounting staff. They will have large responsibilities for implementing the plan and monitoring the results.

Have you had experience with strategic planning starting at the division level and moving up and out to the entire company? Does it only work if it comes from Corporate down?

I see things working from Corporate downward. The departmental plan is how the division will meet its goals, and the division plan is how the company will meet its goals. You can ask department and division heads (and program heads, if you have programs that cross departments/divisions) for rough projections to guide the corporate plan, but I think the corporate plan is the real strategy and the division/department plans are the tactics.

If you need help with your corporate planning efforts, please feel free to email me at [email protected] or call me in Austin, TX, at 559-901-9596.