YOUR BRAND
IMPLEMENTATION PARTNER
July 2023
People running everywhere.
Numerous frantic questions about content you know exists but, frustratingly, cannot find.
Last-minute spell-checks.
It’s mayhem, bordering on madness.
Yes, it’s proposal time!
For those who have lived through the act of pulling together a proposal, you’ll know all too well what a stress-inducing exercise it can be. It is easy to feel overwhelmed by the volume of information you need to either write or gather, especially when you know some content already exists but can’t find it.
There are numerous factors that can make proposals a hair-raising adventure, and many of them can be alleviated.
Let’s take a moment to stop, breathe, and be a little kinder to ourselves as we contemplate a better future.
“Do you remember which proposal it was where we talked about…?” I would love a dollar for every time that I’ve heard that sentence.
An organisation’s content is an integral part of its intellectual property. Treating your intellectual property with the respect it deserves is essential for operational efficiencies, consistent messaging to market, and overall business success through proposal wins.
Written content should be housed in a well-thought-through content library. Content libraries can range from ‘manually managed’ through to fully automated systems.
Automation can take many forms, and your organisation’s budget and willingness to invest in a better future are often the drivers behind choosing an appropriate solution. There will be ongoing subscription fees and knowledge management time needed to maintain an automated content system, and depending on the size of your firm, it can pay dividends in the long term.
But even the ‘manually managed’ content approach can still save time and effort at proposal time. Content can be retrieved with minimal clicks and with drag-and-drop functionality. And there isn’t any ongoing subscription with this method, only a commitment to keeping the content up-to-date.
It’s worth exploring what your options are because the more your content grows, the faster your turnaround on proposal creation can be.
As a general rule of thumb, if you re-use it, store it!
Fixed content
Fixed content is often referred to as marketing content, and can contain material such as:
– Information about your organisation
– Organisation contact details
– Services the organisation provides
– Timeline of key organisation milestones, and
– Anything that is repeat content about your organisation.
Having pre-approved marketing content stored in either manual or automatic retrieval systems is the first of many ways in which you can keep your content and your brand’s tone of voice consistent.
Variable content
Oftentimes, during proposal development, there will be large volumes of content that, at least in part, has been written and used before. This content may contain the bulk of what you need; however, needs to be edited to address selection criteria and align with your proposal’s win themes. This is considered to be variable content.
Variable content can include:
– Credentials of past work or engagements.
– CVs of staff (in any volume or format).
– Content relating to ‘why a prospective client should choose you' (there may be a variety of versions of this text, which can be swayed in the direction relevant to the proposal).
– Any other content that can be used as a base to start from, such as, introduction, approach, organisation and/or personnel’s experience, and details about fees and invoicing.
Credentials and CVs
Credentials and CVs are living documents.
CVs should be updated regularly to best reflect the current experience of the individual. It is advised to create multiple CVs sizes for each person, and in some instances, multiple CVs based on the variety of specialist skills that person delivers.
Credentials are a ‘point-in-time’ document and do not need to be updated. Some engagements are large enough to have multiple credentials written about the same project. This gives the proposal manager more nuanced choice when pulling proposals together.
CVs and credentials will need to be managed by either a knowledge manager or similarly organised personnel within the organisation, and some ongoing maintenance is needed.
Having well-maintained credentials and CVs is imperative to a firm’s success at proposal time.
Bespoke content
Bespoke content is written specifically for the proposal at the time it is needed.
This content focuses heavily on win themes and addresses selection criteria for the proposal. Depending on the content, you may opt to store this content for future use in the aforementioned content retrieval systems.
In order to facilitate seamless integration of bespoke content, professionally designed templates should be created in either PowerPoint or Word.
The quality of your visual output is a direct reflection of your organisation and its brand.
You could have written award-winning prose, but if it is not visually communicated effectively, you will lose your audience.
Templates need to look good, be on brand, and can have the functionality to effortlessly connect with supporting content systems.
A diagnostic review of your current template status can reveal where improvements can be made.
Templates created using a systems-thinking mindset will allow for seamless integration into a broader proposal ecosystem.
And the best part is that once templates have been designed and implemented, there are little-to-no ongoing costs.
As noted, there are numerous ways to improve your proposal’s process, design, and content.
As each organisation is unique, so are the appropriate solutions. But even the best solutions for proposals are futile unless you invest in ongoing oversight driven by detail and consistency.
Undertaking a review of your proposal structure would be the first step in gaining clarity on where the pain points and bottlenecks currently exist. From there, engaging the right systems-thinking design professionals to assist you will go a long way towards setting up a proposal ecosystem where you no longer need to experience proposal madness again.
In this comprehensive guide we explore how small to medium‑sized professional service firms can harness templates and knowledge management solutions that deliver operational efficiencies and consistency to market.
We take a look at this widespread efficiency issue through the lens of knowledge management and quality templates.
July 2023
People running everywhere.
Numerous frantic questions about content you know exists but, frustratingly, cannot find.
Last-minute spell-checks.
It’s mayhem, bordering on madness.
Yes, it’s proposal time!
For those who have lived through the act of pulling together a proposal, you’ll know all too well what a stress-inducing exercise it can be. It is easy to feel overwhelmed by the volume of information you need to either write or gather, especially when you know some content already exists but can’t find it.
There are numerous factors that can make proposals a hair-raising adventure, and many of them can be alleviated.
Let’s take a moment to stop, breathe, and be a little kinder to ourselves as we contemplate a better future.
“Do you remember which proposal it was where we talked about…?” I would love a dollar for every time that I’ve heard that sentence.
An organisation’s content is an integral part of its intellectual property. Treating your intellectual property with the respect it deserves is essential for operational efficiencies, consistent messaging to market, and overall business success through proposal wins.
Written content should be housed in a well-thought-through content library. Content libraries can range from ‘manually managed’ through to fully automated systems.
Automation can take many forms, and your organisation’s budget and willingness to invest in a better future are often the drivers behind choosing an appropriate solution. There will be ongoing subscription fees and knowledge management time needed to maintain an automated content system, and depending on the size of your firm, it can pay dividends in the long term.
But even the ‘manually managed’ content approach can still save time and effort at proposal time. Content can be retrieved with minimal clicks and with drag-and-drop functionality. And there isn’t any ongoing subscription with this method, only a commitment to keeping the content up-to-date.
It’s worth exploring what your options are because the more your content grows, the faster your turnaround on proposal creation can be.
As a general rule of thumb, if you re-use it, store it!
Fixed content
Fixed content is often referred to as marketing content, and can contain material such as:
– Information about your organisation
– Organisation contact details
– Services the organisation provides
– Timeline of key organisation milestones, and
– Anything that is repeat content about your organisation.
Having pre-approved marketing content stored in either manual or automatic retrieval systems is the first of many ways in which you can keep your content and your brand’s tone of voice consistent.
Variable content
Oftentimes, during proposal development, there will be large volumes of content that, at least in part, has been written and used before. This content may contain the bulk of what you need; however, needs to be edited to address selection criteria and align with your proposal’s win themes. This is considered to be variable content.
Variable content can include:
– Credentials of past work or engagements.
– CVs of staff (in any volume or format).
– Content relating to ‘why a prospective client should choose you' (there may be a variety of versions of this text, which can be swayed in the direction relevant to the proposal).
– Any other content that can be used as a base to start from, such as, introduction, approach, organisation and/or personnel’s experience, and details about fees and invoicing.
Credentials and CVs
Credentials and CVs are living documents.
CVs should be updated regularly to best reflect the current experience of the individual. It is advised to create multiple CVs sizes for each person, and in some instances, multiple CVs based on the variety of specialist skills that person delivers.
Credentials are a ‘point-in-time’ document and do not need to be updated. Some engagements are large enough to have multiple credentials written about the same project. This gives the proposal manager more nuanced choice when pulling proposals together.
CVs and credentials will need to be managed by either a knowledge manager or similarly organised personnel within the organisation, and some ongoing maintenance is needed.
Having well-maintained credentials and CVs is imperative to a firm’s success at proposal time.
Bespoke content
Bespoke content is written specifically for the proposal at the time it is needed.
This content focuses heavily on win themes and addresses selection criteria for the proposal. Depending on the content, you may opt to store this content for future use in the aforementioned content retrieval systems.
In order to facilitate seamless integration of bespoke content, professionally designed templates should be created in either PowerPoint or Word.
The quality of your visual output is a direct reflection of your organisation and its brand.
You could have written award-winning prose, but if it is not visually communicated effectively, you will lose your audience.
Templates need to look good, be on brand, and can have the functionality to effortlessly connect with supporting content systems.
A diagnostic review of your current template status can reveal where improvements can be made.
Templates created using a systems-thinking mindset will allow for seamless integration into a broader proposal ecosystem.
And the best part is that once templates have been designed and implemented, there are little-to-no ongoing costs.
As noted, there are numerous ways to improve your proposal’s process, design, and content.
As each organisation is unique, so are the appropriate solutions. But even the best solutions for proposals are futile unless you invest in ongoing oversight driven by detail and consistency.
Undertaking a review of your proposal structure would be the first step in gaining clarity on where the pain points and bottlenecks currently exist. From there, engaging the right systems-thinking design professionals to assist you will go a long way towards setting up a proposal ecosystem where you no longer need to experience proposal madness again.
In this comprehensive guide we explore how small to medium‑sized professional service firms can harness templates and knowledge management solutions that deliver operational efficiencies and consistency to market.
We take a look at this widespread efficiency issue through the lens of knowledge management and quality templates.
