How often do weighty “free audits,” detailed technical studies, or long-winded proposals drive customers to embrace efficiency? How many times in your career have you either offered one of these things to a prospect, or received one yourself with horror realizing that now you have to read the thing or at least pretend you did?
Tom Sant is a nationally respected proposal consultant and author who spends his life coaching people on how to make more effective proposals. I was speaking at a national conference where he was also speaking and overheard him telling his audience, “You could probably put the words ‘Up yours!’ anywhere in a thick proposal like this and never be called out because people simply don’t read them!”
I have to agree with him, particularly in situations where you and several other bidders are responding to a Request for Proposal. The committee (or worse yet, individual) responsible for reviewing submittals might have twenty or more of these boat anchors arrive in the mail with only a week or two to review and comment upon each and every one of them. Do you think those proposals ever get read? Skimmed, perhaps. Read from cover to cover? Not on your life.
What would happen if one respondent took a different tack, submitting a one-page proposal (in keeping with our Selling Energy workshops) explaining his or her approach to the project, and then provided a separate technical appendix containing the necessary details? Whose bid response would be reviewed first? Whose bid response would be the most memorable? Whose bid would be the first to be discussed when the committee met to compare notes on all submittals?
