The Decision Maker s Role and Values


The Decision Maker's Role and Values

The third aspect of your reader that you must evaluate as you prepare your proposal is the reader's role in his or her organization. This is important, because people tend to apply the same standards in evaluating others that are applied to them. If my bonus depends on increasing net profitability, you can bet that I'll be looking at your proposal in terms of its impact on net profitability. Thus, if you understand the decision maker's role in the organization, you are more likely to understand the values, or "feelings," to use Cicero's term, that he or she brings to each decision.

Ideally, every proposal you write will go directly into the hands of the final authority, the one person charged with responsibility for signing the contract or issuing the purchase order. But in this imperfect world of ours, you will probably have to deal with intermediaries, advisors, influencers, and others in the client organization, winning their approval as you inch your deal forward toward the final throne of power. Understanding how the concerns of a decision maker change depending on his or her role can help you position your proposal as effectively as possible.

Often a proposal must go through a series of evaluations (see Figure 6-2). These evaluations may be sequential, with the number of candidate proposals decreasing as weak offerings are eliminated at each stage. Thus, the gatekeeper may initially review a dozen submissions, eliminating half of them very quickly on narrow grounds. The user community may then look at that half dozen, reducing the candidates down to just two or three. From this crop of survivors, the economic decision maker will attempt to select the proposal that offers the best return on investment, the lowest total cost of ownership, or some other measure of payback.

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Figure 6-2: Levels of Evaluation.

In other cases, the evaluations may occur simultaneously, with the entire team offering critiques and comments. However, because the team members will come from different areas of the company where they perform different roles, their values will also be different.

The Gatekeeper

The gatekeeper's job is to filter out solutions that are inappropriate in terms of some set of clearly defined criteria. As a result, the gatekeeper is looking for a reason to reject rather than for a reason to recommend. In addition, gatekeepers often feel that they're in a vulnerable position, since their recommendation could come back to haunt them if it proves to be a bad one. It's easier to justify rejecting what would have been a good choice than it is to explain why you recommended what proved to be a terrible one. Their tendency, therefore, is to be extremely critical and to assume the worst whenever they have doubts. Finally, gatekeepers are often drawn from that category of personalities who love details. As a result, you must provide the gatekeeper with clear, specific evidence that you meet the requirements of the RFP.

In an informal research study, we interviewed gatekeepers. We asked them to share their biggest complaints regarding the proposals they receive. Boy, did they vent! Their answers should give you an idea of what to avoid when submitting your proposal for review by a gatekeeper.

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Evaluators' Complaints
  1. The author did not follow the "instructions."

  2. The proposal contains no compliance matrix. As a result, evaluators spend a lot of time trying to figure out if the response is compliant or not.

  3. Emphasis is placed on the "wrong" portions of the solicitation (failure to understand the award criteria).

  4. Lack of meaningful proposal theme(s). No story is told to the evaluator.

  5. Poorly structured response, illogical TOC, misuse of appendices.

  6. Differentiators are not used at all or are not clear.

  7. Many requirements not addressed at all. (Silence on the SOW requirements means the proposal is noncompliant or deficient.)

  8. SOW requirements not addressed with respect to the business.

  9. Technical claims not substantiated with tangible, real data.

  10. Difficult to read: straight text, no bullets, poor graphics, no white space.

  11. Lack of section summaries. Points are buried in long text.

  12. Overuse of boilerplate. The response is not tailored to the business needs of the client or agency issuing the RFP.

  13. Graphics not readable after copying.

  14. Volume emphasized over content: not concise, no focus, no compelling argument.

  15. Writers propose solutions contrary to what is asked for in the SOW.

  16. No page numbers.

  17. Complex section headers and section numbering (e.g., 3.2.1a.1.3).

  18. ROI and risk not addressed.

  19. Misuse of supporting documentation (corporate manuals, marketing literature, etc.).

  20. No ghosting of the competition.

  21. Incumbents leave out details or experience, assuming evaluators "know" their history.

  22. Prime contractors and subcontractors do not convey a team concept, do not appear well integrated.

  23. Highly technical proposals without a substantiated management plan.

  24. Flowery language, useless adjectives. Writing not simple enough.

  25. Bad grammar, poor proofreading, spelling errors, bad figure references, missing pages, and so forth.

  26. Lack of cost realism. Typically, too aggressive or unrealistic on costs.

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The User

The user evaluates the probable impact of your solution on performance: Will this work? Will it actually make things better around here? Does it look easy? Reliable? Simple to maintain? Quick to learn? Does it meet our needs?

The user knows that lots of solutions that meet the technical specs established in an RFP don't actually do the job when they're installed or implemented.

The Ultimate Authority

The person who makes the final decision, who has veto power over the project, usually derives his or her power from direct access to or control over the money. The ultimate authority is the boss, the owner, the CEO. And the ultimate authority's criteria are usually the needs of the business. What will be the bottom-line impact of this solution? What kind of return will this investment provide?




Persuasive Business Proposals. Writing to Win More Customers, Clients, and Contracts
Persuasive Business Proposals: Writing to Win More Customers, Clients, and Contracts
ISBN: 0814471536
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2004
Pages: 130
Authors: Tom Sant

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