John Tyreman: 0:19

All right. Welcome back to another episode of Breaking Biz Dev. Mark. How you doing today?

Mark Wainwright: 0:24

Good, good. We're at, at the time the year where we're seeing some, shifting of hours, daylight savings, other things like that. John, we just talked about it, so we might be a little, blurry eyed, with this one, you

John Tyreman: 0:35

Oh yeah.

Mark Wainwright: 0:35

gruff in the voice. Who knows how, this'll, play out. But, um, thanks for,, thanks for hanging in with, us folks. Thank you.

John Tyreman: 0:41

Well, I think it'll lend itself well, you know, if we're a little grouchy, this is a bit of a snarky episode too. So

Mark Wainwright: 0:46

is, it is.

John Tyreman: 0:47

I'm excited to, talk about why proposals suck, why they can suck, and some of the reasons behind that. all the way from that, first RFP, into those final submissions and even beyond. So.

Mark Wainwright: 1:01

Yeah, even beyond, we might even get some people who are like, look, coming at this from like a wedding proposal. They like come across our, do some search and they're like, W why did, why did they say

John Tyreman: 1:11

If they're regular, listen listeners of the show, they'll understand if we,

Mark Wainwright: 1:16

are some amazing parallels between, you know, the larger world of proposals and, and,

John Tyreman: 1:21

that's true.

Mark Wainwright: 1:22

our industry of proposals. But yeah, we're here to talk about specifically the sort of proposal process, why it is fraught with problems and, how you manage to just fall in line with this terrible process of selecting a, Trusted advisor, it's just so problematic. And, there's a ton of individuals and groups out there who just constantly beat their head. It's against the wall around proposals so this is not a, this is not an abstraction, John. This is a systematic problem and we're gonna highlight why. Ugh. Day in and day out, your proposals just keep on sucking.

John Tyreman: 2:07

So let's, unpack it. What's the big kind of high level takeaway? Like what's the tip of the iceberg? And then we can just kind of start to drill down.

Mark Wainwright: 2:15

Yeah, we're gonna deal with this in sort of a, timeline of, where did this thing come from, like the proposal and, we're gonna kind of walk through a timeline on it, but here are the, the big level points, this should come as no surprise to people who have listened to Breaking Biz Dev. clients write these proposals and we just assume that they know exactly what they need, that they have self-diagnosed, to use that sort of medical reframing. They've self-diagnosed so they know exactly what they need, so you're just gonna read it and, give them a price. I. The other thing is right, these things often start looking like a big glossy brochure, right? It's a big marketing piece. and it's just

John Tyreman: 2:57

It needs to look pretty.

Mark Wainwright: 2:59

Yeah, yeah. And there's, yeah, right? The make it pretty thing right here, we're gonna put the words in it. You just go Here, here, marketing person. Go, go. Make it pretty. The other thing is, again and again, these proposals just force us to talk about ourselves. And I know that sounds weird. You're like, well, sure Mar, how, how are we gonna,, win if we don't talk about ourselves from cover to cover?

John Tyreman: 3:22

That's right.

Mark Wainwright: 3:22

so yeah, you just go talk about yourself and if it includes some sort of a price at the back end, you've come at it. Wrong. You're gonna give them one. You've done your spreadsheets, you've done your calculations, you've thrown your darts at the dartboard to try to figure out what price gonna associate with this thing, and you just give them one, take it or leave it price. And we've talked about this, ad nauseum, so you give'em one, take it or leave it price and you know, right. It's the last one is like it's, this isn't a conversation.

John Tyreman: 3:52

Yeah.

Mark Wainwright: 3:53

Right. Well, we think that, sending this thing off, you know, whether it's some big glossy brochure looking thing or just some pieces of paper, we send it off in an email and cross our fingers and say, okay, let's hope for the

John Tyreman: 4:05

Now we wait.

Mark Wainwright: 4:06

now we wait, you know, we

John Tyreman: 4:08

You know, the, the funny thing is these are all. Topics that we've covered in the past, and we're weaving them together through the lens of proposals,

Mark Wainwright: 4:17

yeah. They all come to a head. Right. So it's just bad. So, alright, so let's, let's walk through these. three.

John Tyreman: 4:25

In the beginning, right? So if we go like all the way back to where these proposals originate from,

Mark Wainwright: 4:32

yeah.

John Tyreman: 4:32

most of the time it's through that kind of R-F-P-R-F-Q process. So that's our first kinda landing point. Like if we go back in our time machine, let's go back where all these proposals begin. Where does it start? where do proposals start to suck?

Mark Wainwright: 4:47

Yeah. From the, from the get go. Right?

John Tyreman: 4:51

Yeah,

Mark Wainwright: 4:51

it's, well, it's, to go back to that first thing, right? Is that we just assume the client knows what they need. And

John Tyreman: 4:56

right.

Mark Wainwright: 4:57

proposal starts with the client, the client organization. They have a need, they have a problem, whatever else that they need to overcome, so they. Do their homework and they start to sort of self-diagnose. Who knows? Maybe they've had some outside expertise come in and help them with that little thing to kind of get them going. It's like, yeah, you have a problem here. You might have some, some ways to solve it, but it typically starts with the organization. The organization goes through this process where there's sort of sort of self diagnosing. And then they say, okay, we've got, an idea of what this problem is. Let's get it down on a piece of paper and let's. Send it out. either broadcast that or centered out to some organizations, with all the bullet points of what we need and what we want them to do and, that sort of thing. And we wanna do it in a way that we can hopefully minimize price and schedule and scope and all that kind of stuff. We don't want this thing to get outta hand. So it starts right there, right? It starts with this self-diagnosis and sometimes that's off the,

John Tyreman: 5:55

Well, well hold up. Hold up. Time out. Time out. Time out. So. It sounds like, part of this is that when firms get into this scenario, they're too quick to jump the gun to estimating and building like a service design, right? so there needs to be a little bit more emphasis upstream even. And so I'm thinking like, what about that go no-go process,

Mark Wainwright: 6:17

yeah, yeah.

John Tyreman: 6:17

Like, who, should we even bid on this? On this RFP?

Mark Wainwright: 6:20

sure. the go no go is, when the organization that needs some help sends it out, it lands in your inbox and you read it really quickly and you kind of fudge about how expertise is a fantastic match

John Tyreman: 6:33

Right.

Mark Wainwright: 6:34

needs are, whether or not they are

John Tyreman: 6:35

You look for reasons why and not why not.

Mark Wainwright: 6:38

Yeah. Right. Yeah. Right. That's well said. It's right. Just in case people didn't hear that. Right. We read these solicitations it's just go, go,

John Tyreman: 6:46

It's ingrained in us, right? We want to win. We want to go after. We want to grow.

Mark Wainwright: 6:51

Yeah. all the why's and we rarely touch on the why nots, right? Because the why nots are like downers. It's like, we don't wanna, of course we could win this thing. So you get it, you start reading through it. Your go no go is just fraught with problems. We've touched on the go. No go in the past. They

John Tyreman: 7:05

Yep.

Mark Wainwright: 7:06

gamed. You know, some people have these fancy score sheets and

John Tyreman: 7:09

Put the thumb on the scales.

Mark Wainwright: 7:11

right. They're problematic. So,

John Tyreman: 7:13

Yeah.

Mark Wainwright: 7:13

I don't know how many legs of the stool that we are kind of dealing with here, but that's the one, right? It's like the solicitation shows up, the request for proposal shows up in the organization and it's fraught with problems, but we ignore them. And then the go, no go kind of happens and you're gonna go. And that's, problematic. we're like a half step into this whole thing and we've already blown it.

John Tyreman: 7:37

a lot of times in these requests per for proposals, like you said, the client has sort of self-diagnosed, what they think they need,

Mark Wainwright: 7:44

Yeah.

John Tyreman: 7:44

then what they're looking for is to shortcut that whole sales process and what would be, finding the right solution. Because a lot of times, these buyers, they don't know what, they need, they know what they think they need. They don't fully understand a lot of the implications, and that's why as experts, you should be in a position to consult your clients and discover what their needs are.

Mark Wainwright: 8:07

Yeah, yeah, exactly. problem uh. You haven't had the conversation, you

John Tyreman: 8:15

Right.

Mark Wainwright: 8:15

ability to have that and forth with the client to really stress test, you know, dig below the surface, kind of push and pull a little bit on the solicitation, the question that they have, the problem that they have in front of them. You haven't, haven't had a chance to work that they just kind of came up with it and now they send this whole thing out. And I've used this analogy, and we chuckled about it the other day when we were talking about it, but the client has set a trap. So this solicitation, and we'll touch on this again and again, John,'cause there's a lot of these. you're picturing yourself walking through the woods, right? And your trail is with bear traps, these big, gnarly rusty bear traps. And we step right into them all the time. Right?

John Tyreman: 9:05

Oh, okay.

Mark Wainwright: 9:06

step into is that we just assume the client knows. What they want or what they need, right? What's what, whatever the, the solution is, and people listening to this that have some experiences saying, no, no, mark, we know the client doesn't know best. We know we're gonna go and second guess, but that's not how we act,

John Tyreman: 9:21

Right.

Mark Wainwright: 9:22

At the end of the day, we just take the solicitation for what it is verbatim, and we just spit back out them, you know, kind of like what we think they want to hear. that's our first trap. We've stepped in, John, we've got our ankle. Securely snagged there with the big,

John Tyreman: 9:35

The big, rusty, gnarly steel bear trap. Yeah. And you know, the hard part about all of this is the river's flowing at this point. It's gonna be hard for you to row upstream. Because the client they believe that this is the process they need to follow. This is their buying process. So any deviation from that is going to cause, you know, may, maybe not frustration, but just kind of it's stepping outside of what they're used to.

Mark Wainwright: 10:01

Yeah. already moving.

John Tyreman: 10:03

yeah.

Mark Wainwright: 10:03

moving. There's timelines, there's schedules, there's competition. There's this deadline, there's this. Right. It's just going, there's no time to say time out. I mean,

John Tyreman: 10:14

So you got that gnarly steel bear trap around your leg and you're off down the river.

Mark Wainwright: 10:18

Yeah, forget it. Yeah. Yeah. did, we did. We mix metaphors

John Tyreman: 10:21

I, I think we may have, but you know, just to drive the point home. So,

Mark Wainwright: 10:25

Brutal. Yeah.

John Tyreman: 10:26

right, so you stepped into this trap of even just responding to the, this proposal in a way that, puts the client in the driver's seat.

Mark Wainwright: 10:34

Yeah.

John Tyreman: 10:35

so let's, go into that second stage where you're actually. Kinda like building the proposal. maybe it wasn't the right decision to go for it, but you did. maybe it wasn't the best thing to follow that same process and structure, but you're going to,

Mark Wainwright: 10:49

Yeah.

John Tyreman: 10:49

now it's time to build the proposal.

Mark Wainwright: 10:52

Yeah, so the, proposal is a response. It is the second half of this whole sort of if then logic thing,

John Tyreman: 10:59

Mm-hmm.

Mark Wainwright: 11:00

is the beginning, and you know, right or wrong. It's like if this is what the client needs, then this will be our response. So we have to react to that if part meaning that the client has their needs, has the bullet points. This is, you know, the situation. This is what we need,, right or wrong. We have to translate that our world. And we just say we need to create an understanding. And the translation is our understanding, So the client asks for something, we have to read it and process it and think about it and understand it, and then we have to react to it. then we have to create the proposal with our response and where this is so problematic, why the situation that we or we find ourselves in is so problematic is that we kind of skip over that sort of moment to read, understand, reflect, and create this sort of well sorted understanding that. Is the foundation on which we build our, response. So we get this document, this, this request for proposals. We have to read it and understand it and you know, if this was great, this would be happening in a conversation. If I heard you right, you know, solicitation folks, client, this is what you think you might need. Right? If I heard you right, if I understood you correctly, is what I think you need. But we don't have a chance to do any of that. So we have

John Tyreman: 12:18

Right.

Mark Wainwright: 12:19

we have to just, create an understanding on our own and then jump to the proposal part. The thing I'm trying to highlight here is we have to make sure that we are explicit about our understanding. We have to create that.

John Tyreman: 12:31

Right.

Mark Wainwright: 12:31

That connection between what they ask for and what we're gonna recommend, which is what I've called in the past, a statement of understanding. And that needs to be a critical part of the proposals. Anybody that I've worked with, all the clients out there, if you've, done any work with me at all, you know that this is something I, pound my fist on the desk about. It's

John Tyreman: 12:48

Mm-hmm.

Mark Wainwright: 12:49

have to create a statement of understanding in your proposal every single time that says, we heard this, we understood this, you gave us this background., so this is our understanding and the reason you do that is at the very end of the understanding you say, did we get that right?

John Tyreman: 13:04

Right

Mark Wainwright: 13:05

we missed? Right. Again, that's fantastic to use in a conversation, harder to use in sort of this, this document. But what you wanna do is you wanna show the client everything you've understood and then you go to your proposal because. They need to know if you started out right,

John Tyreman: 13:20

Right, exactly.

Mark Wainwright: 13:21

direction. Oh yeah, those guys got it right. They got that point, they got this. They understood the background. Good. They see where we're trying to go. Great. They understand we can go to the recommendations, but if you start off wrong, if you didn't understand the question, how can your response be? Right? So

John Tyreman: 13:39

Well, that's,

Mark Wainwright: 13:39

That's that

John Tyreman: 13:40

that's exactly right.'cause the flip side of that is, oh, they understand me is Oh, the, no, wait a second. That's, how did they get to that understanding?

Mark Wainwright: 13:49

Yep.

John Tyreman: 13:49

it becomes like an interest that, well, did we tee that up? Right? Like, did they get, did they infer that from the RFP that we sent out? And then that becomes, you know, a, a moment in time where you can recalibrate what those expectations are and align on what the court problem is. And maybe that's different from what they originally thought.

Mark Wainwright: 14:09

Right, right, right. So that's

John Tyreman: 14:11

Yeah.

Mark Wainwright: 14:11

right, right off the bat, right? We have to start with that understanding thing. We skip right over it. We just go to their response. You know, we start crafting. We start creating the solution. I have heard so many times, consultants, whoever they are out there, whether they're engineers or. architects or advisors or whoever else they are, it's like, you know, there's some line they sneak into the cover letter that's like, oh, we've already started coming up with the solution. We've already started solving this. sounds fun. If you're a client. They're like, oh, they've already started. Woo, great. They've already started the solution. This is fantastic. But lo and behold, we find out that the solution that they're trying to craft

John Tyreman: 14:50

It doesn't align.

Mark Wainwright: 14:51

started off wrong. You know, it was like that whole sort of compass setting on a boat, right? If you're one or two degrees off and where you

John Tyreman: 14:57

Right. Yep.

Mark Wainwright: 14:58

By the time you've traveled the required distance, you're well off track. You know, you've missed it. you've missed that little wonderful island you were going and now you're floating in the middle of the Pacific and you're like, wait, I thought we were on track here.

John Tyreman: 15:10

I love it when we use sailing analogies for sales topics.

Mark Wainwright: 15:14

Yeah. Yeah. We've done that in the past. We've, I don't know.

John Tyreman: 15:16

Yeah.

Mark Wainwright: 15:17

For the sailors out there, they get it. Right. If you're just a little bit off, you're in trouble.

John Tyreman: 15:20

Yeah.

Mark Wainwright: 15:21

right. foundationally lack of understanding, the lack of sort of articulating that understanding, being really explicit about it, that's missing.'cause Oh, by the way, the client never asked for it in their solicitation, so we're not gonna give them the understanding. You have to. So that's that part. And then this next chunk. John, it's just something that always gets my goat,

John Tyreman: 15:41

Yeah, we, we talked about it and making the proposals look like a brochure,

Mark Wainwright: 15:46

yeah,

John Tyreman: 15:46

it look pretty. And I've heard that used so often in my experience. Just make it look pretty.

Mark Wainwright: 15:52

yeah. And you know I love and proposal professionals. they're good folks. they're talented, they do hard work. They do not just hard

John Tyreman: 16:02

A lot of grunt work.

Mark Wainwright: 16:03

They do a lot of grunt work. There's a lot They do nearly impossible work.

John Tyreman: 16:06

Yeah.

Mark Wainwright: 16:07

when

John Tyreman: 16:07

Herding cats.

Mark Wainwright: 16:09

Yeah. Yeah. Totally hurting, you know, trying to get their SMEs to give them information to put in proposals and updated resumes. It's really tough.

John Tyreman: 16:15

Yeah.

Mark Wainwright: 16:16

the problem here is a lot of the people who are proposal professionals inside of professional services firms are sort of trained in early career sort of marketing communications. People

John Tyreman: 16:29

Mm-hmm.

Mark Wainwright: 16:30

their past, like their training has been in marketing communications. They use Adobe InDesign and Photoshop, and they're coming at this from a creative perspective and they

John Tyreman: 16:42

Right.

Mark Wainwright: 16:42

make a document that reflects, that reflects that creativity. So it ends up looking, it ends up looking like a glossy brochure and. folks. Proposals are not marketing tools.

John Tyreman: 16:55

No.

Mark Wainwright: 16:56

are sales right? And that's not to say that your sales tools can't look nice, but. Rather than leaning super hard into graphic design, when we're talking about proposals, what you really need to do is lean into information design, making sure that the information that you're communicating in your proposal is legible, understandable, you know, is concise. that you can sometimes present and represent these complex processes or complex ideas using. Whatever it is, simple graphics, simple tools inside of that proposal to help your client simplify these complex problems. Right. And that doesn't happen.

John Tyreman: 17:40

that's not to say also that there is no room for a marketing slide deck. you can use a pitch deck. There is a use case for that. I would even argue that you probably don't even need that and that those graphic design. Skills and resources would be better applied to your firm website, honestly, because that's the, you know, that's the front,, door, that's the entrance way.

Mark Wainwright: 18:01

Yeah. You're listening to breaking biz dev

John Tyreman: 18:04

the podcast that beats up, breaks down, and redefines business development for the professional services firms of tomorrow. Your hosts are John Tyerman, founder of Red Cedar Marketing, the podcast marketing company for experts and professional services firms,

Mark Wainwright: 18:19

And Mark Wainwright, principal consultant and founder of Wainwright Insight, the fractional sales manager and sales consultant to professional services firms.

John Tyreman: 18:28

If you find this podcast helpful, please help us by following the show and leaving a review on Apple podcasts

Mark Wainwright: 18:34

and now back to the show.

John Tyreman: 18:38

so yeah, you're right. information design, how do you structure the different options, the different, kinda like timelines of your project and all of those things to convey information in a succinct, efficient way.

Mark Wainwright: 18:50

Yeah. Yeah. So that's often missing. And again, no, I'm not casting any shade on, on anyone here. But John, if there's any marketing proposal professionals out there and just one of them catches hold of this and he's like, oh yeah, right. I need to be much better at information design than graphic design. it's, there are different things, right? And I just, I would hope that people start rethinking that. So, right, so building the proposal, it's lacking an understanding. It starts to look like a brochure and it's that other, there there's a trap, right? There's that other. right? the first gnarly bear trap was the fact that, we just blindly assumed that the client knew exactly what they needed. The second one here and you stepped right in it, is that the client's solicitation, this request for proposals basically says, Hey, for 20 pages, talk about yourself, and we step right into that.

John Tyreman: 19:46

Yeah. Instead of reflecting back the client's scenario, what they're faced with, the problem that they're faced with and the how they would approach. Solving for that. Instead it's, here's our work and here's how we are different than our competitors.

Mark Wainwright: 20:04

Yeah, And in the proposals, a lot of times there's an approach section. It's like, here's the recommendations. And the recommendations are always, here's us, and here's what we'll do,

John Tyreman: 20:13

right.

Mark Wainwright: 20:14

rather than. And this may sound different, this may sound the

John Tyreman: 20:17

Here's the out.

Mark Wainwright: 20:18

than here's you the client and your problem and your needs, and here's what we're going to do with you.

John Tyreman: 20:23

Yep. Here's the outcomes you can expect as a result.

Mark Wainwright: 20:26

you're trying to achieve, and here's what we're gonna do alongside of you in aid of you, right?

John Tyreman: 20:31

Yeah.

Mark Wainwright: 20:31

is professional services, John. We're here to serve. The work we do is not ours in professional services. It belongs to the clients, right? We're just simply walking alongside them, helping them, guiding them, so. is a reframe. And if you read through anybody out there, if you've worked on proposals, you've have one maybe sitting on your desk right now or on the screen, right. Just read through that thing and you're like, holy smokes. We talked about ourselves the whole time.

John Tyreman: 20:57

I love doing this as just a quick kind of spot check, look at a page in your proposal and look at the amount of second person language to first person language,

Mark Wainwright: 21:07

Yeah.

John Tyreman: 21:08

and that should be a two to one ratio. You should be talking about the client and them and you and yours. You know, way more than I, and we in us, in ours.

Mark Wainwright: 21:17

yeah, yeah. So it's that. Highlighter thing where you're highlighting

John Tyreman: 21:20

Yep.

Mark Wainwright: 21:20

that are about you and about them, and on balance, we step right into that trap. John,

John Tyreman: 21:25

All right. So we've stepped into a gnarly rusty steel bear trap, and then we've fallen into a river, and now we've gotten caught by a rusty hook in the other leg.

Mark Wainwright: 21:37

Well,

John Tyreman: 21:38

it's just dragging us down. All right, what's the next trap that we're falling into?

Mark Wainwright: 21:42

but yet we persist, right? We're

John Tyreman: 21:44

It's like Wiley Coyote.

Mark Wainwright: 21:46

we're still gonna win. We're still, yeah. We've got this. Yeah, we're in trouble, right? We're on the,, we're starting to lose. We had that compass thing going on. We were degrees off, like we've got a mess on our hands.

John Tyreman: 21:56

gosh.

Mark Wainwright: 21:57

and then we we've got this last little part. we've got the

John Tyreman: 21:59

I.

Mark Wainwright: 21:59

part of the proposal we have to find out, which is like, all right, we gotta come up with a price. Right. It's always like the last

John Tyreman: 22:06

Oh, yep. Mm-hmm.

Mark Wainwright: 22:07

they gotta come up with the price. Right. And I mentioned this before, right? is another trap maybe it's a trap we reached into with our hand or something like that. And the other trap here is that we come into this. we pull the spreadsheet out. We've seen all the spreadsheets. When they do your pricing, you're like, rows and columns, people, hours, dollars due to calculations and everything. And you scroll down to the bottom and there's the big number at the very bottom. We take that big number. We stuff all this sort of, here's all the stuff we'll do. We put that big number in the proposal and we cross our fingers, It's'cause

John Tyreman: 22:38

It and send it via email.

Mark Wainwright: 22:40

We're a high cost provider, John, if they don't take, this high price, then you know, it's their fault and we don't wanna work with him anyways.

John Tyreman: 22:48

And that's the only option that they have.

Mark Wainwright: 22:52

Right?

John Tyreman: 22:52

Take it or leave it, man. Yeah.

Mark Wainwright: 22:54

Conversely. We've talked about this at length,

John Tyreman: 22:58

Yep.

Mark Wainwright: 22:58

you gotta give them options. Buyers need options. They need context. They need the low, medium, high. They need the soft, medium, hard. They need the basic, the standard, the enhanced, they need context in order to, figure out, and this is the line I love, right? They need to figure out how they can work with you, not if. They'll work with you.

John Tyreman: 23:20

Oh, I like that a lot.

Mark Wainwright: 23:21

you give them the options. They give them the 1, 2, 3 options. It say, oh, there's a spectrum here. They're not endless ranges though. There's option A, there's option B, and there's option C. Now the choice is yours, prospective client. You get to choose.

John Tyreman: 23:35

Yeah,

Mark Wainwright: 23:35

Yeah. So gotta give them options.

John Tyreman: 23:39

gotta give them options. All right, so that was another trap that you fall into

Mark Wainwright: 23:42

Yeah. Yeah.

John Tyreman: 23:44

and there's some debris flying in the river and it's slashing you left and right man.

Mark Wainwright: 23:49

mess.

John Tyreman: 23:49

But you're in it without a paddle. And so the price, and I jumped the gun a little bit, but the, next part is actually submitting the proposal. So what are some of the traps that firms can fall into when they're submitting it?

Mark Wainwright: 24:03

When we are presenting our proposal, you know, I can't see any other way, John. It just, it has to be a conversation because every time we send something off to the client without this conversation, there's a ton of misunderstanding, lack of clarity. They immediately have questions, and we're not there to answer them. We're not there to see their reaction. So again, this whole thing is fraught with problems there's no conversation.

John Tyreman: 24:32

You know, I like this'cause it kind of blends with another one of the traps that we talked about earlier is the brochure and graphic design versus information design.

Mark Wainwright: 24:41

Yeah.

John Tyreman: 24:42

I think this, like we've, we've talked about three option tables in the past, and I think that's what you're alluding to here is, you know, give the client three different options, low, medium, high. that is an exercise in information design because designing that table you want to convey. The right level of depth with the right level of width in terms of those different, the range of different options. So I think that just to, put a fine point on and a tangible example of information design versus graphic design. Sure. There's, what's the color of option one, header versus option two And that's, there's some graphic design that goes into that, but by and large, that would be a good example of information design.

Mark Wainwright: 25:24

Yes, yes. And you know, this thing gets sealed up or emailed off or whatever else. And you know, the group, uh, you know, has a collective sigh of relief. think, well, we did our part. But there's this last part, and I think I've heard, Blair ends. Mentioned this on,, two bobs. I know we've kind of reigned some praise on, David t Bakker and Blair ends on their podcast. Go listen if you haven't. Blair has said in the past that you need to be compliant with their requests and other requirements their proposal solicitation process, but you can't be complicit to a bad buying. Process.

John Tyreman: 26:06

Right.

Mark Wainwright: 26:07

the, so that's the different, right? You need to comply with what their requests are. Sure. You're gonna get yourself booted if you don't, right? There's certain requirements, there's certain mandatories that you need to take care of, but you can't be walking alongside a really. Problematic process that's just fraught with bear traps and just be okay with it. Right. You know, at something, this goes all the way back to the go no-go thing. This goes to submitting it and all these things, it's just fraught with all these problems. You're like, oh man, I just wish this could all be different. I wish we could have conversations. I wish we would've presented options. I wish that we could have seen the client's immediate reaction to the price and the scope and everything, and had a conversation about it. so the. Process is fraught with problems and you are, you know, kinda an accessory to murder in this whole thing.

John Tyreman: 26:54

Right.

Mark Wainwright: 26:54

just gone along with it.

John Tyreman: 26:56

And it seems easy, right? All we gotta do is just read this. We don't even have to interface with the client very much, and then we can just do it all in house and send it off and that's what leads to low win rates and poor clients and low margins.

Mark Wainwright: 27:11

right, right, right. But. John, we know there's one more piece.

John Tyreman: 27:15

So what, what's the next, what's the bonus piece of this? All you're, you're telling me, mark, that just hitting send on your email and blasting that proposal off. That's not the end.

Mark Wainwright: 27:26

No, because lo and behold, strikes and you get a call that says, we'd like you to come in for an interview.

John Tyreman: 27:36

Shiver me timbers. You are telling me that we got to the next stage.

Mark Wainwright: 27:41

to the next step. Unbelievable. We didn't know the client. We did a terrible job at showing them. We understand them. We gave them one, take it or leave it price. did all these things terribly. In spite of all that, actually want to talk to us now.

John Tyreman: 27:56

How can we suck even more? Now,

Mark Wainwright: 27:58

How can

John Tyreman: 27:58

what's the next?

Mark Wainwright: 27:59

right. How can, what's the next, what's the next trap? And this is, there is one, John. You know, it, there's just, there is. We've got,, we're basically paralyzed on the trail now with so many, we've got ourselves sort of entwined in all these traps.

John Tyreman: 28:11

mode now.

Mark Wainwright: 28:12

We're can, like we're There's barely a pulse. Yeah, but there's one more huge trap that we're going to stumble into. And that is get invited to the interview, the prospective client says, alright, so you can gonna come into the interview. Here's a basic outline. We want you to answer these five questions or whatever else it is, and you just nod and say, oh great, we've got a 60 minute interview and we get to talk about ourselves the whole time.

John Tyreman: 28:40

Oh my God.

Mark Wainwright: 28:41

Oh, the trap there. It was. that's the trap. So, right, so you pull out the slide deck and you do the images and you get your bullet points and you talk about this and you put little scribbly drawings or you know, big ideas up on the screen and you're waving your hands and there's,, the light show comes in and there are people standing up and talking and others and you know, it's. It's crazy.

John Tyreman: 29:08

It's like a performance. Then the fog starts to rise in a single beam of light comes down.

Mark Wainwright: 29:14

could you imagine? you're in a selection committee. In an interview and an architecture firm walks in the door and all of a sudden the lights drop and the smoke machine starts and there's a big spotlight and lasers kind of going all over the place. I, I, I don't want anybody to take this seriously,'cause somebody out there is thinking, oh.

John Tyreman: 29:31

Oh wow. What a point of differentiation,

Mark Wainwright: 29:34

lasers, right? The

John Tyreman: 29:35

right? Anything but talking about the client.

Mark Wainwright: 29:38

Yeah. Uh, anything. Right, right, right. So yeah. Right. What should be happening otherwise, right. In all seriousness, this is potentially the first time, unfortunately, that we've been in the presence of the prospective clients. We have to do everything we possibly can to avoid that trap of talking about ourselves for the 60 minutes that they've graciously given us,

John Tyreman: 30:00

Yeah.

Mark Wainwright: 30:00

and figure out a way to talk with them, to have conversation, right? To get to know them, to introduce ourselves to one another, to make sure that we understood things correctly. It's like, look, in our proposal we provided a. Hopefully you provided a really clear understanding you know, a statement of understanding. Now it's the perfect time to say, look, in the first five minutes of the interview, you've done your introductions. Everyone said, said hi to each other, you just ask them, Hey, did we get that right? We gave you our understanding and we weren't clear on some things, other things much more clearer. But did we get that right? then you stop talking. I.

John Tyreman: 30:41

Shut up and listen.

Mark Wainwright: 30:43

You shut up and listen. Right? and hopefully there's an opportunity for them to, at a minimum, get some head nods. And,,, best case scenario, you get a little back and forth. They say, yeah, well most of it was good, but there was this important thing and that important thing. That maybe you could have hit on more, or this is something that most of the teams really, really missed, and we were hoping that people would hit on that. Then all of a sudden you say, ah, great. Now we gotta talk about that thing. Rather than just assuming that we nailed the understanding and everything else, and we're just gonna go yak, yak, yak, slide. Next slide, please. You know? Right. So that's. Key, right? We're in the presence of the client and We have to avoid the trap of blocking in the door and talking about ourselves.

John Tyreman: 31:25

Because that could be the decapitating move that just takes you right out of the running.

Mark Wainwright: 31:30

out. Right? We, we've got, we've just, we've entangled ourselves in all these traps, and that could be the one that, that does you in is

John Tyreman: 31:36

Right.

Mark Wainwright: 31:37

and I will ask firms. I do not participate in interviews. I help some organizations that I work with do some preparation work leading up to these things, but not a ton. the question I always ask when, you know, I, there's two questions, right? First one is, did you articulate your understanding and did you ask them if you got that right? And the second one is, who talked more? You or them?

John Tyreman: 31:59

Mm-hmm.

Mark Wainwright: 32:00

Right? Was it, was it 50 50? You know, was it really a conversation?'cause I think most consultants want to come into an interview. Have it being a conversation. They would really like that.

John Tyreman: 32:08

Right.

Mark Wainwright: 32:09

would like it to be a back and forth, you know, inevitably they say none. We talk 95% of the time

John Tyreman: 32:15

Yep. And that could be a product of,, just not understanding how to be in those situations and not having enough reps in those situations. And that's what those reflections are all about. And the value of working with, you know, a coach to try to like get you to that place where you do feel comfortable. With silence and asking questions and leaning into some of those more awkward moments and trying to turn the tables around.

Mark Wainwright: 32:40

Yeah, good point. and we've got our big fat conclusion there, John, which, you know, your proposals suck because they're all about you and not about the client.

John Tyreman: 32:49

That's right.

Mark Wainwright: 32:49

There it is, folks.

John Tyreman: 32:51

In a nutshell,

Mark Wainwright: 32:51

pill, right.

John Tyreman: 32:52

all right. They, they just listened to 35 plus minutes of us, and we could have just delivered that right at the onset. Well, I, I suppose we did, but we just unpacked it for them,

Mark Wainwright: 33:01

yeah, we unpacked, we, you know, hammered it home. We did everything else. And now,

John Tyreman: 33:04

broke it down.

Mark Wainwright: 33:05

When people listen us, hopefully people start to see the traps that are laid out in front of them

John Tyreman: 33:11

That's the goal.

Mark Wainwright: 33:12

begin to kind of avoid them. It's like, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no.

John Tyreman: 33:17

John and Mark called this one out.

Mark Wainwright: 33:18

yeah, I see that. Does everybody else see that? That client just laid a trap for

John Tyreman: 33:23

That looks like rust.

Mark Wainwright: 33:24

yeah. Yeah,

John Tyreman: 33:25

Are you up to date on your tetanus shots?

Mark Wainwright: 33:29

If not, we have to steer clear this one.'cause

John Tyreman: 33:30

Yeah,

Mark Wainwright: 33:31

to get trapped in

John Tyreman: 33:31

just listen to Breaking Biz Dev. That's that's all you need.

Mark Wainwright: 33:34

Yeah. There you go. All right. So there it is, John. I think we, hammered that one enough. So yeah, proposals. Proposals suck. And we don't even know it.

John Tyreman: 33:42

Until next time.

Mark Wainwright: 33:44

Until next time.