I heard about them this morning when someone in my Facebook network posted this video to their page:

Transfer from Asphalt to Solar Roadway

After watching the video, I was happy to click out to vote for them. They are in a competition at the GE Challenge to win a portion of the $220 million being offered in their Ecoimagination Challenge grant program.

From there, I looked at a couple of other submissions. Only this one caught my attention so I voted for it as well:

Wind capture that avoids open blade windmill issues

Then I clicked back and voted for the other two proposals Solar Roadways has at GE:

Solar Roadway Wants to Win GE Grant!

And finally, on the Profile for the engineer/founder, I clicked out to watch a TED presentation he made in June 2010:

Endearing story about the genesis of this company

I haven’t looked yet, but I’ll bet they are on Twitter. AND I know the folks at ARPA-e must be watching this to track their progress.

I want to buy stock in this company. In the meantime, I’m stealing every good idea to help clients understand how to use Social Media to Win Work!

I use a quad diagram for this meeting. Easy to put up on a board or on a webinar screen.

Celebrate: The first and most important. What went right? Who was our hero? How did we make something special of the proposal that just went out? If someone outside the team should be celebrated, who gets to work on the Thank you. Will it be a note or a gift?

Fix: That went wrong? What is the timeline to fix this so it doesn’t happen again? Who will work on this?

A printer ran out of toner? Buy a backup, or get a key to the storeroom where replacements are kept.

Improve: What did we notice that “but for” could have been a serious problem? Is it in our realm of influence? If not, can we bring in the folks responsible to team with us on a prevention? How much time will we budget to fix this? When is it due back?

We had a production problem with the print shop. When we pulled the printers in, they suggested we send our files in a different order, and that made all the difference, erasing the slow down we’d suffered.

The Red Team review wasn’t successful, making changes that should have been made earlier, during the storyboard review. We needed to add some training. So, we developed a mini-course on Storyboards and recruited folks used for Red Team to attend these brown bag sessions. We also created an instruction sheet for Red Team Reviewers and packaged the pre-review packet with the storyboards used to create the proposal so they’d be reminded of the instructions driving the proposal development.

Ignore: Some issues can’t/ should’nt /won’t be fixed and don’t endanger delivery of a winning proposal, so we’ll spend a moment griping about them and then decide to ignore it.

Amazingly, we put very little in this box. New trainees would feel that everything was outside our control, but more experienced folks knew we had more tools than you might suspect and would figure out ways to nibble away at issues.

For example, resume updating was always behind.

• Our best writer took over the quarterly reminder message and made it a hilarious literary gem folks looked forward to receiving.
• Our best technical person brought in a friend who was programming the new management system and figured out how to grab data being used for billing to automatically update each person’s resume with the jobs they’d billed to. With the minutia already written (account number, client, project title), it was trivial to jot down a note about what you did on the project.
• Candidates for a plum assignment had to be identified quickly. We developed a list of candidates for the President based on the data in the resume database, and we made sure folks knew that the shortlist was created from the resume database.

These systems didn’t happen overnight. We tackled issues as we became aware of them, and bit by bit, built a monster proposal machine. Small disasters were a gift because they gave us the data to know what we had to fix to be ready for a bigger disaster.

We lost power for two hours one day. That got us thinking about what we would do if power were out longer and we had a proposal due. Over the next few months we whittled away at a list of issues until we had a disaster plan. It didn’t get a chance to gather dust.

A few months later, a transformer went out, taking down our entire campus and all our servers. Our group gathered up their supplies, headed for home, got on-line, created a network in the cloud, and were working within 45 minutes. The proposals underway were delayed by only a few hours as we transferred work to other team members and protected our critical path of proposals nearing deadline. We looked like geniuses. The rest of the firm took a pretty big hit in productivity that month with two days lost.

As the team leader, I would look at the issues raised and think about whether the correct place for prevention was actually farther upstream than it might appear. For example, we had a problem printing an odd file and were investigating other ways to print these particular files. However, the better solution was to ask for these files (data output from a proprietary system) a few days earlier than Red Team and produce them ahead of time. The data in these files would not change based on review comments, so there was no reason to delay production of those files until the rest of the document was ready. If we tried to fix this problem on the back end, during production, we had to convert the files and lose resolution, which was not necessary if we re-arranged the production schedule earlier in the process.

I never run out of things to fix, but it stays interesting because we don’t spend time repeating the same problems in the same boring ways.

However, individuals in your firm are on these sites. So every firm needs a social media policy if you don’t already have one.

TRUE STORY:

When the World Wide Web was brand new, the firm I worked for didn’t have a website yet. Only a few of our competitors had websites up, and everyone was fumbling around. We found some good ideas (posting a website and getting in the category for your business with Yahoo and the other directories)  and some bad ideas (posting graphics that were too big to load in less than two minutes!).

Our proposal team was the defacto marketing division since the only other “marketing” department was the graphics team. We took up doing vanity searches of our corporate name just to keep up with what was being said about us out in the ether.  Our employees were also dabbling on the internet, posting personal pages and fooling around with HTML.

Unfortunately, some of those personal pages were objectionable but also mentioned our firm as their employer. Search for our firm and you could get some pages of porn and pages with generally unacceptable lifestyle choices. Maybe you’d get a page that reflected well on our business, maybe not.

We suggested a corporate-wide policy be created to cover how and when the corporate name and/or logo could be used. You would think this wouldn’t have to be written down and disseminated to everyone, but common sense ain’t so common.

Same goes today, only moreso. Some managers worry about social media impacting work productivity. I worry about social media impacting your brand and your firm’s ability to qualify for and win work. A simple set of rules and cautions is all it takes to make folks understand they should avoid implicating the firm in their personal adventures.

Have you Googled your key personnel being proposed for the first time to a client? Don’t you think clients do that?  Add a step in your proposal process to Google all the key people during a review cycle, just to be sure you don’t get any surprises. If it turns out someone with the same name and profile that could be mistaken for your employee has unsavory posts that turn up too high in the search results, 1) coach your person to post their own profile to a few social media sites, especially LinkedIn and Facebook, and 2) consider using their middle initial or otherwise modifying their name to minimize the unsavory hits from matching.

I go one step further and contact many of the folks with my same name. I trade links with them and send traffic their way when it gets misdirected to me. Luckily none of them are strippers, neo-nazis or drug dealers, at least not so far!

• all their phone numbers (work, home, cell),
• all their email addresses (work, and  home) and
• street addresses (work, home, girlfriend) suitable for overnight delivery of documents.

Folks would tease that I kept a “little black yellow pages” with all the personal contact information for so many folks in the firm.

You never know when you’ll need to reach someone and proposals are too time sensitive to wait for the next business day.

< my excuse > I was brought in to help with a proposal underway and did not have the authority nor buyin to use my usual process.< /my excuse >

Sure enough, we go into our crunch weekend, and discover that no one has the home number for the keeper of the cost section. There was a problem, we’d called in a consultant to figure it out, but when he was ready, the cost person was AWOL. Friday night. No response to office voicemail messages nor emails. Great. That cost extra since the consultant had to work blind. With a 5 minute phone call, he’d have finished in minutes. But without his questions answered, he needed more time to work on his own, write out complete instructions, and discuss all possible answers to his questions. Luckily we had until Sunday morning to finish the cost section.

Saturday we meet, but the files are not available. Some of the firm’s servers are down and the internal team members can’t communicate. However, we don’t know this because we don’t have alternative email addresses that could be used to alert everyone. And we don’t have an alternative repository (I use Dropbox, so copies of everything would have been on all our hardrives in a case where the server had gone down.) so we waste time sending files to alternative home email accounts once we get together by phone.

Sunday, we need final approval and the signature of a principal of the firm. You guessed it, no one had the guy’s home phone number. The files couldn’t be emailed earlier because the servers were off line. He was carrying a blackberry so we could communicate with him, but he wasn’t close to a fax machine, and couldn’t open documents.

I abhor heroic efforts to do what should be effortless. I save the heroics for legitimate emergencies, and manage with a process designed to avoid details tripping up progress.

Example of a Legitimate Emergency:

True story: It’s final production on a proposal after hours, and the proposal person is packing proposals in a box. He looks out the window when he hears some commotion. A moose has ambled into the parking lot and walks over his car, smashing the roof in, and breaking all the windows. (Evidently moose aren’t too smart nor delicate.) This is a good reason to have home phone numbers in case you can’t get a taxi in time to get you to the last courier drop.

Here are my favorites and several of them have versions for Blackberry and Droid phones:

For File Management:

Dropbox provides In the cloud access to files, and being able to view them from my iPhone is an extra great feature. I use this with teams across networks, when we have subcontractors as well as insiders working on a proposal. It works across all computer platforms.

Time Management:

Timebridge. I wasted hours trading emails to set up meetings with multiple parties. Now I send one email and let Timebridge take it from there. The meeting shows up on my calendar as soon as everyone has replied. This works across all computer platforms, and having it also on my iPhone is a great extra feature.

All Hours by Halle Winkler/Politepix. Setting a time for a meeting across time zones often resulted in my noting the wrong time in my calendar. This allows me to see up to three locations at once, and when I’ve agreed to a meeting time, I’m one click from having it added to my calendar.

Proposal Delivery:

Drop It Off. Provides me with a map and directions to FedEx and/or UPS closest locations and sorts for things like “still open and still shipping today” and “latest drop off points within 5 miles or 25 miles.”

Delivery Status by Junecloud. Now I know exactly where a package is, whether a document on the way to a client, or supplies I need for a presentation. (This is Mac only)

What Apps do you have on your iPhone that make a difference?

“Our hit rate is 40 percent. Is that good?”

I work across a broad range of industries. The target hit rate varies with the maturity of the industry.

In those industries in which complex sales (proposal competition being the end of the marketing pipeline) are predominant and precise, you’ll need a 70% hit rate so that your overhead expenses are in the competitive range.

Examples are government defense contractors, where the number of competitors is slim, the cost of producing the proposal high, and the precision and accuracy of the intelligence embedded in the proposal critical.

At the other end of the spectrum are industries new to RFPs because their clients are moving to the complex sales approach, and away from the consultative sales approach. Both the proposals and the review process by the client are less refined, less rigid, and more prone to influence from the remnants of the consultative sales process. In these industries 40% may be the target hit rate for that industry at that time.

Once you know the industry target hit rate, you can judge the maturity of your own firm by the distance from the industry target hit rate.

Another way to measure whether your hit rate is good or bad is to perform a diagnostic test on your team and then substitute in your current hit rate. Click here for a diagnostic test you can use to determine the level of development of your team. Once you find your level, use the hit rate you currently have instead of the hit rate used on my form (which was designed for one specific industry in a mid-range between the two described here). Now you have an idea of whether you have more to improve or are operating at a level suitable for your firm to remain competitive in their industry.

But don’t sit on your laurels! All markets mature, and those who don’t work on continuous improvement fall behind quickly.

In my own proposals, what was outstanding a few years ago is merely routine now. What was good enough to win a few years ago, won’t get you near the shortlist today.

And many of the applicants I’m helping have never written a proposal to the federal government. If this is your situation, here are a few ” How to ” tips:

1. Read the RFP -
   Some of my clients don’t want to wade through 60 pages before they get started writing. This is a big mistake. Don’t write a word until you’ve read the solicitation and understand what they want. You have limited time and need to focus on the requirements, not your own opinion of the best way to describe your technology.
2. Get your registrations in order -
   You’ll likely need a CCR, and this takes time and needs to be started first. If they have a specific portal to which you will load the proposal, get yourself registered there right away. You’ll need a DUNS number for your CCR, so even if you are undecided, get that application started.
3. Allow time for the upload process -
   What should take 10 minutes may take you hours. Don’t plan on rushing to upload your proposal at the last minute. If the servers are backed up, or you have a problem with one of your files loading, you may not make deadline. If you don’t, you will not be considered. No, this is not unfair. If you can’t read the instructions and follow them, the government doesn’t want to do business with you. Would you?

Some applicants I’m helping have experienced proposal teams in place but are getting help for the extra load. Here are a few tips for the more seasoned proposal teams:

1. Since the crash/debilitating delays/failure of the government-wide portal last year, agencies have set up their own portals. Each of them has a little different flavor, so register early and be extra careful to read each screen carefully. I’ve found several surprises.
2. The good news is that the page limits are severe. The bad news is that the agencies are receiving many proposals and have the same number of staff to review them. Do not veer from the evaluation criteria. Your TOC should mimic the RFP. Give them a way to speed through your proposal and they’ll have time to digest your message. Let your executives convolute the proposal away from the scoring criteria and reviewers won’t try to ferret out the point score, they’ll just skim and move on to the next proposal.
3. I’m finding it easy to construct strawman RFPs to get a jump on production. Agencies are tweaking RFPs from the early posts under ARRA, so you can work from these to storyboard and get your first review cycle complete by final release. Changes are nominal between rounds.

Let me know if I can help you! I’m on a roll with stimulus proposals and winning good work for great people.

BARDA (Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority) is charged with finding and supporting development of agents to protect the US population at large from attack with contaminants and agents like Anthrax, developing medical countermeasures, and stockpiling medicines for an emergency.

Here’s the description from the BARDA home page:

The Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), within the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, provides an integrated, systematic approach to the development and purchase of the necessary vaccines, drugs, therapies, and diagnostic tools for public health medical emergencies.

BARDA manages Project BioShield, which includes the procurement and advanced development of medical countermeasures for chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear agents, as well as the advanced development and procurement of medical countermeasures for pandemic influenza and other emerging infectious diseases that fall outside the auspices of Project BioShield.  In addition, BARDA manages the Public Health Emergency Medical Countermeasures Enterprise (PHEMCE).

TMTI (Transformational Medical Technologies Intiative ) is charged with finding and supporting development of agents to protect military personnel from biological weapons. They are a DoD (Department of Defense) agency.

Here’s the description from the TMTI homepage:

Transformational Medical Technologies Intiative (TMTI) was pioneered by The Department of Defense (DoD) in 2006 to better prepare and protect the warfighter and the nation from emerging, genetically engineered, and unknown biothreat agents.

DTRA (Defense Threat Reduction Agency) is a DoD agency focused on WMD (Weapons of Mass Destruction) and supports developments to counter WMDs.

Here’s the description from the DTRA website (About Us page):

DTRA is the U.S. Department of Defense’s official Combat Support Agency for countering weapons of mass destruction. Our people are Subject Matter Experts on WMD, and we address the entire spectrum of chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear and high yield explosive threats. DTRA’s programs include basic science research and development, operational support to U.S. warfighters on the front line, and an in-house WMD think tank that aims to anticipate and mitigate future threats long before they have a chance to harm the United States and our allies. SCC-WMD, the U.S. Strategic Command Center for Combating Weapons of Mass Destruction, synchronizes Combating Weapons of Mass Destruction efforts across our military’s geographic commands and leverages the people, programs and interagency relationships of DTRA at a strategic level. We work with the military services, other elements of the United States government, and countries across the planet on counterproliferation, nonproliferation and WMD reduction issues with one goal in mind: Making the World Safer.

Vaccines for a variety of disease have the attention of agencies responsible for responding to and preventing death from bioterrorist attack. Malaria, mustard gas, anthrax,  influenza, nuclear contamination, smallpox, botulism and radioactive contamination are all of interest for these agencies.

If you found this page, you may be interested in our services to support your proposal to these or other agencies. If so, please contact us by clicking here.

The problem with organizations is that it is easier to focus on internal politics because the culprits are right in front of you. Of course, this mires the organization in a zero progress game. Everyone is poised to prevent internal disruption of their carefully balanced power base. The bigger the organization, the bigger the problem of internal politics constraining and consuming the creative resources of the organization.

Some analysts think that a fanatical focus on the competition is the difference between Microsoft and Apple. They are wrong.

Focus on the Competition Does Not Improve Results

If you shift the focus to the competition, you are plotting for small advantages in a world where the competitors are one step ahead of you. This will not lead to breakthroughs, and IMHO will spiral down a rabbit hole to mediocrity and “me too-ism.”

Focus on the Customer Renders Breakthrough

However, if you shift the focus to the customer, you have the opportunity to notice something overlooked by the competition. If you focus on the customer, you will be examining the root of the purchase decision, not your competitors interpretation of that purchase decision. You prevent being misguided by a competitors false interpretation if you stay focused on the customer and only monitor the competitor’s responses.

Apple demonstrates this beautifully, with offerings no competitor had invented. Microsoft, well, not so much. They seem to weigh down products with a clear offering, layering on “inventions” from other parts of the organization so that the final product is hard to distinguish from previous offerings and just too muddled to be amazing. Too bad, because the brains at Microsoft are no less brilliant than the brains at Apple. But the environments are very different.

Proposals are Opportunities for Breakthrough Invention

When I’m working on a proposal, I spend little or no time gathering competitor intelligence. Most of it is gossip and innuendo, some of it is just plain incorrect. Instead, we spend time focused on the customer. What keeps them up at night? What part of their mission can we improve? How does our work move the customer forward?

The breakthroughs always come during these discussions. The creative twist that attracts the customer to our proposal comes out in these brainstorming sessions.

The only thing generated by competitor analysis is fear and trepidation, so I avoid it.

My hit rate is solid at 85 percent and going up with this last year’s wins. I’ve kept this level of performance ever since I started using this approach. Might be worth a try.

Chocolate and Hazelnuts. Lower fat than peanut butter, and all chocolate. A jar can be kept at your desk forever (which at my place is about two weeks +/-) And did I mention it’s chocolate?