Power Proposals - How to Write Less and Win More

Posted by Adrian Davis 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sooner or later, you're going to hear these words, "Sounds good. Why don't you send me a proposal?" Of course, you've already heard them and you've already experienced the mixed emotions - the thrill of knowing you're close to the finish line and the agony of knowing there's a lot of work ahead of you and it could be for nothing.

How do you ensure you don't waste your time? How do you ensure that your proposal stands out, is read and most importantly, is approved and acted upon?

Rule #1: No Surprises
The mistake most people make is withholding vital information, such as pricing. The purpose of your proposal is not to sell your buyer. Let me repeat that. The purpose of your proposal is not to sell your buyer. It is to crystallize everything you've spoken about in a single document that can be acted upon. Your selling job is done. You must pass the baton on to your buyer. Proposal in hand, your buyer must now do the selling and get the necessary internal approvals to move forward.

Rule # 2: Write for the Final Decision-Maker not Your Buyer
By the time you get to the proposal stage, you've developed a pretty good relationship with your buyer. Do not submit your proposal "to" your buyer. Be sure to submit your proposal "through" your buyer. It is a very rare organization today that has a leader that will make significant decisions unilaterally. No matter who your buyer is, they will most likely have to consult with one or more other people before signing off. Ensure you understand how the approval process works. Rather than submit your proposal to your buyer, work alongside your buyer.

Always work from a document stamped, "Draft - for discussion only". The most important benefit of doing this is giving yourself permission to be wrong. As you sit down with your buyer, you can be side by side rather than across the table. If the buyer feels you are submitting a final document, he or she immediately moves into Accept or Reject mode. This puts them across the table from you. When you work from a draft, you are working together to ensure the wording will work for them. As they consider their relationship with the final approver(s), they can soften or harden the language, include or exclude certain elements and restructure or reframe your logic.

Rule #3: Focus on Results and the Next Action
Think about what you're really proposing. Don't get caught up in your credentials or boiler plate formalities. Stay focused on the results your buyer wants from you. That's all the buyer really cares about. How will you improve their condition? Everything else is a footnote. Far too many proposals begin with, "ABC Company is pleased to submit this proposal... blah blah blah." You need to come out swinging. There's no time to risk disengagement.

Remember, it is highly unlikely that you will be present when the final decision is being made. In fact, people who may have never met you or even heard of you may be deciding your fate. Your value must now be represented by your proposal.

In addition to having a singular focus on results, you must also have a very clear next step. Your methodology is too much to act on. It's also academic. What actually happens may or may not unfold as you've outlined. What matters is your commitment to your buyer's success. If your buyer trusts you, they'll take your methodology on faith. What's really important is your concrete and clear next step.

Economic slowdown speeds up drive for acquisitions

JACOLINE LOEWEN

The Globe and Mail

Published Tuesday, May. 28 2013, 5:00 AM EDT

Gloomy pundits and unfavourable macro-economic news can lead business owners to shelf plans to sell their companies, but the smart ones don’t try to time the market, nor do they wait to be courted. They actively seek out buyers.

They also watch for micro signals within their industry because the implications of small shifts in one area can signal bigger changes ahead.

Spots of activity are happening across the ethnic food industry in Canada, which is highly fragmented, with a wide scattering of companies making revenues from $10-million to $100-million. These owners are often running lifestyle businesses and they serve a niche market, such as tropical fruit drinks and spicy snacks for Asian customers.

The range of consumers clamouring for exotic tastes such as coconut water or tandoori-barbeque flavoured chips is expanding. Big companies, including Pepsi and Loblaws, are private-label innovating in this segment. Owners of ethnic food companies are finding their products moving from the back shelves to front-and-centre at the big-box retailers and gas stations to catch the consumer eye.

There are few large ethnic food players in Canada to keep a good balance of power with the corporate retailers and wholesalers who have been consolidating. The opportunity is ripe for a large company to roll-up the smaller ones and create a significant ethnic food business.

The economy continues to make it a struggle for any company to increase revenue by building capacity through its own efforts. Buying smaller businesses as “add-on” acquisitions is an attractive strategy for organizations that want to boost sales. Larger buyers can acquire smaller companies at lower risk because they bring a niche client base that would take years to develop.

As the economic slowdown continues, there has been an increase in the drive for acquisitions – sellers of ethnic food companies have a chance to turn this situation to their advantage. If they identify the major players in their industry and look at the acquisition activity closer to home, they can create a sale opportunity.

There are many moving parts for a seller in a fragmented industry such as ethnic foods, and to suggest the complexity of the selling process can be reduced to a handful of points is a risky proposition. With that caveat in mind, a seller should start by asking three questions:

1. What is the buyer seeking?
As management guru Peter Drucker has said: “The purpose of a company is to create a customer.” If you understand your target buyer’s customer focus and figure out what it is trying to offer consumers, you will gain insights into how your company can add something unique to that buyer.

“With ethnic foods, would the buyer be interested in adding to their product mix and bringing something new to their consumer’s table?” asks Kamal Baig, former CEO of a tropical drinks company in Toronto. “When you have products with a unique niche, this is a powerful addition of loyal consumers, and there could be the potential to scale up the amount sold.”

Perhaps the buyer’s larger distribution network would give your innovative products exposure to a new set of consumers while refreshing a brand?

2. How would a buyer look at my business?
How would your business fit into the buyer’s company? Be able to explain the synergies your firm would bring and how these would benefit the larger, platform business.

For example, will there be efficiencies if manufacturing is combined?

3. How can I know what my business is worth?
Your business is worth what a buyer will pay. Sellers often make the fatal mistake of conducting serial negotiations, which is a recipe for a poor valuation.

Jacoline Loewen is a director at Crosbie, which focuses on succession advice for family businesses and closely held small to medium-sized enterprises. Crosbie develops customized strategies, particularly in relation to M&A, financing and corporate strategy matters. Ms. Loewen is also the author of Money Magnet: How to Attract Investors to Your Business. You can follow her on Twitter @jacolineloewen.

A Futurist Looks at the Future of Marketing

by Dana Rousmaniere

Digital marketing is evolving as fast as any other medium on our tablets, smartphones, Google Glass and beyond. To learn about what the future may bring to this marketing genre, we reached out to Gerd Leonhard, an author, strategic advisor, CEO of TheFuturesAgency, and someone whom The Wall Street Journal calls "one of the leading media-futurists in the world."

 
Here are some of Leonhard's predictions for what's coming. Add yours in the comments section below.

1. By 2020, most interruptive marketing will be gone. Instead, marketing will be personalized, customized, and adapted to what I have expressed as my wishes or opt-ins — which essentially means that advertising becomes content. Data will be essential, and as users, we'll be paying with our data — bartering a bit of our personal information in return for the use of platforms and services. Customers will be forming relationships with brands that are built on trust, and if a company breaks that trust, it will be very quickly viral and very quickly over. By 2020, unauthorized targeting of consumers will essentially be useless. I, as a consumer, am going to choose who I want to hear from. I'm going to like things, or I won't like them, and you will have to earn that from me.

2. The idea of having a separate marketing department is going to vanish. In the future, the "reason to buy" will be socially motivated. If a product is great and everybody loves it, it will sell. And you're going to stop buying things from companies that don't fit your values, just because you can't see giving them the money. 

3. Location-based services will be immensely valuable and useful, but not until we have some kind of a privacy bank — some authorized authority or entity that will keep the public safe, and that has a neutral objective. Because clearly, I'm not going to offer up my location if I don't feel safe. 

4. Companies are going to try to predict how people feel about their brand, and then adjust in real time by changing features, and starting new conversations with customers in real time. All of the companies of the future will have one big job: to make sure that the customer feels cherished and safeguarded. As Amazon calls it, "customer delight," will be the number one mission. If you screw that up, everyone will leave. 

5. Companies can collect all the data they want, but data alone will never be enough. You still need to reach consumers on an emotional level. The bottom line for marketers will be that if a product or service isn't humanized, it won't sell — because buying something isn't an intellectual process of saying "this could be useful"; it's saying "I really want this." 

About Gerd Leonhard: Gerd Leonhard is considered a thought-leader and global influencer in media/content, technology, marketing & communications, telecom, and culture, consulting many leading global companies. He is an author, strategic advisor, CEO of TheFuturesAgency and a fellow of the Royal Society for the Arts (London). Since 2011, Gerd's area of expertise also includes important "green" topics.

Entrepreneurs: Go as Long as Possible Without Taking Venture Capital

 

Often I get asked the question: when is the right time to take venture capital? My answer is: Never. Unless you absolutely need to take a round, the best way to start a company is by bootstrapping it yourself.

When I founded Shutterstock in 2003, I decided to take a different route than most entrepreneurs. Way too typically, one would put together a business plan and find funding. What most people don’t realize, is that there are plenty of tools out there to start your own company with just a few thousand dollars. If you can figure out how to avoid an angel or venture round, you will have much more control in the long run. This isn’t always possible - but I would recommend trying everything you can to remain independent.

Eventually Shutterstock did a growth private equity round five years in. At this point in the company’s lifecycle, we had much more control than we would have in the venture phase.

What are the advantages to bankrolling and not taking venture capital?

• You will fail faster. It took me 10 tries to get to Shutterstock. Most of my startups never made it off the ground. Being an entrepreneur means being able to pivot quickly, shut down a business that isn’t performing and move on. If you use somebody elses cash, you may be forced to continue even though you know it’s time to move on.
  
  
• Every dollar counts. I was hyper-focused on ROI from the start when I was buying Google Adwords keywords. Since I could feel the money moving out of my own bank account, I was very sensitive to my return on investment. There was no room for error. This efficiency later translated into a complex lifetime value calculation that drove our acquisition model to this day.
  
  
• You will concentrate on profitability from the start. All businesses need to create value at some point to survive. While some companies have had successful exits without profits, they are few and far between. By building profitability into your model from the start, you will be able to start scaling. Self-funding will force profitability thinking at every stage.
  
  
• You will own more of the company later. The earlier you are subjected to dilution, the less of the company you will own in the future. Venture capital rounds often involve loss of control, and a majority of the company to be sold.
  

What are the advantages to taking venture capital?

• I recognize that self funding isn’t an option for everyone. If a large amount of capital is required and not taking on a venture round will be truly detrimental to getting your company off the ground, then by all means do whatever you need to do.
  
  
• Often venture partners provide support with areas that the company is weak in. If you need help hiring, scaling, or operating, often a venture partner can provide this help as part of the deal. If you don’t take capital, you’re on your own.
  

How do I make sure that my startup uses as little capital as possible?

• Use as much open source software as you can. Use MySQL instead of MS-SQL/Oracle. use Linux (and specifically free versions like CentOS instead of Redhat). CPAN alone has over 120,000 perl modules that are already written - so why re-create the wheel?
  
  
• Learn how to code. There are great affordable online learning platforms that can help you learn how to code, create html pages, link up databases, etc. Learn as much as you can because the more you can do yourself, the less you will have to hire.
  
  
• Be every job. It may seem overwhelming, but it’s possible. When I started Shutterstock I was the customer service rep, the website developer, the first photographer. By making sure I gave each role a shot, I knew exactly how what I needed so I didn’t overhire. I wasn’t necessarily good at each job, nor was my expertise even close to each job, but I learned a ton and got to delay some hiring. This culture of lean innovation is still very much alive at Shutterstock and has contributed to much of our growth.
  
  
• Use your product as if you were the customer. Not only will you get to know your own product better, but you’ll be doing quality assurance work and testing throughout the process.
  

Bottom line is that it isn’t always possible or practical, but the longer you wait to raise money, the better off you and your business will be.

Posted by:Jon Oringer

Why CEOs Don't Focus On People - Even If They Say It's Important

Erika Andersen,  

I often lament the state of people management and leadership in the world today, and note how important it is to the future of business for executives to be better at leading and managing. And you may have heard me opine that poor management and leadership are a key factor in both the exodus of top talent and the failure to build successful companies.

And I often wonder aloud why executives aren’t better managers and leaders, given all the data that shows the connection between engaged employees and great business results.

This morning I got some insight. A post here on Forbes by Susan Adams discusses a new study, conducted by two groups at Stanford Graduate School and the Miles Group, a New York-based consulting company. I was so fascinated by the results that I went to the study itself to investigate further.

The study polled over 160 CEOs and directors of North American public and private companies, focusing on what they saw as the CEOs’ strengths and weaknesses, and asking what measures and weighting the boards used in evaluating the CEOs.

I wasn’t at all surprised by the strengths and weaknesses. Boards (and the CEOs themselves) say that the CEOs are excellent at “decision-making” and “planning,” for instance, and not so good at things like “mentoring and development skills,” “board engagement,” “listening,” and “conflict management.”  Sadly, that’s what I would have expected.

As I read further, however, I had my ‘ah-ha.’  It turns out that there’s a big gap between what boards are actually requiring of their CEOS, and what they think they’re requiring.

That is, while a large majority of board members believe their evaluation of their CEO is balanced between financial and non-financial metrics, it’s simply not true.  For example, the survey found that, on average, a CEO’s performance in the areas of talent development and succession planning was given only a 5% weighting, and only a 2.5% weighting was given to employee satisfaction/turnover. The most heavily weighted metrics were in accounting, operating, and stock price.  The study also found that supposedly important measures like product service and quality, customer service, workplace safety, and innovation aren’t included in more than 95% of CEO evaluations.

Something I’ve learned over the years about us human beings: if you want people to behave in certain ways, you have to make them feel those behaviors are easy, rewarding, and normal.  That is, they have to believe they know how to do the behavior and nothing will get in the way of them doing it (easy), that it will give them something they value (rewarding), and that their peers and/or people they admire do it (normal).

Given this, it makes sense that CEOs don’t focus enough on building a committed, engaged workforce, on creating great customer service, or on innovation: their boards are making it not-easy, not-normal, and definitely not-rewarding to do so.

If boards are giving lip service to the importance of leading and managing well – but are actually only holding CEOs accountable for stock price and growth metrics, then most CEOs will continue to drive financial value for the short-term, in ways that may not be sustainable.  They will read all the data that shows how employee engagement is a key (perhaps the key) driver of performance – nod sagely and agree…and then continue to behave as they’re being required and rewarded to behave by their boards.

Here’s one thing we can do to change this: if you’re a stockholder in a public company, write to your board and let them know how you’d like them to evaluate the CEO: that you’d like that person – and his or her team – held accountable for both great financial results, and how they achieve them.

I’d love any other ideas you have about how to change this state of affairs…
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Check out Erika Andersen’s latest book, Leading So People Will Follow, and discover how to be a followable leader. Booklist called it “a book to read more than once and to consult many times.”

Seven Strategies for Simplifying Your Organization

by Ron Ashkenas 

This post is co-authored with Lisa Bodell.

Over the past several years we have heard hundreds of managers talk about the negative impact of complexity on both productivity and workplace morale. This message has been reinforced by the findings of major CEO surveys conducted by IBM and KPMG [PDF], both of which identified complexity as a key business challenge.

Agreeing on complexity as a problem is one thing, but doing something about it is quite another — particularly for managers who are already over-worked, stressed, and can barely keep up with their current workload. In fact, the Catch-22 of complexity is that most managers don't feel that they have the time to focus on it: Having the problem precludes the ability to solve it.

With this dilemma in mind, we think it's important for managers to have a strategic framework that they can use to address complexity in their own areas, at their own pace, in their own ways. So to that end, we would like to offer a "simple" seven-step simplification strategy. While we present these sequentially, they can be implemented in any order, depending on where you might be able to make the greatest difference most quickly. Over time however, it's important to do all seven so that simplicity becomes a core capability of your organization and not just a one-time project.

1. Clear the underbrush. An easy starting point for simplification is to get rid of stupid rules and low-value activities, time-wasters that exist in abundance in most organizations. Look, for example, at how many people need to review and sign off on expense reports or small purchases; or how many times slide decks need to be reviewed before they are presented. If you can shed a few simple tasks, you will create bandwidth to focus on more substantial simplification opportunities.
2. Take an outside-in perspective. Simplification should be driven by the need to add value to your customers, either internal or external. So a key step in the process is to proactively clarify what your customers (internal or external) really want and what you can do to make them more successful. One manager, for example, took her team to visit a customer plant so that people could see how their product was actually used, which gave them ideas about how to improve it.
3. Prioritize, prioritize, prioritize. One of the keys to simplification is to figure out what's really important (and what's not), and continually reassess the priority list as new things are added.
4. Take the shortest path from here to there. Once it's clear that you are working on the right things, root out the extra steps in core processes. Where are the extraneous loops, redundancies, and opportunities to make our processes as lean as possible?
5. Stop being so nice. One of the patterns that causes or exacerbates complexity is the tendency to not speak up about poor practices. This is particularly true when people hesitate to challenge more senior people who unintentionally cause complexity through poor meeting management, unclear assignments, unnecessary emails, over-analysis, or other bad managerial habits. To counter this trend, use constructive feedback and conflict to keep your colleagues (and yourself) honest about personal behaviors that might cause complexity.
6. Reduce levels and increase spans. Another source of complexity is the structural tendency to add layers of management, which often leads to managers supervising just one or two people. When that happens, managers feel compelled to add value by questioning everything that their subordinates are doing, which adds work and reduces morale. To reduce this kind of complexity and stay away from micromanaging, take a periodic look at the organization's structure and find ways to reduce levels and management and increase spans of control.
7. Don't let the weeds grow back. Finally, remember that complexity is like a weed in the garden that can always creep back in. Whenever you feel like you've got it solved, do steps 1 through 6 over again.

In today's global, increasingly digital organizations, complexity is a growing drag on productivity and workplace satisfaction. Managers need to develop simplification as a core leadership capability and a critical component of the business strategy. Hopefully these steps will help you get started.

Lisa Bodell is the founder and CEO of FutureThink and the author of Kill the Company.

Ron Ashkenas

Ron Ashkenas is a managing partner of Schaffer Consulting, and is currently serving as an Executive-in-Residence at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley. He is a co-author of The GE Work-Out and The Boundaryless Organization. His latest book is Simply Effective.

7 Tips for Writing Better Business Copy

BY Shanna Mallon 

 

Even good writers make mistakes, from obvious repeats to subtle misspellings. It means we're human.

 

If you're like most writers, you're probably making common blunders on a regular basis. Don't lose heart. Awareness is half the battle: By becoming alert to typical mistakes, you become less likely to make them.

Before you publish your next blog post or submit another magazine article, do yourself a favor and check it against this list. Below are seven tips that can help improve your writing:

1. Be mindful of accidental repeats. 
You know that feeling of telling a friend a story and then realizing you've already shared it? It happens in writing, too. When you're not paying close attention, you might repeat a phrase, a story, or a point without realizing it. One good way to catch these accidental repeats is by reading your content aloud; often your ears catch mistakes that your eyes don't.

2. Avoid empty adverbs. 
When you add "really" to a verb, what are you adding? Is calling something "very" cold better than calling it frosty, frigid, or icy? The truth is, many common adverbs are empty: They add little or nothing to the meaning of a sentence and only clutter your copy. Cut them out.

3. Don't use dangling modifiers. 
Dangling modifiers are a classic symptom of writing exactly as we speak. Although casual, conversational language may contain dangling modifiers, written language should not; they muddy your message. A modifying phrase should immediately precede the thing it modifies. So, instead of writing, "Setting an editorial calendar, the blog mapped months of topics," write, "Setting an editorial calendar, the writer mapped months of topics on her blog." The blog is not setting the calendar; the writer is setting the calendar.

4. Which vs. that. 
The words "which" and "that" are not interchangeable. Both begin clauses, but "which" clauses are unnecessary to the meaning of a sentence (and thus set off by commas) and "that" clauses are essential.

5. Steer clear of overly complex words. 
Using overly complex words in place of simple ones is a perfect way to alienate your readers. Better to be clear and get your message across than to be fancy and lose your audience. When reading over your content, ask yourself whether the meaning is obvious. If not, rewrite.

6. Keep common misspellings in mind. 
Most writers understand the difference between "your" and "you're," but it's all too easy to accidentally type one when you mean the other, especially if your spell-check program doesn't pick up the error. Be on guard for common misspellings such as these:

• They're/Their/There
• Lose/Loose
• It's/Its
• Effect/Affect
• Weather/Whether
• Then/Than

7. Your personal 'tells.' 
A writing "tell" is like a poker "tell": It's something you regularly do -- without meaning to -- that gives you away. In poker, it might be the way you tap your fingers when you have a good hand; in writing, it might be the way you always use words like "just" or something else. Once you identify some of your overused words or other crutches, you need to ruthlessly cut them out. Using them once in a while is fine, but using them all the time dulls your writing.


This story originally appeared on PR Daily