Overall, it’s been a good month for SJK Consultants. We’ve delivered: four writing skills workshops to teams in two of The Big Four accountancy firms in London and Geneva (average 95% satisfaction); a successful writing workshop to the PSLs (Professional Support Lawyers) of a ‘magic circle’ law firm; and four writing workshops to defence & security consultants (93% satisfaction). We also won a bid writing coaching programme with a small, innovative pensions consultancy, and helped a GP Federation get shortlisted for a London borough NHS contract.

But it’s not all been plain sailing…We worked with a professional services firm on a major bid and failed to even get shortlisted. They’d over-estimated the quality of their relationship with the buyer. It was like being slapped in the face. But what did I learn from it? That bidders must assess with brutal honesty the quality of their relationship with each buyer, and bid consultants mustn’t accept the bidder’s initial assessment at face value!

Amusing note: the other day I was looking a consultancy website that preaches the merits of personalized communication. Guess what their email address was? info@domainname.

Over the last 13 years we’ve observed or been involved in 100s of bids, tenders, pitches and proposals, from a range of organisations across many industries. The beleaguered bid team pour their heart and soul into writing the bid, working late nights and early mornings, often at the expense of their personal and family life. But that’s the wrong thing to focus on; it’s often too late by then. Too many firms over-emphasise the bid document and under-emphasise the relationship with the buyer. You don’t win a bid from behind a computer. The process of winning starts far in advance of this step and the stats seem to back this up.

Most businesses we talk to strive for a win-rate of 75%, ie they’re winning three out of every four pitches they go for. If you were offered this you’d probably take it, wouldn’t you?

Our win-rate is 86%. So what are we doing differently for our clients to hit this rate?

We help our clients to pre-empt the bidding process and tilt the odds of winning in their favour. We do this by front-loading the process, in five steps. We help our clients to:

1. Nail their value proposition. Without articulating this clearly, the odds of success are against you.
2. Identify the organisations they want to work with, and the individual buyers in those organisations.
3. Raise their profile with those buyers and get to know them.
4. Understand those buyers’ major headaches and put together a proposal for how to overcome them.
5. Rinse & repeat.

Compare this proactive approach to the typically reactive response of many businesses to RFPs, ITTs and EOIs. Our approach is about playing by your own rules and time-scales, not someone else’s.

So my message to you is this: if the client doesn’t know, like and trust you and your organisation when they issue the tender, your heroic efforts on the bid document are likely to be in vain. The harder you work at the front of the process building great relationships with buyers pre-tender, the more business you’ll win.

Trouble is, most people are poor at building rapport, asking great questions and listening whole-heartedly to the answers, without an agenda. The micro-skills of client relationship building are the biggest business development challenge facing professional services firms today – especially fee-earners who are great technicians but not natural communicators. But that’s for another blog…

To learn more about improving your win-rate, download a free chapter from SJK Consultants Director, Scott Keyser, by clicking here.

Having trained thousands of business people all over the world in writing, I’ve identified three elements of good writing:

Top Content – I can’t help you with this. It is up to you and your business to apply your expertise through research, consultation and thought.

Clarity – if an idea is clear in your head, it will be clear in writing.

Personality – this is what I want to focus on. This is what most business writing lacks.

Many business writers suffer from The Myth of Professionalism.  They believe that to write well it must be ‘professional’, resulting in formal language. The problem with formal language is that words tend to be long, hard to spell, less understood and create a gap between the writer and the reader.

Formal writing is de-humanised and makes the writer sound like a corporate drone. Business writing is too formal and that’s why it’s dull. What do you think?

To read this post in full, click here

Last Friday saw the UK charity Comic Relief raise an impressive £78 million for individuals in need in the UK and Africa. As I sat, with my family, watching the programme without donating, I felt un-moved. That is until a story came on describing how a 72-year old Grandmother and her granddaughter search for food every day in a mountain of rubbish. The young girl was stalked by men trying to abuse her as she and her frail Grandmother rummaged through the waste for scraps of food. As I watched and listened to the TV, I felt outraged that anyone should have to live like this and it ‘moved’ me.

The language here is key; I was ‘moved’ to donate. ‘Move’ is a multi-layered word meaning ‘motivated to act’ and ‘affected emotionally’. This story is living proof that logic provokes people to think but emotions make them act.

Therefore, when writing, if you don’t affect your reader emotionally, they are less likely to do what you would like them to do.

One technique in my 21-technique toolkit is ‘Establish your objective’ using the acronym K.F.C. What you want your reader to Know, Feel and Commit to doing.

Knowledge is all about wanting to inform your reader, Feeling is about the emotions you want to arouse in them in order for them to take action and Commit to something as a result of reading your words.

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I recently reviewed a client’s proposal for public sector funding. The first, most important question, asked for a summary of the project, including that telling phrase, “Why should we give your our money?”.

The client’s first paragraph described the background of the project. The funding organisation already had access to this information, so this was a waste of space and paper. The second paragraph continued to develop upon the background of the project so wasn’t much better. The third paragraph began unpromisingly: ‘Whilst we are aware that…’. This didn’t sound like it was about to summarise the project, and it didn’t. Eventually, in paragraph four, the proposal was outlined. The only reason I kept reading was because the proposer is a client; if I had been the evaluator, I would have given up and marked them down.

So what is my point?

The first three paragraphs were the literary equivalent of the writer clearing their throat before writing something relevant and interesting in the fourth paragraph. This is not an isolated case; I regularly come across this when I am reviewing bids, tender and proposals.

Ineffective writing like this is usually caused due to poor planning and an unwillingness to get straight to the point.

Try this approach to avoid similar mistakes:

1. Define and explain what you are proposing in one sentence – you can give more detail later
2. Describe what the reader/client will get if they appoint you (benefits/outcomes)
3. Show why your proposal matters to them by linking what the client/reader could receive, and how this will help them to achieve their agenda and objectives.

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