44 NZB December 2013 nzbusiness.co.nz
Jordan Kelly is a bid strategist and
writer. She is the author of Think
& Win Bids: Winning High-Value,
High-Stakes Bids through Superior
Questioning, Listening and Thinking Skills,
and The Bid Writer’s Style & Grammar Guide – all
available at www.bidstrategist.com
If you’re looking for “high-viz” points
of difference when competing with
larger competitors, look no further
than the avoidance of convoluted
bombast and meaningless ‘mumph’
as your first. Most corporate
submissions are full of it. The use
of plain, unadulterated English will
be a refreshing change for your
prospect organisation’s evaluators.
Bid teams cause themselves a
huge problem when they insist on
using trendy fashion-speak and
other frivolous fuzz in their written
responses. Knowing the frustration
this causes clients, and the
frequency with which it happens,
I can only sincerely urge you, the
smaller player, to take full advantage
of your corporate competition’s
tendency towards what is, plainly,
nonsense.
There are two key reasons your
larger competitors engage in this
rubbishy writing. More often than
not, its usage is an attempt to sound
sophisticated and “switched on” or
“up to the minute”. Other times it’s
to smoke over a lack of substance in
answers to the bid documentation’s
questions. Often, it’s both.
Bid teams and their writers can
also get tangled up in this type of
non-English even when there actually
is knowledge and potential substance
to be conveyed in the content of a
proposal or bid. This is particularly
unfortunate for their employers
(but equally to your advantage),
because those documents come
across pretty much the same as the
substance-less version that uses the
same terminology to disguise a lack
of core message.
I’m going to give you some
examples of this ‘empty’ writing.
They’re fabricated because quite
clearly I can’t refer to confidential
bid documents. Nonetheless, they’re
typical of some of the writing I see
produced by corporate sales and
bid teams, and many senior
executives.
Example 1:
We employ best-of-breed technology
options to implement cutting-edge,
proven solutions, ensuring you of a
constantly innovative approach and
continuous improvement in your IT
environment.
Example 2:
Our track record demonstrates our
commitment to world best practice
and, accordingly, we will engage our
focus on innovation throughout the
contract.
Example 3:
As your business partner, we will
work closely with you to leverage
our experience across the project,
producing an optimal solution that
is robust, scalable and that can be
seamlessly integrated with your
existing systems.
Do experienced operatives really
write this kind of nonsense? Yes they
do. And much worse. The entire
content of some of the bids I’m given
to provide commentary on is as
convoluted and meaningless as the
above examples. Tens (sometimes
hundreds) of pages of, largely, noninformation.
This commonly happens when
little or no prior planning takes place
and where, as a result, there is no
central bid strategy. Worse still, this
strategy-less starting point
guarantees a very supplier-centric
bid or proposal. And usually one
that is not even particularly readable
or sensible, let alone compelling.
My recommendations are two-fold:
• Use plain English. Resist the
temptation to dazzle the prospective
customer or client organisation and
its evaluators with an extensive array
of jargon. I’m always particularly
saddened when I see a submission
produced by an SME, the
management of which obviously
thinks it’s a demonstration of their
ability to foot it against their larger
competitors by using the same crazy
corporate-speak.
Feel free to download my free
(for a limited time) e-book,
Deadbeat Words, from bidstrategist.
com. It might also help in identifying
certain words that have become
ingrained in your own vocabulary
without your realising their
jargonistic nature.
• Place priority emphasis
(as early as possible) on
conducting intensive, thorough
bid strategy planning sessions
(preceded by comprehensive
client, contract/project and
competitor research).
This will help ensure a
distinctive win theme
and, in turn, solid
content, and applies to
any size business.
The
impassioned
message
I want to
leave you
with is ‘tell
it like it is’. Drop the dandy words.
You don’t need them, the client/
prospect and its evaluators are
neither fooled nor impressed by
them – and (pending the quality
of your offer and the substance of
your content) the absence of them
will render your documentation a
pure and softly-landing snowflake
upon the garbage (the hard-going
reading contained in your corporate
competitors’ productions) below.
Are your bids full of it?
In the third and final instalment of her series on bidding strategy, Jordan Kelly covers both
corporate arrogance and the use of “highfalutin’ gobbledygook” in submissions.
