Tag Archives: proposal

An Eventful Monday

Now that I’ve formally scheduled the release of my talkie—it’s even an “event” on Facebook—I may as well provide a description of what my talkie contains.

  • First, the video is 3 minutes and 40 seconds long, which for me is long. And why you won’t see it on Bluesky or Instagram. But you will see it here; it’s already scheduled.
  • Oh, and I talk. The video alternates between shots of me at Bredemarket world headquarters and shots of textual/image descriptions incorporating Canva’s finest AI-generated music. If you’ve seen my other videos you know the…um…score.
  • I start by introducing the subject of “marketing and writing services” and identifying MY hungry people (target audience). 
  • Then I explain, in detail, what Bredemarket’s “CPA” services are NOT…and what they ARE.
  • I briefly touch on the questions I ask my clients. If you’ve read Bredemarket’s “Seven Questions Your Content Creator Will Ask You,” you’re already familiar with these questions.
  • Then I do something that some sales professionals would NEVER do—reveal my pricing up front.
  • Finally, my call to action is for interested prospects to book a meeting with me on my CPA page. If you don’t already have the link to that page, you’ll get it on Monday.

Well, that’s that. Come back Monday at 8:00 am Pacific Standard Time / 1600 GMT.

My Latest Bredemarket Video Is (well, will be) a Talkie

I assembled my latest video on Friday night.

It’s a talkie. 

But my talkie doesn’t cause 21st century controversy.

I still have my usual text, images, and AI-generated music, but I actually talk between the segments.

I plan to release the video on Monday.

Well, except on Bluesky and other social channels that can’t handle 3 minute and 40 second long videos.

The facts are that I need to trim 2 minutes and 40 seconds to get my new video on Bluesky.

Proposal Tools of the 2020s

When I was last a full-time Proposal Manager a decade ago (for MorphoTrak), a proposal due date extension did not necessitate an update to an Asana task end date. Asana existed (its iOS and Android apps were both released by 2015), but MorphoTrak wasn’t using them.

Things are different now.

My consulting firm Bredemarket has helped (at least) four identity/biometric companies with proposal work over the years, including RFI responses, RFP responses, proposal letters, and similar communications; proposal templates; and proposal standard text (what the machinists call “boilerplate”).

I signed non-disclosure agreements with all these companies, which is why I redacted my current client’s name and its prospective customer from the accompanying image. But if my client wins, I will celebrate. Quietly.

Incidentally, since my Asana is only accessible to me, it only includes minimal information. In Asana, this entire response is a single entry. I use other means to communicate the more detailed schedule to my clients.

Incidentally, if you were one of MY prospects and received a communication saying that I was wrapping up a project today…I’m not. But it’s almost wrapped up, bearing in mind that any gas fills up the available space.

But if you want me to work on your gas, contact me via Bredemarket’s “CPA” page. 

Proposal work (the P) is just one of several services Bredemarket provides to identity, biometric, and technology clients. In fact, all 4 of the referenced Proposal clients have also used my Content services, my Analysis services, or both.

CPA

Marketing and Writing “CPA” Services for Inland Empire Businesses

Inland Empire businesses, do you require marketing and writing deliverables for your product or service with a unit price > $2000?

Consider Bredemarket for your content – proposal – analysis needs.

Let’s talk.

bredemarket.com/cpa

Bredemarket Inland Empire Services.

Featuring the Proper Second Video, Biometrics and Bredemarket

My “Biometrics and Bredemarket” video is buried in the middle of my “Ready, Fire, Aim” post, but people are finding it anyway.

(They’re skipping the short video and watching the long one.)

So it’s time to feature “Biometrics and Bredemarket” on its own.

Biometrics and Bredemarket.

If you don’t feel like watching a 2 minute and 20 second video, here are the bullets:

  • Marketing and writing deliverables
  • Provided by a biometric product marketing expert 
  • With industry knowledge
  • Of multiple biometric modalities
  • Who delivers content
  • And proposals
  • And analyses.

Learn more in the video, or at my “CPA” page.

Not that type of CPA.

The Problem With Ready, Fire, Aim

(Ready, fire, aim wildebeest via Imagen 3/Google Gemini)

If I had to choose between acting too quickly and acting too slowly, I would choose the former. You already know I don’t like it when things never get done. But the ready, fire, aim method introduces problems of its own. Let’s look at how ready, fire, aim can adversely affect both external and internal content.

External content

If you haven’t figured it out already, I create a lot of external prospect/customer facing content. Not only for Bredemarket’s clients, but also for Bredemarket itself so I can get more clients. This blog post is an example.

Sometimes I meticulously plan a full campaign via a myriad of Asana tasks covering multiple blog and social media posts. Sometimes the entire project appears in a day or two, sometimes it takes a week, and one recent project took 3 weeks including teaser content, the main content, and follow-up content.

Yes, sometimes I meticulously plan. And other times I just do stuff.

Last Saturday I was struck with an idea for a 2 minute and 20 second landscape video about biometrics and Bredemarket. I knew it was long and many who encountered it wouldn’t watch the whole thing, but I wanted to make my statement and reserve it for bottom of funnel activities.

Only AFTER I posted the video did I realize that this was the logical second part to a 30 second video that I had previously created for biometric clients. 

If I had thought this through, I  could have started with the 30 second video, THEN introduced the longer video as the logical next step. Like a funnel, if you believe in funnels.

The proper first video

Well, better late than never.

The 30 second edition.

Watch this 30 second video that I made for Bredemarket’s biometric prospects and clients.

For Biometric Clients.

The proper second video

Hey, did you like that video? Would you like to learn more?

The 140 second edition.

Watch this 140 second video that I made for Bredemarket’s extra special biometric prospects and clients.

Biometrics and Bredemarket.

Hey, did you like that video? Learn more on my “CPA” page.

Bredemarket’s “CPA.”

Well, that’s what I should have done in the first place so I wouldn’t have to make this clumsy fix later.

But there’s still time to fix a future internal campaign before it happens.

Internal content

Because this content is internal I can’t really talk about it, but I anticipate that Bredemarket will be invited to a future event…and I am already planning NOT to attend.

There are a number of stakeholders associated with this event, and in a TLOI kind of way they will have different reactions to my non-attendance. Some of them probably don’t give a you-know-what whether I attend or not. But perhaps there are those who do care, ranging from mild curiosity about why I’m not going, to the other extreme of demanding to know how I could bypass this important event.

So I drafted three messages in case I was asked about my non-attendance: (1) a brief two-paragraph message, (2) a longer message, and (3) a detailed message which delved into my concerns.

But what if I don’t know which message to send? What if I unloaded my deepest darkest fears via the long message, when the stakeholder merely wanted to know if I had other commitments at the time of the event?

So I rewrote the messages so that they build on one another.

  • Let’s say Bob asks why I’m not attending. I would simply send Bob the first, brief message. If this satisfies Bob’s curiosity, we’re done.
  • If Bob asks more, then I will send those portions of the second message that weren’t part of the first one—namely, the 3rd and 4th paragraphs of the second message. (The first 2 paragraphs of the second message are identical to the entire first message.
  • If Bob still questions, I will unload parts of the third message on him—namely the stuff absent from the second (and first) message.

There’s my funnel. And if needed I can skip directly to the third message with certain stakeholders.

And if no one asks why I’m skipping the event, I don’t send ANY communication—and know that my decision to skip the event was the right one.

Future content

So in the future, whether creating external or internal content, I need to pause and think about how it fits into the tons of content I’ve already created.

So that I can tell the best stories.

And so I will achieve ready, aim, fire rather than ready, fire, aim.

In the Long Run, Can Your Company Be Saved?

Effective product marketing usually won’t help you make your numbers this quarter. But it can provide long-term benefits…if properly executed and maintained.

A Cautionary Tale

In a down employment market such as the one the tech industry is experiencing right now, the common wisdom is that if a company isn’t hiring new employees, it can definitely use independent consultants.

Sometimes the common wisdom is faulty.

One of Bredemarket’s former clients (whom I will not name) illustrates the gaps in the common wisdom. I had worked on projects for this company several times…until I didn’t.

  • Because of a company reorg, my contact at the company changed, and the new contact sent a project my way.
  • Halfway through the project I was asked to stop work with no explanation.
  • When a direct report to my new contact reached out to get to know me, the report assured me that the stop work order had nothing to do with me. 
  • My contract was about to expire, but the direct report said it would probably be renewed. (Admittedly the direct report had no decision-making authority).
  • A month later, I found myself unable to log in to the company’s contractor website.
  • I reached out to a third party (not employed by the company) who managed its contractors. The third party confirmed that my contract had not been renewed.
  • I executed my offboarding process for removing confidential company information and informed my company contact. I received no response. (Not surprising. Many people, rather than delivering or confirming bad news, will say nothing at all—ghosting.)
  • I subsequently learned that the company was performing multiple rounds of layoffs, in a “the layoffs will continue until morale improves”style.

If Properly Executed

If I had provided said company with top-notch content-proposal-analysis work, would those laid-off people have kept their jobs?

Probably not. Content, proposal, and analysis work is not a quick fix.

  • Content, for example, often takes as many as 17 months to bear fruit.
  • The proposal process is only part of a long-term effort, which may start years before a Request for Proposal (RFP) is released, and may not end for years after a proposal is submitted in response to the RFP.
  • And analysis itself is just the first step in a long process. After you analyze something, you have to decide what to do with the results.

While not a quick fix, doing the work now will benefit the company in the long run. Even in the short term, setting the strategy communicates to everyone, including both internal and external stakeholders, the direction in which your company is heading.

If Properly Maintained

But you can’t just treat this as a one-time oroject and be done with it. Looking at the content portion alone, you have to regularly revisit your content and update it as needed.

This is a trick I learned back in my proposal days. Some of my former employers used proposal management software packages, many of which used a “timeout” feature on standard proposal text that required someone to review the text by a certain date. 

Does your proposal text state that your software supports Windows 10? Perhaps it’s a good idea to mention Windows 11 also. 

Or you may need to revise your standard proposal text to mention that new feature…or new benefit. Any proposal text for a health application that was written in December 2019 definitely required an update in December 2020.

What this means for your company

If you haven’t laid the groundwork for your company’s product marketing, Bredemarket can help in a variety of ways. After asking questions (starting with “Why?”) about your needs, we can jointly decide on the most critically important things Bredemarket can do for you and your company.

To find out how John E. Bredehoft of Bredemarket can serve as your “CPA” (Content-Proposal-Analysis marketing professional), go to my CPA page.

Postscript

And no, I’m not going to share an Eagles song. I’m going to share a Madness song.

(AI wildebeest “Keep Moving” image from Google Gemini)