Tag Archives: proposal

Why Do Enterprises Become Dust?

Hardly anything is permanent. And this applies to boxing AND to B2B sales.

Mike Tyson and legacy

By Super Festivals – https://www.flickr.com/photos/superfestivals/53161465181, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=136938246.

Perhaps you heard what Mike Tyson said a few days ago.

I don’t know, I don’t believe in the word “legacy.” I just think that’s another word for ego. Legacy doesn’t mean nothing. It’s just some word everybody grabbed onto.

It means absolutely nothing to me. I’m just passing through. I’m going to die and it’s going to be over. Who cares about legacy after that?

We’re nothing. We’re just dead. We’re dust. We’re absolutely nothing. Our legacy is nothing.

With the life that Tyson has lived, it’s understandable why he’s echoing Ecclesiastes in this interview.

But you don’t have to have had Tyson’s experiences to realize that legacy does not last.

Neither wanted nor needed

In business (and in life), there are companies (and people) who don’t need you or want you.

This may be temporary. The company that doesn’t need you today may urgently (and importantly) need you tomorrow.

By White House – Eisenhower Presidential Library, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3025709.

Or it may NOT be temporary. There are companies that will NEVER need you or want you.

I recently ran across three such companies that will never need Bredemarket.

Six weeks (now less than six weeks)

Six weeks, the still image version.

Perhaps you noticed Bredemarket’s “six weeks” promotion over the weekend. It was addressed to companies that may have a final project that they want to complete before the year ends in six weeks. (Now 5 1/2 weeks.) I emphasized that Bredemarket can help companies complete those content, proposal, and analysis projects.

The promotion included a blog post, a LinkedIn post, a Facebook reel, an Instagram reel, a YouTube short, and appearances in other online locations. Which is probably overkill, since the promotion is already outdated and can’t be used again until possibly November 2025.

I also included email in this campaign, targeting prospects whom I haven’t worked with recently, or whom I’ve never worked with at all. I didn’t go overboard in my emails; although I have over 400 contacts in Bredemarket’s customer relationship management system, I sent the email to less than 40 of them.

As of this morning, none of the recipients has booked a meeting with me to discuss their end of year needs.

  • Some explicitly told me that they were fine now and did not need or want Bredemarket’s services for end of year projects.
  • Some didn’t respond, which probably indicates that they did not need or want Bredemarket’s services either.

And I discovered that three companies (four contacts) will NEVER need or want Bredemarket’s services.

Delivery incomplete

How did I discover that?

Via four “delivery status notification” messages.

Delivery incomplete.

So I visited the web pages in question, and they no longer existed.

This site can’t be reached.

I’ve been building up my CRM for over four years, so it’s not shocking that some companies have disappeared.

But one of the companies (“Company X”) DID exist a mere eight months ago.

I know this because I prepared a presentation on differentiation (see version 2 of the presentation here), and two representatives from Company X received the presentation in advance of a conference.

After the conference organizer distributed the presentation, I offered to meet with the companies individually (no charge) to discuss their content and differentiation needs, or anything else they wanted to discuss.

While some conference attendees took advantage of my April offer, the representatives from Company X did not.

And now in November, Company X no longer exists.

A tumbleweed on a fence.
Tumbleweed image public domain.

Could Bredemarket have created the necessary content to keep Company X afloat? Who knows?

But EVERY company needs content to differentiate it from its competitors. Otherwise the competitors will attack you. And your competitors may not be as merciful with you as Jake Paul was with Mike Tyson.

If you need Bredemarket’s help with content, proposal, or analysis services, book a meeting with me.

Bredemarket’s CPA: Content – Proposal – Analysis.

Don’t Miss the Boat

Bredemarket helps identity/biometric firms.

  • Finger, face, iris, voice, DNA, ID documents, geolocation, and even knowledge.
  • Content-Proposal-Analysis. (Bredemarket’s “CPA.”)

Don’t miss the boat.

Augment your team with Bredemarket.

Find out more.

Don’t miss the boat.

Important and not urgent, but how important?

Whether and how you delegate something depends upon its importance, especially if you recognize three levels of importance. Sometimes the very important and critically important items require a CPA, or Content-Proposal-Analysis marketing professional. (I know one.)

When importance is simple

Last October I spent some time talking about the Eisenhower Matrix and its critical flaw, focusing upon the “important but not urgent” quadrant:

Adapted from https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/developing-leadership-skills.

When you have a single level of importance, then decisions are pretty simple. For urgent things, do it yourself if it’s important, delegate it if it’s not.

When “importance” is more granular

But what if, instead of “Not Important” and “Important,” we had three levels of importance instead of just one? In other words, “Not Important,” “Important,” “Very Important,” and “Critically Important”?

A U.S. Navy plane flying over a Soviet ship in October 1962 is, um, classified as “Critically Important.” Oh, and it’s urgent. By USN – Dictionary of American Naval Aviation Squadrons Volume 2: The History of VP, VPB, VP(H) and VP(AM) Squadrons [4], Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7328539.

In that case, you not only consider whether to delegate something, but who should be delegated that thing. (Or, as you’ll see, WHAT should be delegated that thing.)

  • If the need is not important, delegate it, but it doesn’t really matter to whom or what you delegate it. ChatGPT or Bard is “good enough,” even if the result is awful.
  • If the need is important, delegate it to someone you trust to create very good content. Let them create the content, you approve it, and you’re done.
  • If the need is very important, then you may delegate some of the work, but you don’t want to delegate all of it. You need to be involved in the content creation process from the initial meeting, through the review of every draft, and of course for the final approval. The goal is stellar content.
  • If the need is critically important, then you probably don’t want to delegate the work and will want to do it yourself—unless you can find someone who is better than you in creating content.

As I noted in October, a more granular approach to importance increases the, um, importance of Bredemarket’s services.

  • In the simple Eisenhower Matrix model, Bredemarket handles the Not Important stuff while you handle the Important stuff.
  • In the “three levels of importance” model, Bredemarket handles the Very Important and Critically Important stuff. Because the merely Important stuff and the Not Important stuff doesn’t require my 30 years of technology, identity, and biometrics expertise.

Sometimes you need a CPA (but NOT a Certified Public Accountant)

But if your needs are critical, and you require the services of a CPA (Content-Proposal-Analysis marketing professional), then you need to learn what Bredemarket can do for you. Click on the image to learn more.

Bredemarket’s “CPA.”

Bredemarket’s “CPA”

Is your firm losing business and leaving important items unfinished?

I, John E. Bredehoft of Bredemarket, am a “CPA.” Not a Certified Public Accountant; a Content-Proposal-Analysis marketing professional:

  • Content such as blog posts, case studies, data sheets, white papers, and more.
  • Proposal submissions from identity/biometric and technology firms to governments and enterprises.
  • Analysis of markets, companies and competitors, products, and websites and social media.

I offer over 30 years of technology experience—30 in identity/biometrics, where I am the biometric product marketing expert.

I ask questions first (why, how, what, and more) and collaborate later to ensure I deliver the right content to you.

I provide pre-packaged services or bill you at an hourly rate.

Click here to find out more about Bredemarket’s “CPA” services, and schedule a free 30 minute content needs assessment with me.

Bredemarket’s “CPA” (October 7, 2024)Download

Identity/Biometric Professionals, Does Your Company Need the Right Words?

Identity/biometric professionals require the right words to raise product awareness, influence consideration, or drive conversions.

Bredemarket helps you create the words your prospects and customers must hear now:

With over 29 years of identity/biometric experience, John Bredehoft of Bredemarket is the biometric product marketing expert that can move your company forward.

If I can help you, book a free 30 minute meeting with me on Calendly.

From calendly.com/bredemarket.

If you’re not sure about using Bredemarket, here is more information.

Identity professionals…

Content Marketing and Proposals are Pretty Much the Same

I’ve taken a very small break from my identity blog post writing business to help a biometric company with a proposal. I am, after all, the biometric proposal writing expert, so I’m at home working on identity proposals. After all, I’ve done it before.

This is NOT a depiction of the bidders’ conference I attended in Connecticut 20 or so years ago. Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15798710

Bredemarket’s services are grouped into two distinct and separate functions: content marketing (blog posts, white papers, etc.) and proposals (RFI responses, RFP responses, sole source letters, etc.).

My division of my services makes sense in the real world. After all, in some employment situations, content marketing and proposals employ distinct and separate sets of employees.

The last Association of Proposal Management Professionals Conference I attended, in Chicago in May 2014. From https://www.apmp.org/assets/apmp-annual_report-2014_final.pdf.

But other companies are different. In fact, I’ve seen employment ads seeking marketing/proposals managers. Sounds like a lot of work, unless the company submits few proposals or performs minimal marketing.

And in many companies there are NOT dedicated proposals specialists. Which is why Bredemarket makes its money by helping the salespeople at these firms get the documents out.

Time for the truth

And if we’re truthful with ourselves, content marketing and proposals are pretty much the same thing.

I know this angers some people, who insist that they are content marketing professionals or proposal professionals, with all the proper certifications that a mere mortal could never attain. Or they did attain it, but it lapsed. Or is about to lapse unless I renew it in time.

But hear me out. I’m going to list four aspects of a particular document, and you tell me whether I’m talking about a piece of marketing content, or a proposal.

  1. The document focuses on the customer’s needs.
  2. The document describes benefits the customer will realize.
  3. The document targets one or more sets of people hungry for the solution.
  4. The document shall be in Aptos 12 point, single spaced, with 1 inch margins, and shall not exceed 20 pages.

Guess what? From that description you CAN’T tell if it’s a piece of content or a proposal.

Yes, I know some of you thought item 4 was a dead giveaway because it sounded like an RFP requirement, but maybe some company’s brand guidelines dictate that the firm’s white papers must conform to that format. You never know.

And I know that when you get into the minutiae, there are certain things that proposal writers do that content marketers don’t have to worry about, and vice versa.

But at a high level, the content marketer already knows 90% of the things they need to know to write proposals. And vice versa.

Can we all get along?

From https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1sONfxPCTU0.

How Bredemarket Helps in Early Proposal Engagement

Man, I’ve been negative lately.

I figure that it is time to become more positive.

I’m going to describe one example of how Bredemarket has helped its customers, based upon one of my client projects from several years ago.

Stupid Word Tricks. Tell your brother, your sister and your mama too. See below.

I’ve told this story before, but I wanted to take a fresh look at the problem the firm had, and the solution Bredemarket provided. I’m not identifying the firm, but perhaps YOUR firm has a similar problem that I can solve for you. And your firm is the one that matters.

The problem

This happened several years ago, but was one of Bredemarket’s first successes.

From Sandeep Kumar, A. Sony, Rahul Hooda, Yashpal Singh, in Journal of Advances and Scholarly Researches in Allied Education | Multidisciplinary Academic Research, “Multimodal Biometric Authentication System for Automatic Certificate Generation.”

I should preface this by noting that there are a lot of different biometric modalities, including some that aren’t even listed in the image above.

The firm that asked for my help is one that focuses on one particular biometric modality, and provides a high-end solution for biometric identification.

In addition, the firm’s solution has multiple applications, crime solving and disaster victim identification being two of them.

By FBI – http://www.fbi.gov/news/photos, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18500900

The firm needed a way to perform initial prospect outreach via budgetary quotations, targeted to the application that mattered to the prospect. A simple proposal problem to be solved…or so it seemed.

Why the obvious proposal solution didn’t work

I had encountered similar problems while employed at Printrak and MorphoTrak and while consulting here at Bredemarket, so the solution was painfully obvious.

Qvidian, one proposal automation software package that I have used. But there are a LOT of proposal automation software packages out there, including some new ones that incorporate artificial intelligence. From https://uplandsoftware.com/qvidian/.

Have your proposal writers create relevant material in their proposal automation software that could target each of the audiences.

So when your salesperson wants to approach a medical examiner involved in disaster victim identification, the proposal writer could just run the proposal automation software, create the targeted budgetary quotation, populate it with the prospect’s contact information, and give the completed quotation to the salesperson.

Unfortuntely for the firm, the painfully obvious solution was truly painful, for two reasons:

  • This firm had no proposal automation software. Well, maybe some other division of the firm had such software, but this division didn’t have access to it. So the whole idea of adding proposal text to an existing software solution, and programming the solution to generate the appropriate budgetary quotation, wasn’t going to fly.
  • In addition, this firm had no proposal writers. The salespeople were doing this on their own. The only proposal writer they had was the contractor from Bredemarket. And they weren’t going to want to pay for me to generate every budgetary quotation they needed.

In this case, the firm needed a way for the salespeople to generate the necessary budgetary quotations as easily as possible, WITHOUT relying on proposal automation software or proposal writers.

Bredemarket’s solution

To solve the firm’s problem, I resorted to Stupid Word Tricks.

(Microsoft Word, not Cameo.)

I created two similar budgetary quotation templates: one for crime solving, and one for disaster victim identification. (Actually I created more than two.) That way the salesperson could simply choose the budgetary quotation they wanted.

The letters were similar in format, but had little tweaks depending upon the audience.

Using document properties to create easy-to-use budgetary quotations.

The Stupid Word Tricks came into play when I used Word document property features to allow the salesperson to enter the specific information for each prospect, which then rippled throughout the document, providing a customized budgetary quotation to the prospect.

The result

The firms’ salespeople used Bredemarket’s templates to generate initial outreach budgetary quotations to their clients.

And the salespeople were happy.

I’ve used this testimonial quote before, but it doesn’t hurt to use it again.

“I just wanted to truly say thank you for putting these templates together. I worked on this…last week and it was extremely simple to use and I thought really provided a professional advantage and tool to give the customer….TRULY THANK YOU!”

Comment from one of the client’s employees who used the standard proposal text

While I actively consulted for the firm I maintained the templates, updating as needed as the firm achieved additional certifications.

Why am I telling this story again?

I just want to remind people that Bredemarket doesn’t just write posts, articles, and other collateral. I can also create collateral such as these proposal templates that you can re-use.

So if you have a need that can’t be met by the painfully obvious solutions, talk to me. Perhaps we can develop our own solution.

Drive content results with Bredemarket Identity Firm Services.

Cross-Functional Collaboration and the Wannabe PMP

Catalan castellers collaborate, working together with a shared goal. By Eric Sala & Tània García (uploaded to Commons by Baggio) – https://web.archive.org/web/20070529054035/http://www.nooficial.com/index.php, CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1115767

Whether you’re an employee or a sole proprietor, at some point you’re going to have to play well with others to get things done.

Bredemarket has performed this (fancy phrase: “cross-functional collaboration”), both as part of Bredemarket’s services and outside of it.

  • As an employee, I’ve managed SaaS proposal projects and other projects that needed the input of many.
  • Within Bredemarket, I’ve managed proposal and other projects of similar complexity.

Even though I’m not formally certified to do this, I do it anyway.

Pre-Bredemarket: I get SaaSy

Long before I started Bredemarket, I was managing products and proposals associated with an on-premise technology solution.

This solution had a long sales cycle (longer than Cloudflare’s, for example) and a long implementation time. After contract signature, it might take a year or more to lock down the requirements, procure the hardware and third-party software, configure the solution, perform a factory acceptance test, deliver the solution to the customer’s premises, perform one or more rounds of on-site testing, and obtain final acceptance.

But my employer wasn’t lacking in revenue during implementation, because it received partial payments as it passed various milestones. Perhaps a small percentage of the total price would be paid upon requirements completion. Another percentage at delivery. Additional percentages at different points in the implementation, with the final large payment upon acceptance.

By Sam Johnston – Created by Sam Johnston using OminGroup’s OmniGraffle and Inkscape (includes Building icon.svg by Kenny sh), CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6089457

But then I was the proposal manager for a prospect desiring a SaaS implementation.

  • The Request for Proposal (RFP) made it very clear that the prospect would not pay a dime to the successful bidder until AFTER the system was accepted and in productive use. Because that’s how SaaS implementations work.
From Regiondo, https://pro.regiondo.com/blog/saas-vs-on-premise/. Note the difference in set-up costs (for the purchasser) between the on-premise and SaaS models.
  • This would have a major financial impact on my employer, since it would take a much longer time to recoup the initial costs of the implementation.
  • Without going into details…we didn’t, um, “win” the bid.

Several years later, the, um, SITUATION had changed, and my employer was more willing to accept the financial risks associated with SaaS implementations. I was still a proposal manager at the time and was able to work on my employer’s first successful SaaS bids. But that assumption of risk wasn’t the only barrier to success, because I had to work with a lot of different cross-functional collaborators to get those bids out.

  • The salespeople who wants to sell the SaaS systems to their prospects.
  • The engineers who had to do the heavy lifting to transition our on-premise solution to a SaaS solution.
  • The program managers who had to keep an eye on the costs of the implementation to ensure that our employer’s financial risk was minimized.
  • The customer support people who had to manage the system after final acceptance, even though much of the system was in a cloud center somewhere instead of at the customer’s site.
  • The finance and pricing people who had to adjust to this new way of doing business.
  • The legal people who had to develop a brand new contract that encompassed the new reality.
  • Finally, the executives who were willing to take the risk to enter the SaaS market and who wanted to succeed without losing money.

I think this is when I made my observation about managers of large proposals. In a large project, the proposal manager is the only one who spends 100% of their time on the project. The salespeople are selling other deals, the engineers are engineering other stuff, and so forth. Therefore, it was up to me to ensure that everything continued to move forward, because while these bids were important to the others, they were critically important to me.

From https://bredemarket.com/2023/10/26/do-you-know-the-three-levels-of-importance-tloi/.

Anyway, these later bids had a much happier ending, the employer successfully entered the SaaS market, and as more customers moved from on-premise to SaaS models, thus evening out my employer’s income stream, the financial risk from SaaS proposals was reduced significantly.

That cross-functional collaboration experience, exercised on these bids and in many other instances over the years, would be put to the test a few years later when I started Bredemarket.

Bredemarket: herding cats

From Fallon (not Jimmy) 2000 “Cat Herders” advertisement for EDS, https://www.fallon.com/cat-herder.

It’s one thing for a company employee to manage a project with a ton of people, none of whom report to you and most of whom outrank you.

It’s another thing when an outside contractor has to manage a project of inside employees.

One of my Bredemarket projects, which happened to be another proposal project, required me to do just that. While the proposal was much simpler than the bids constructed at my former employer, the effort still required a lot of shepherding to get all the pieces put together, obtain all the approvals, and get someone to submit the final proposal since I, as a non-employee, couldn’t do it myself.

Everything worked out, and the employees were great, but there were times when it seemed like I was the only one to keep an eye on all the tasks.

Something that I had never been formally trained to do.

Today’s acronym is PMP

Eventually I (temporarily) stopped working on finger/face projects for Bredemarket because I was employed by a finger/face company. And I found myself managing projects of similar complexity (the 80+ battlecard project, for example).

And that’s when I realized that I was a de facto project manager.

Even though I didn’t have the fancy certification to attest to this.

From https://www.pmi.org/.

The Project Management Institute offers several certifications, including:

I toyed around with the idea of starting the certification progression in 2023, and even though my employer didn’t have the rigorous annual goal-setting processes that larger organizations have, I set a personal goal in one of my employer’s Asana projects to advance to CAPM by the end of 2023.

And then…things happened.

Perhaps at some point I’ll get the official piece of paper that I can flash around, but until then I’ll learn on my own, both by coursework and by…well…actual managing projects.

From https://www.linkedin.com/in/jbredehoft/details/skills/.

Working With Familiar Faces

Often consultants work with someone whom they have never met before.

Sometimes they get to work with friends they have known from previous experiences, which can be a good thing.

From “We Are Your Friends.” https://vimeo.com/11277708.

First example: A couple of years ago, when consulting for a large client, I worked on a proposal with one of the client’s partners, and one of the employees in the partner organization happened to be a former coworker from MorphoTrak.

Second example: This morning I’m meeting with Gene Volfe, a former coworker at Incode Technologies (we started at Incode on the same day). We’re working on a project together that requires Gene’s demand generation skills and my content skills…which we will be employing for the benefit of another former MorphoTrak coworker.

Third example: Speaking of Incode, two of my former coworkers are reuniting at a different company. As a sign that these two know each other well, one made a point of saying to the other, “Go Bills!”

And yes, Gene, I remember how you like Google Docs…