Tag Archives: proposal

Verifying That Credential

People can claim all sorts of accomplishments, but how do you verify (and authenticate) the truth?

The claimed credential

For those who don’t recall, I did a thing in 2021. Specifically, I achieved APMP® Bid and Proposal Management Foundation 2021 certification.

I even published the link to my certification. Here it is.

https://www.credly.com/badges/f177cbf8-e085-4fae-943a-1e418d86c872

Now if you click on that link, you will see a “Verify” link at the top left.

From Credly.

And if you click on that”Verify,” this is what you get.

The verification.

So I have verified that I am allowed to call myself John E. Bredehoft, CF APMP. It’s allowed:

In the same manner, those who have achieved one of the APMP certifications can append the appropriate certification. In the case of APMP Foundation certification, that means that I can style myself as “John E. Bredehoft, CF APMP.” (Or “John E. Bredehoft, MBA, CF APMP, RSBC” if I want to be thorough. But I probably won’t, since “RSBC” stands for “Radio Shack Battery Club.”)

But have I REALLY verified that I have achieved this accomplishment? (Not the battery club one, the proposal one. Although it would be good to know whether I really have that MBA educational accomplishment.)

The identity problem

You see, despite how impressive that Credly link is, it doesn’t prove nothing.

Sure, somebody who claimed to be John E. Bredehoft sat down in 2021 and took an online exam.

  • But was that person truly John E. Bredehoft?
  • And even if he was, am I the same John E. Bredehoft who received the certification?

Maybe there were fraudsters along the way. Maybe someone else took the test and pretended to be Bredehoft. Or maybe I’m not Bredehoft.

Sure, at one point I whipped out a credit card with Bredehoft’s name on it. But that doesn’t prove identity.

You probably know the things that prove identity. A biometric modality, including the liveness of that modality. A government-issued identity document that matches the biometric. A sensible location (was the test taker in Ontario, California as expected?).

Now perhaps this is overkill for authenticating a proposal writer, but it may not be if you need a certified plumber.

Or a certified lawyer.

Or a certified doctor.

The other problem

But there’s another problem with the whole thing, even if I am who I say I am.

Yes, my September 2021 achievement is verified.

And yes, the record was updated in January 2022.

But…to maintain a CF APMP certification, you need 20 Continuing Education Units (CEUs)/Continuing Professional Development (CPDs) every two years.

APMP continuing education requirements.

And because I truly am me, I know I didn’t meet the CEU/CPD requirement by September 2023. I don’t know how many I did achieve; the APMP was changing its CEU/CPD tracking system in early 2022, and then I joined Incode and theoretically wasn’t writing proposals any more. Theoretically.

So in truth, my shiny badge only represents a dated accomplishment. John E. Bredehoft can no longer use the CF APMP designation.

Unless I add “Emeritus” or something.

And as for those cases in which the certifications and identities truly matter…

21 Days of Bredemarket “CPA” Services

What in the heck does Bredemarket do?

Content, proposal, and analysis (“CPA”) marketing and writing services.

But what in the heck does Bredemarket DO?

During the first 21 days of March, my biometric, identity, and technology clients received blog posts, an ebook, emails, a landing page, slides, a press release, a Request for Information (RFI) response, a process, and other things.

Can I help your firm? Let me know on my “CPA” page.

CPA

Want to know how many blog posts and emails I wrote? Watch the video.

21 days of CPA.

(CPA wildebeest Imagen 3)

And When the Sun Comes Up I’ll Be On Top in Proposal Work

Proposals are not the biggest part of my Bredemarket consulting work, but I still enjoy the satisfaction when my client submits a persuasive, compliant proposal. A day before the due date, even.

And yes, the Imagen 3 AI picture includes the number 96, in homage to Bredemarket’s very popular “96 Smiles” post about the Shipley Business Development Lifecycle. 

But if you need proposal assistance, or content assistance, or analysis assistance, contact me.

CPA

How Marketing Leads Can Navigate the Time of Uncertainty

Marketing leads (and others) like to talk about “eras” and “ages.” But I resisted the urge to refer to an “era” or “age” of uncertainty, preferring to reserve these terms for periods of hundreds or thousands of years. “The dot com ERA”? Come on.

But when we encounter technological or governmental changes that take place in mere days, we need to do things in different ways.

Three tips for dealing with uncertainty

Here are three tips that I am following for dealing with uncertainty. And if you are a marketing lead for your company, the third tip applies especially to you.

Tip 1: De-emphasize long term planning

Note that I didn’t say to stop long-term planning entirely. Heck, Bredemarket has worked on go-to-market processes and plans for three clients over the past couple of months—plans that assume you have months, not days, to execute a launch. 

But sadly, the accuracy of any long-term plan is probably not high. 

  • If you assumed that the U.S. management of its nuclear assets would maintain its low level of risk, that changed in a single day when the responsible people were mistakenly fired. We will see how many of them return to work.
  • Similarly, if you assumed maintenance of the status quo in the generative AI world…what were you smoking?

So while long-term planning is (in TLOI terms) important, short-term planning is very important, and short-term execution is critically important.

Tip 2: Expect the unexpected

This is always a good tip, but especially so today. You and I can name many times when something surprised us, and we had to scramble to adjust.

For example, many of us have received a terse request to meet with our bosses the next day. (Maybe more than one such request over the years.) The next day, after meeting with the boss and an unannounced third person, we adjusted to the new reality that our boss is no longer our boss, and we no longer have a job.

So how can we prepare for the unexpected? By definition we can’t. But we can at least be alert.

  • Question all your assumptions. (Yes, even that.)
  • Determine what you will do if the unthinkable happens.

Tip 3: Move quickly

Normally things remain constant for a day or two. So take advantage of the temporary certainty. When you can, execute now.

For marketing leads:

  • Get that content out. Conceive, draft, review, fix, and publish. Don’t spend months searching for the perfect words; there aren’t any.
  • Publish before  the content goes stale. If you’ve been working on an explanation of a Biden Administration executive order…put that work on hold or kill it entirely.

And if you’re swamped and don’t have the time to generate the content, or write the proposal, or perform the analysis, call on the short-term help here at Bredemarket to bail you out.

Before it’s too late.

CPA

To learn more, you can watch Bredemarket’s short, medium, or long videos about my “CPA” marketing and writing services. I can work with you to fill your content, proposal, and/or analysis gaps.

Short:

Short

Medium:

Medium

Long:

Long

Submission (of proposals)

(All images Imagen 3)

From the early 1990s to 2019, the majority of my identity/biometric proposal work was with U.S. state and local agencies, with some work with foreign agencies (such as Canada’s RCMP), private entities, and a few proposals to U.S. federal agencies.

I had no idea what was going to happen in 2020, and one of the surprises is that the majority of my identity/biometric proposal work since 2020 has been with U.S. federal agencies. Many requests for information (RFIs) as well as other responses.

The L&M does stop at Bredemarket, apparently. 

The L & N, not M, but close enough for government work.

I’ve worked on client proposals (and Bredemarket’s own responses) to the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security, Justice, and perhaps some others along the way.

And no, there’s no uniformity

Same department, different requirements.

Coincidentally, the two most recent identity/biometric proposals I managed for Bredemarket clients went to the same government department. But that’s where the similarities ended.

The first required an e-mail submission of a PDF (10 pages maximum) to two email addresses. A relative piece of cake.

Mmm…cake. Always reward your proposal people.

The last required an online submission. No, not a simple upload of a PDF to a government website. While my client did have to upload 2 PDFs, the majority of the submission required my client to complete a bunch of online screens.

And there were two separate sets of instructions regarding how to complete these online screens…which contradicted each other. So I had to ask a clarification question…and you know how THAT can go.

Oh, and as the consulting proposal expert, I could not complete the online screens on behalf of the client. The client’s company had a single login, which was assigned to a single person (a company executive) and could NOT be used by anybody else. 

So on the day of proposal submission the executive and I videoconferenced, and I watched as the executive answered the responses, in part using a document in which I had drafted responses.

And of course things were not perfect. The executive pasted one of my responses into the space provided, and only THEN did we discover that the response had an unadvertised character limit. So I rewrote it…at the same time that I resized a required image with unadvertised dimension restrictions.

But there’s some uniformity

Perhaps if I had written more federal proposals at Printrak, Motorola, MorphoTrak, IDEMIA, and Incode, I would have known these things. Perhaps not; as late as 2014 I was still printing proposals on paper and submitting 10 or more volumes of binders (yes, binders) along with CDs that had to be virus-checked.

Some Requests for Proposal (RFPs) provide helpful checklists.

But regardless of whether you submit proposals online, via CD, or in paper volumes, some things remain constant.

  • Follow the instructions.
  • Answer the questions.
  • Emphasize the benefits.
  • And don’t misspell the name of the Contracting Officer.

If you need Bredemarket’s proposal services, or my content or analysis services, visit my “CPA” page to get started.

Introduction Goes Here

(Imagen 3)

Proposal professionals are familiar with this question: do you write the executive summary first, or last?

I recently struggled with this, but in a non-proposal project—specifically, for an online article I was writing for a Bredemarket client. I had already asked my seven questions, so I had a high-level idea of the points I wanted to make. But I intentionally started writing the rest of the online article, and put some filler text at the beginning:

“*** Introduction Goes Here”

Those who have worked with me on content, proposal, and analysis projects know how much I love my three asterisks, and other things to flag incomplete text.

But why did I delay writing the introduction to the end? Because of one important difference between proposals and online articles.

  • When an entity receives a proposal, the content is analyzed internally by few who HAVE to read it. The humans and non-person entities (proposal evaluation software) are required to analyze sections of the proposal, or perhaps even the whole thing.
  • When an entity receives an online article, the content is analyzed externally by many who DON’T have to read it. The humans and non-person entities (Google, Bing, etc.) may start reading at the beginning, and if they don’t like the article, they quit reading right there. (Proposal evaluators don’t have that luxury.)

Because of this, the opening words of an  article can be very important. And the right words need to be there.

So I saved that writing exercise for later.

Process

Luna Marketing Services asked us on Instagram when we last went over our current processes.

My answer: January 18, 2024.

The illustration shows just one part of one of my processes. I don’t share the rest of this particular process, but it governs creation of most of my “CPA” materials.

In fact, I am about to start a short writing project for one of my clients, and I will start by asking these seven questions.

But not in Word. In the client’s Jira.

Don’t forget that processes require flexibility. Don’t complete processes for the sake of completing processes.

If Only It Had Been Lower Key

Several days ago, I scheduled the low-key release of a 10 second short for today at 9:00 am PST.

Specifically, I scheduled 2 uploads (which went to 3 platforms).

After I confirmed this morning that the uploads were successful, I performed a 3rd upload.

Only after that third upload did I realize that the video prominently highlighted Bredemarket’s ability to create proposal “temolates.”

Oops.

So I hurriedly deleted the old video (I hope) and released the “OP” version.