Winning business through RFPs is tough, sure, but there are still a few very good reasons to keep up with the published RFPs in your market: They offer a good window into the state of the industry, can keep you abreast of new projects being launched by past clients, and may also reveal the occasional gem of a winnable project.

The key to getting value from RFPs is using tools that can help you find opportunities that are appropriate for your business, and find enough of them that you will have a reasonable chance of actually winning some.

Here are a few of the tools and methods that I have experimented with over the years, and the strengths and weaknesses of each.

1. Onvia

Onvia was my go-to RFP monitoring tool for a few years, until I tested it against Find RFP (below), and then switched over to that service completely. Even the cheapest Onvia package is far more expensive than other RFP monitoring services, and the charge goes up dramatically if you want nationwide coverage.

Like the other, less expensive, services, Onvia gets most of its information by scouring all of the websites that state and local governments use to post RFQs and RFPs. Onvia’s justification for their higher price is the extra research and market analysis services they provide, and the fact that they also include some private (non-government) bid opportunities. Both of these extra features, however, seemed to be aimed primarily at contractors and other companies in the construction industry, so unless you sell parabolic light fixtures, rent construction barricades, etc., it’s probably not worth the extra money.

2. Find RFP

As I mentioned above, I tested Find RFP against Onvia for several months before canceling my Onvia subscription, and I didn’t see any relevant opportunities on Onvia that weren’t also on Find RFP. Combine that with the fact that Find RFP was a lot cheaper ($29.95/month for national coverage) and it wasn’t a hard decision.

3. Governmentbids.com

I haven’t actually tested Governmentbids.com, but it appears similar to FindRFP. FedOpps.com used to be another option, but it looks like it has gone out of business.

Most of these services have free trial periods, so it’s possible to try more than one and see what works best for your business. If you can, try them simultaneously so that you can see if one is picking up opportunities that the others are missing.

One thing that I will suggest about any of these services is that you consider using a keyword search to tailor the RFPs you receive, instead of using industry codes. The industry codes are pretty vague in many cases, and it is very common for RFPs to be categorized incorrectly. And the more specialized or obscure your service is, the more important it is to use this approach. Don’t just pick an industry code that sounds close and hope it works, because if RFP writers select other codes then you won’t see those opportunities.

4. RFP Database

RFP Database is different from the other RFP services in that it relies on users to supply RFPs and RFQs, rather than pulling information from government sites. Members earn “credits” for submitting RFPs they have found in other places, and then use these credits to view RFPs submitted by others.

The good thing about this system is that it isn’t limited to government RFPs. Users can submit opportunities they find anywhere, so you will occasionally find things that don’t show up in the other services. The drawback is that it isn’t comprehensive, which means that it is mainly useful as a tool to augment another service such as Find RFP.

5. RFP Postings on Professional Organization Sites

Depending on your specialty, there is a chance that there is a professional organization out there that posts RFPs of interest to you on their website. I won’t try and list any here since you probably know which organizations are relevant to you, but just as an example, here is the American Planning Association’s RFP/RFQ database.

Most of these sources aren’t going to notify you by email when a new opportunity is posted, so you’ll either have to set up a system to remind yourself to check these regularly, or use a tool like ChangeTower to alert you when something is added to the page.

6. Local or State Government Purchasing Sites

Services like Find RFP mine hundreds of sites for their listings. If you have a particular geographic focus, you can access these same sites directly – generally for free – and sign up to be notified of new opportunities that meet your criteria.

Start by visiting the RFP/RFQ areas of websites run by the state, city, and county governments in your area, as well as universities, hospitals, etc. On the sites, look for language like “doing business with us” or “resources for businesses.” The actual list may be called “bid listings,” “procurement opportunities,” etc., so don’t just look for “RFP” or “RFQ.”

The same rule about using keywords instead of industry/commodity codes that I mentioned in item 3 also applies here. Don’t set up a situation where you are depending on the RFP creator to categorize the RFP correctly.

7. Alerts and Social Media

I’ve tried looking for new RFPs using Google Alerts and some of its alternatives in the past and never had any luck. Things seldom appear, and when they do it is often months, or even years, past the due date.

My attempts to set up ongoing Twitter searches have also been unproductive. Broad search terms result in too much noise, and more specific searches rarely yield results.

Putting it Together

I recommend that you use a combined approach in order to see the maximum number of opportunities and ensure that nothing falls through the cracks. Start by picking one of the inexpensive paid services like Find RFP to do most of the work for you, and set yourself up to receive notifications directly from the key agencies or organizations in your geographic market.

Since these RFPs are by definition “public,” there is a lot of competition, so you’ll need to see a lot of them to find the few that you really have a chance at. Taking a look at a large number of RFPs also gives you a chance to share the opportunities that aren’t right for you with friends and colleagues, which can be a great networking activity.

And once you’ve found an RFP that looks promising, make sure to check out our How to Respond to an RFP post for some tips on crafting an effective proposal.

Updated 05/16/19

The post How to Find RFPs for Creative Services appeared first on Pushing Snowballs.

Called in to stop the fight from happening, the state law enforcement organization sent just one Ranger, who was allegedly met at the train station by an incredulous Dallas mayor wanting to know where the rest of his group was. According to legend, the lawman’s reply was something along the lines o”how many fights you got?”

Beginning with the fact that this wasn’t actually a riot, but was instead a well-attended prize fight, the “One Riot, One Ranger” phrase is loaded with misinformation and exaggeration. Over the years however, it has become strongly associated with the group. It has also taken on its own life as a saying that means “don’t send a group to do what one capable and determined person should be able to handle on their own.”

I had a boss for many years who liked to invoke the “One Riot, One Ranger” principle when deciding who would attend interviews for projects where we had been shortlisted. He also regularly cited legendary architect Philip Johnson’s ability to win multimillion-dollar commissions with only the most basic presentation techniques and minimal preparation.

While I like the idea of one person being able to go in and tell a firm’s story with such conviction that the client decides they are the perfect fit for a project, it almost never works in real life. Once you’ve survived the proposal process and made it to the interview round, the client is looking for a fuller picture of what your firm offers, and how you’re different from other finalists. Relying on the personality and institutional knowledge of just one individual typically isn’t going to get you over this hump.

When you show up for a project interview with a skeleton crew, here are some of the ways it might be interpreted by the client:

You’re not enthusiastic about the project.

Clients know that you have multiple projects going on at any time, but no one wants to feel like theirs is going to be the one you care the least about. By skimping on the interview effort, you’re opening the door to this suspicion.

And what if you really aren’t that enthusiastic about the project? What if its size just doesn’t justify the time commitment and travel costs associated with sending a larger team? While you always have to tailor your level of investment to the possible return, this may be an indication that this wasn’t a project that you should have pursued in the first place.

You don’t have enough bandwidth to handle the project.

Are you there by yourself because everyone else in the office is too swamped with work to attend an important interview? Sure, you want to give the impression that you’re a successful, busy firm, but if you don’t have the resources to handle the interview, how are you going to do the work, right?

You’re too small.

A variation on the bandwidth issue, showing up at an interview for an important project with just a handful of people can leave clients with a “where is everyone” feeling. Showing 8-9 team members in the proposal and then just 1-2 live bodies at the interview raises some questions about your ability to actually field that team when it’s time to do the work.

You don’t understand the scope of the project.

Whether or not you think the project is significant, the owner probably believes that it is. By making a minimal appearance at the interview, you’re liable to give the impression that you and the client have very different ideas about what it’s going to take to successfully complete the project.

By not sending a significant portion of the team to an interview, you’re also missing out on some other valuable opportunities:

You’re missing the chance to “show your wares.”

As much as we like to think that we’re selling our results or processes, most clients that are hiring professional services firms still feel like they’re paying for people. This means that your people are your product, and buyers always like to touch the merchandise.

You’re limiting the odds of making a winning personal connection.

Don’t underestimate the importance that personal connections can play in the decision-making process, especially when it comes down to the last few finalists. Every client team is made up of different personalities, and you never know who from your office might have a communication style, personal background, or sense of humor that resonates with one of the decision-makers. Bringing more people to the table increases your chances for scoring big on these intangible factors.

I know that some of you are committed to a strict rule of “don’t have anyone in the presentation who isn’t presenting.” While I agree that you don’t want to have someone sitting inexplicably in the background, you may just need to expand your definition of “presenting.” For example, a brief speaking part during which they explain their role in the project, along with participation in the Q&A, could be ample justification for their presence at the interview.

Of course, if you’re a one-person firm and are going to be doing the bulk of the work on your own, then this doesn’t really apply to you. Walk into the interview and celebrate that fact that you’re introducing the client to the person that they’ll be dealing with, and the one that will be doing the work.

If you’re proposing multiple team members, however, and it’s a project you really want, consider pulling out all of the stops for the interview. Because that interview isn’t a riot, and you definitely aren’t a 19th-century Texas Ranger.

The post After a Successful Proposal, Don’t Skimp on the Interview appeared first on Pushing Snowballs.

But what if the services you provide are so specialized that they’re seldom requested in their own RFP? Are there proactive steps that you can take to earn a spot as a subconsultant on RFP teams, as opposed to just waiting for teaming requests from prime consultants?

In fact, the mechanics of the RFP process create some unique opportunities to find prospective projects, and the challenges that the process puts on respondents can be turned to your advantage and help you secure a spot on the team.

Many of these techniques are actually variations on the things that you would do to pursue RFP opportunities as a prime consultant, with some subconsultant-specific twists.

1. Monitor and share published RFPs

In order to pursue a place on teams being formed to pursue new RFPs, the first thing you need to do is find a way to stay abreast of RFPs as they are released. This can be done with an RFP monitoring service like FindRFP, or through a variety of other methods described in this previous post on How to Find RFPs.

Once you’ve spotted RFPs that might require a firm like yours as part of the project team, you can reach out to companies in your network that might be likely to respond to the RFP as a prime consultant. The message to them is “If you’re responding to this RFP, we’d like to be part of your team.”

Some subconsultants and vendors even make sharing RFPs a regular part of their outreach effort to prospective clients, updating prospects on relevant RFPs even if they don’t see an opportunity to be part of the team. In general, however, it’s getting harder to find RFPs that sophisticated firms haven’t already heard about, so I’m not sure how much value you actually deliver by doing this. The more important thing is to target the RFPs that offer immediate teaming potential.

2. Attend pre-proposal meetings

What if you’ve used your RFP monitoring activities to identify a new opportunity, but none of your regular contacts have indicated any interest in putting together a team to respond? If the RFP includes a pre-proposal meeting, that presents a great opportunity to see who is considering a response, and even meet them in person.

Depending on the specifics of the meeting, there may be a variety of ways to find out who is there, and also make your own presence known to potential team members.

At smaller meetings, attendees may be asked to introduce themselves. Take good notes, and when your turn comes, identify yourself in a way that clearly establishes the role you could play on a team.

There is often an opportunity for brief interaction with other attendees at the end of the meetings. Take advantage of the opportunity to introduce yourself to potential teammates and exchange cards.

Pay attention to the sign-in sheet. At bigger pre-proposal meetings, it can be hard to figure out who’s in attendance. In this situation, the sign-in sheet can be your friend. Some institutions/agencies will release the list of attendees as an addendum to the RFP. If not, try the guerrilla technique of visually scanning the sheet for key company names as you sign in yourself.

3. Be prepared to respond

Once you’ve identified firms willing to consider you for their teams, all of the work you have (hopefully) done previously to assemble and organize your marketing tools will pay off. You should be able to provide all of the materials needed by the prime consultant – quickly and in the exact format they need.

This quick response will pay long-term dividends. That is because while marketing directors always want to team with the firms that are the best fit for a project, they also put a lot of value on a team member’s ability to make their life easier by promptly complete, concise, and clearly organized information ready for use in their RFP format.

Over time, marketing directors at large firms learn who can be trusted to help them build the best RFP response, and those subconsultants will always top their list of potential team members.

4. Stay on people’s radar

Professional services marketing always has an element of “being in the right place at the right time,” and the hunt for RFP teaming opportunities is no exception. Sometimes the subconsultant that is asked to be part of an RFP team is just the one that happens to be on someone’s mind because they recently received an email from them, or saw a blog post they had written, or read something about them in a professional journal.

5. Become a resource

This one is closely related to #4. That’s because the most effective way to stay on people’s minds is to earn a reputation as a resource for information about your area of specialization. Even more than end users, prospective partners don’t need to be bombarded with marketing messages. Share information about new technologies and trends in your specialization – and serve as a reliable source of answers and advice – and you’ll be the firm that people turn to when they’re assembling teams for potential projects.

6. Increase your odds with multiple teams

One factor to consider when you’re participating as a subconsultant on RFP teams is the issue of being included in more than one proposal. If your service is specialized enough, then there may be occasions where prime consultants are fine with you being a part of multiple teams. In fact, it is not uncommon for a highly specialized consultant to be included on all of the teams pursuing a project.

Of course, there will also be situations where a team leader – especially one that has a good chance of getting a project – requests exclusivity from all of the members of its team. The point here is that you shouldn’t automatically assume that you can or can’t be a part of multiple teams, and when you can, you should increase your odds of success by participating in as many teams as possible.

As we’ve said before, finding work through RFPs can be a frustrating and time-consuming endeavor – with the odds stacked against you. This means that anything you can do to minimize the resources you put into an RFP or increase your chances of success is a good thing. And as a subconsultant on an RFP team, you’ll invest less time in the preparation of the response, and sometimes even have an opportunity to enhance your odds by being a member of multiple teams pursuing the same project.

By taking a structured approach to your efforts to expand these kinds of opportunities, you should be able to reap some of the benefits without drawing resources away from marketing initiatives aimed directly at end-user clients.

In future posts, we’ll address some other issues related to RFP teams, including the specifics of what you should be ready to supply when asked to join a team, and what you can do to make sure that being a member of a winning team actually turns into billable work.

The post How to Find RFPs as a Subconsultant appeared first on Pushing Snowballs.

To deal with with a complex RFP, use a structured, step-by-step approach.

Seasoned RFP responders deal with these challenges by taking a structured, step-by-step approach to the response process. At some firms, this process is well documented, with a system of forms, checklists, and software tools that help them coordinate their efforts and manage deadlines. At smaller organizations, the approach is often less formal, with an experienced individual using their own experience – rather than an institutionalized system – to manage the process.

Whether these systems are well documented – or exist only in the mind of the firm’s marketing director – they work by breaking the response process into a set of manageable components and then tackling those components using a timeline that prevents last-minute scheduling crises. They also help spot unusual requests or technical requirements that might be hidden deep within a complex RFP.

If you’re new to the RFP process, or have been at it for a while but still find yourself struggling every time you begin working on a response, you can make some noticeable improvements just by creating a simple outline of steps to follow for every response.

The process will be a little different for every firm and every industry, but try using the steps below as a starting point for developing your own standard approach for RFP responses.

1. Review the RFP Document

Do this immediately. Do not wait two weeks. Comb through the document and pull out key requirements, dates, and other important elements. As part of this review, make sure to do the following:

Identify production and delivery issues that could impact the process.

This includes questions like whether the response will be delivered in hard-copy or electronic format. If it is hard-copy, how many copies are required? And is a delivery address clearly stated? Look for inconsistencies in these specific instructions so that you can resolve them during the early phases of the process, rather than having to scramble on the final due date.

Also, make note of items that will require outside assistance, like notarized documents, reference letters, or copies of signed financial records.

Establish the project scope.

In many RFPs, the full description of the scope may be spread across multiple sections. Even if there is a part of the document dedicated specifically to the scope, there may also be additional (even contradictory) information in other sections, such as the section specifying how the fees should be stated.

Keep a running list of questions.

While reviewing the RFP, note items that are unclear or contradictory so that you can include them in the questions you submit during the RFP’s Q&A window. 

2. Identify Project Team Members

As soon as you have developed an understanding of the project scope, assemble the internal team for the project. By identifying these individuals early in the process, you can then use them to help develop an accurate project approach and fee, and also to help choose any outside partners or subconsultants.

In addition, quickly identifying project team members gives you more time to confirm that you have up-to-date resources (bios, photos, etc.) for each of them, and leaves plenty of time to generate any new materials that are required.

3. Identify and Make Initial Contact With Sub Consultants

Work with the internal project team to identify potential subconsultants for the assignment and contact them immediately. Don’t wait on this, or some of the best firms may agree to exclusive partnerships with your competitors. Tell them you will get back in touch in a few days with a detailed description of what you need from them for the response.

4. Create a Table of Contents for the Response

Sometimes RFPs request duplicate or contradictory information in various sections. They can also have very specific requirements for how they want the information organized, which doesn’t always match up perfectly with the information they have requested. Creating an actual TOC for the response early in the process can help you to get a handle on this. Don’t worry about the detailed content of each section yet. Focus on the big picture.

Creating the table of contents now also allows you to use it as a sort of “checklist” as you assemble the various components of the response.

5. Request Detailed Information From Sub Consultants

Now that you have your table of contents you can get back to each of the subconsultants with a detailed list of what you need from them in terms of firm overviews, project sheets, resumes, etc. Note that if you are going to get to the project approach soon, then you can wait and request these materials along with any information you will need from them regarding fees and work process. If the development of the detailed project approach is going to take more than a few days, however, it makes sense to go ahead and let people begin compiling this other information.

6. Check for RFP Updates or Responses to Questions

Before getting into the development of the project approach, make sure to check the requesting organization’s web site for any updates or addenda, or for responses to questions submitted about the RFP. Even if you didn’t submit any questions yourself, it is still very important to obtain and review the answers to other firms’ queries, since these answers are often the vehicle for revealing significant changes to the project scope or response process.

7. Define and Document the Project Approach

With some of the more general components of the response now underway, you can now begin work on the detailed project approach. The specifics of this approach will depend heavily on the project scope, schedule, and deliverables described in the RFP, and it should be developed with extensive input from both the internal project team and relevant subconsultants.

8. Address the Fee Proposal

Now use the completed project approach to formulate your proposed project fees. Since you’ve already adapted your standard approach to address the project phasing and deliverables requested in the RFP, the process of estimating fees should actually be relatively straightforward. If appropriate, you should also share relevant portions of the project approach with subconsultants for their use in generating fees.

9. Document the Project Team

Remember that you started assembling the information on the project team members right after receiving the proposal. That was in order to avoid any last-minute scrambling for headshots or employment histories. Now, however, is the time to complete the final team documentation.

Take advantage of every opportunity to tailor your response to the specifics of the RFP, rather than just using generic materials.

By waiting to finalize this until after the project approach is completed, you can tie the description of each team member’s role to specific elements of the approach, and also use their bios and project experience to reiterate how their expertise is relevant to their role in the project. Take advantage of every opportunity to tailor your response to the specifics of the RFP, rather than just using generic materials.

10. Document Firm Experience and Qualifications

Like the information for individual team members, this firm-wide information should have already been in the works, but now is the time to finalize this content. Make sure that projects that you show – and the order you show them – reflect the appropriate scope of services, project type, and industry. Also, make sure to include projects that the internal and external team members have worked on together, and make note of these previous collaborations.

11. Review the RFP Again

With all of the key content for the response now completed, cross-reference everything with the RFP again to make sure you have addressed all of its requirements. If you haven’t been checking for updates to the RFP throughout the process, now is also a good time to do that again.

12. Create Overview Materials

Resist the temptation to create overview materials – like an executive summary and/or cover letter – at the beginning of the process, even though they appear at the beginning of the response. Instead, wait until the end so that you can pull the high points from the broader response to create a truly effective summary.

13. Produce, Assemble, and Package the Response

After thoroughly proofing the response, create the PDF document and/or print and bind the physical books. Make sure to open and review the PDF and flip through each of the hard copy documents to confirm that all of the pages are there and in the correct order.

14. Review the RFP One More Time

With the response ready to deliver, review the RFP’s instructions regarding production, packaging, and delivery one more time. Pay special attention to the delivery address and labeling guidelines.

15. Deliver the Response

If the response has to be provided in hard-copy form, deliver it by hand if possible. And if the recipient is in another city, and you need to use FedEx, don’t just forget about the package once you hand it to the shipper. Track the package to make sure that it makes it to its destination, and follow up with the recipient via phone or email if there is any doubt.

16. Wait

In most cases, you’ll now need to resist the urge to contact the RFP recipient for updates, since most issuers of formal RFPs have strict guidelines about communications with respondents. You should still watch the calendar and feel free to inquire via phone or email if milestone dates pass without any word from the organization.

Does your system for creating a proposal in response to an RFP look like this? Or have you developed a radically different approach? If you’re an experienced RFP responder, what’s your best advice for someone sinking into despair as they flip through their first RFP?

Share your thoughts in the comments.

The post How to Respond to an RFP appeared first on Pushing Snowballs.

People still visit this site in pretty significant numbers, however, so we’ve been thinking about the kinds of information we can share that will be valuable to the site’s users, and that will also complement the things we’re now doing at Content & Context. By the way, please take a look at that site sometime and let us know what you think.

As I’ve mentioned before, the stats about how visitors arrive at this site – along with the feedback and requests we hear directly from users – make it pretty clear that there is a tremendous amount of interest in examples of completed RFP responses from a variety of industries, so we anticipate making this a major focus of the site in the future.

This week we have a PDF version of an RFP response that was prepared for the development of a Downtown – Waterfront Master Plan for Belfast, Maine.

While the document could certainly benefit from some hierarchy (subheads, bullet points, etc.) that would make it a little easier to navigate, it does have some good examples of how a Project Approach and Work Plan can be effectively customized to show an understanding of the project’s needs. The breakdown of team members’ anticipate involvement in each task is also clearly stated, without being unrealistically detailed.

The post Sample RFP Response for a Downtown Master Plan appeared first on Pushing Snowballs.

That was what I had originally envisioned for this post. A list of questions to consider before you commit to expending the time (as well as covering the hard costs for travel, etc.) associated with a serious RFP response. Maybe even ten questions. After all, people do like lists.

As I got into it, however, I started thinking about how I have come to approach this decision-making process over the years. And I realized that all of the questions I had in mind were really just variations on one big question:

Why would the client choose your firm over other respondents?

For example:

If it is an out-of-town project, and there are qualified local firms that offer the requested services, why would the client choose you over the local options?

Is it the continuation of an ongoing project, or the implementation of a plan that was developed by another firm? If so, why would the client choose you over the firm with previous experience on the project?

If you didn’t help the client write the RFP, and it looks as though someone else did, why would they choose you over the firm that gave them the assistance?

If it is a price-sensitive client, and your firm charges premium fees, why would they choose you over the less expensive alternatives? Can you make a compelling case for why your services are worth more? Do they even have the ability to take that into account? Or are they required to hire the low bidder?

Are there other firms who have done this exact same type of project for organizations just like the client? Or even worse, the client’s competitors? Many clients see safety in hiring that kind of familiarity, rather than using their imagination to picture how non-specific experience might be relevant to their project. Will you be able to convince them that it is?

Is the project big enough to attract the attention of “superstar” firms? What can you offer the client to offset the appeal of a big name?

Hopefully you are already on one of these “inside tracks.” You’re the local favorite. The firm that helped them write the RFP. The one who worked with their competitors. Or even the superstar firm. Even if you are, however, you need to be aware that there might be respondents that fall into some of the other categories themselves, and you need to be ready to preemptively offset those threats.

And if you aren’t any of those things – you’re just someone who found the RFP through FindRFP, or through another method of monitoring RFP opportunities, and you need the work – then you need to give some serious thought to what you are going to do to level the playing field.

The post The One Question You Must Ask Yourself Before Responding to an RFP appeared first on Pushing Snowballs.

The reasons for this shift aren’t hard to understand. The ability to view PDFs is now pretty much ubiquitous, and receiving information in this format enables people to get it faster, and easily pass it along to others in their organization.

There are also some clear benefits to this situation for brochure senders. It saves on printing and postage costs. It eliminates the need to store pre-printed brochures, and the waste that accompanies that practice. It makes it easy for you to customize materials on the fly. And it’s also better for the environment, assuming that the recipient doesn’t just turn around and print out their own copies.

There are drawbacks as well, however. You lose some control over the way that the brochure is viewed. And if your brochure has to be printed because it isn’t easily viewable on screen, not only will some of the environmental benefits be lost, but it may be reproduced on a printer that doesn’t show your work in its best light.

You can prevent most of these problems by avoiding the mistake that most people make when they begin getting requests for PDF brochures. What is that mistake? It is making a PDF of your existing printed materials. That is because the page orientation, font sizes, layouts, and lack of interactive functionality are geared toward the printed piece, and viewing this on the screen is going to lead first to user frustration, and then to the printing of the brochure on inappropriate equipment.

PDF vs. URL

Before I go any further, I should address a question that I know some of you are asking. Why would I want to send a PDF at all when I could just send a URL to our web site? The first, and probably most important, answer is that many potential clients just want a PDF, not a link. They may be requesting information from multiple firms, and want to keep the brochure files together in one folder, or whatever. The bottom line is that you’re not going to endear yourself to a prospective client by being difficult, especially in the early stages of the process. In addition, sending a PDF does allow you to do some customization – highlighting your most relevant projects, personnel, and service offerings – and a PDF also has a better chance of printing out nicely than a web site if the recipient does insist on printing.

Convinced that a screen-specific PDF brochure makes sense for you? Here are some tips that I have picked up through doing some of these myself and talking to others about their approach:

Ideal Document Size/Orientation

This is an area were PDF brochures made from printed pieces typically have big problems. Computer monitors have a landscape orientation, and if your PDF brochure has a portrait orientation (vertical 8.5×11, for instance), then you are going to force the viewer to do one of two things. They can view the full page all at once, which will be quite small because of the wasted real estate on either side of the screen, or they can fill the screen with the width of the page and scroll from top to bottom. Neither of these options creates an ideal viewing experience, and the result is likely to be the printing of the document.

That’s why a landmark/horizontal orientation is the cornerstone of a good PDF brochure. In fact, page orientation and appropriate font sizes are probably 90% of what makes a screen-friendly PDF successful.

The actual size of the document is a little less important than the orientation, and is somewhat flexible, since varying screen ratios means you aren’t really going to be able to create something that completely fills every screen. Letter or A4 size (depending on the country of you audience) are good because the dimensions will remain the same when they are printed, but they do leave a lot of screen unused on many monitors. Dimensions like 11.7 x 6.7 come a lot closer to using the full screen, but because of all the variability in actual screen sizes, it probably comes down to the ratio you feel best suits your layout. If you do use a non-standard page size, I suggest trying a test page on a few monitors before creating the entire brochure.

Font Sizes

After document orientation, font size is probably the most important factor in a successful PDF brochure. Depending on the font you are using, I wouldn’t go much below 12pt (or maybe even 14pt) to ensure easy readability on all monitors. Captions are obviously a problem, but if you can’t live without them, you could experiment with using the PDF “notes” feature to create pop-ups for captions. Unfortunately, I haven’t found a way to make this look nice, so please share any ideas you may have.

If you’re having trouble fitting all of your copy while keeping it readable, you can also try getting creative with some of the other PDF capabilities (“next page” or “read more” links, etc.) to present your information. In general, however, you should look at this as an opportunity to make your content more focused and concise, because that is what someone who requests an overview brochure via email is probably looking for anyway. Save your detailed information for white papers, case studies, or other items that make sense in a more traditional printed format.

Image Resolution

Given that this document is intended for on-screen viewing, your first reaction may be to downsample images to 72dpi when you make your PDF. I would recommend, however, that you actually use a higher resolution – assuming that you can do it and not make your file more than 3-5 megabytes. That is because you will want the highest resolution possible if someone does print the document, and there is also a chance that some people with large monitors will be viewing the document at greater than 100% size, even on screen.

If you’re pushing the limits for an emailable document, switching the image quality from “Maximum” to “High” can also make a significant impact on your file size, and I have found that to have very little effect on image quality.

Document Properties

In the document properties window, Acrobat Pro allows you to control several factors related to how users will see your document. The most useful of these are found in the Initial Vew tab. You should definitely set the magnification to “fit page,” which will enable the user to see that this is a horizontal document intended for on-screen viewing.

A more controversial feature is the “Open in full-screen mode” option. Full-screen mode is clearly the best way to view a PDF brochure, but when someone opens a document that has this feature implemented, Acrobat gives them a scary warning message about full-screen documents being used to impersonate applications that could try and get their personal information. I haven’t done any surveys of how people react to this message, but I do have a concern that it could lead some less tech-savvy recipients to get nervous and completely close the document. You may want to consider the technological sophistication of your likely recipients when deciding whether or not to use this feature.

Links and Navigation

You should definitely take advantage of the PDF’s ability to include clickable links to your web site, blog, Facebook profile or page, Twitter profile, etc. And don’t forget that you can also create links to other pages with the PDF itself. While the possibilities here are endless, one basic application of this would allow someone to skip from an overview page with a list of services directly to a detail page for a particular offering that is relevant to their needs, without having to page past several other service descriptions.

I’m interested in hearing your thoughts about what makes a great PDF brochure, and what kind of feedback you’ve received on yours from potential clients. And if you have one that you would like to share, feel free to either post a link in the comments or send me the PDF. If I get a few good ones I’ll share them in a follow-up post.

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These spreadsheets, which are available for download from the Wellesley Hills Group website, address concepts that are explained in detail in the book, but there are also some instructions within the files, so you could get some use from them even without having read the book.

The first file is a pretty straightforward monthly budget template, which isn’t anything groundbreaking, but it will save you some formatting time, and the included sample is informative if you haven’t had much experience with marketing budgets. The second file, however, is much more interesting. It can help you to better understand how your sales pipeline works (i.e. how prospects move from being a lead to a customer), and what levers you can move to get more customers out of the end of the pipeline.

In addition to trying these tools (especially the second one), I would also strongly encourage you to take a look at the book. I initially assumed that it would be aimed primarily at firm principals or sole practitioners who practiced marketing on the side, as opposed to full-time marketing professionals. As it turns out, however, I have found a huge amount of useful information, especially in big-picture areas like forecasting, planning, and achieving buy-in from other stakeholders within a firm.

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This doesn’t mean, however, that there isn’t a lot you can learn from these big-firm marketing operations, including things that don’t cost any money at all. That’s because some of the most potent advantages large firms have don’t come from financial resources, but from the smart planning and resource management that come from taking a thoughtful approach to the marketing process.

So if you want to stay ahead of your small to mid-size rivals, and maybe even snatch some projects away from the bigger players in your niche, try some of these large-firm tactics.

1. Utilize a CRM System

Everyone (hopefully) understands that you need to know who your prospective clients are, but many people don’t recognize that keeping track of every interaction with them is equally important. Customer resource management (CRM) software is the tool that makes this possible. It allows you to keep track of how a prospect got onto your radar and what kinds of overtures they have (or haven’t) responded to, which is what enables the tracking activities that are proposed later in this post, and it also facilitates the scheduling of future tasks for prospects, which will help ensure that you stick with a regular program of follow up.

DesignM.ag had a very good post a few weeks ago that provided an overview of some of the CRM software that is available today. I have had good luck with DayLite, which is Mac only software, although I will say that it doesn’t provide a tremendous amount of guidance on how to set up your database, requiring you to figure out some of the principals of CRM on your own. Salesforce.com offers a little more guidance and is widely regarded as the industry standard, which can have some benefits if you ever want to share your system with someone else or bring in another person to help manage your marketing efforts. Salesforce can be one of the more expensive options out there, but there are a couple of different plans, and it is very rich in features and well supported.

2. Create Systemized (But Not Standardized) Marketing Materials

Reinventing the collateral wheel for every new prospect or project opportunity seems to be a favorite pastime of smaller creative firms. Maybe this is because they don’t have a good system for accounting for the time spent on this activity, and therefore don’t recognize its cost. Or maybe they just don’t have the luxury of forward thought when it comes to marketing, which brings with it the realization that this inquiry actually won’t be the last, and that there will be another, similar request within weeks.

Successful larger firms don’t approach marketing collateral on an ad hoc basis. They respond to inquiries or opportunities by drawing from a deep well of static and interactive materials.

This isn’t to say, however, that you should utilize a generic, one-size-fits-all response to inquiries about your firm and its capabilities. A good system should be thought of as a highly customizable kit of parts, with room for appropriate information that makes it unique to the recipient. This will yield materials that are higher quality, more comprehensive, and less time-consuming to produce than those that are the result of starting from a blank page.

How do you do create this kind of system? Start by looking at what you have sent out in the past year. There’s probably quite a bit of good material there, and you may even be surprised by some of the great content that you’ve produced and forgotten about. Once you’ve identified the raw materials, standardize the formats and create a catalog of your new inventory to help you find things quickly in the future.

3. Look at Leads in a “Funnel”

One pretty standard sales management technique at big companies with a long sales cycle is to view prospects in a “funnel.” The basic idea is that at each stage of the sales process some of your potential customers are going to fall away because they have selected another firm, decided not to buy, been deemed non-qualified, etc. This means that you need a lot of prospects at the wider top part of the funnel (the initial contact) in order to keep a decent flow coming out of the narrow bottom (where they become clients).

A typical funnel, which could be customized to account for the unique characteristics of your industry and/or sales process, might include the following levels:

• • • Inquiry
    • Presentation
    • Follow up/Consultation
    • Proposal
    • Contract Negotiation

If you assign all of your prospective clients or projects to various parts of the funnel, and then monitor the funnel contents, you can watch for gaps in the flow of potential work, especially at the top end of the funnel. If you notice a narrowing of the “Inquiry” category, for example, then you know that you need to increase your efforts to add new prospects to the system.

This is another area where good CRM software can be a big help. Some of the more full-featured CRM programs, including DayLite and Salesforce.com, have funnel tracking features built into the system, which makes it easy to set up and monitor your own funnel.

4. View Your Marketing/Sales Process as a Pipeline

While the funnel is a way to monitor the health of your prospect flow, the pipeline model is a tool for actually moving prospects toward becoming customers.

By devising a sequence of interactions that you can have with a prospect, and creating materials to support those interactions, you can accomplish several things. You increase the number of prospects that you can manage simultaneously, improve the quality of your communications with prospects (giving them something of value, instead of just asking them over and over again if they are ready to hire you), and also decrease the instances of prospects “falling off the radar” after an initial inquiry and exchange of preliminary information.

Here’s an example of a very simplified approach to this process:

• • • Initial contact: Send capabilities brochure
    • One week after initial contact: Follow up to answer any questions
    • Four weeks after initial contact: Send link to download relevant case studies
    • Eight weeks after initial contact: Send invitation to view archived webinar
    • Every 4-8 weeks thereafter: Send link to relevant industry news with a personal note

The exact content of this program will depend, of course, on your business and the materials you have at your disposal. It may also be more or less focused on direct contact depending on your personal style. You will also want the ability to break out of this system when appropriate. For example, someone who is about to make a hiring decision may get more information at the outset than a person who is strictly a long-term prospect.

As with the funnel, a good CRM system will help you to manage this process.

5. Measure and Focus

Smart marketers of consumers products measure everything and then focus their resources on the tactics that work. Unfortunately, with business to business offerings (like creative services), it can be hard to measure the effectiveness of marketing tactics. Completed sales are much less frequent, which means less data, and since our web sites generally aren’t transactional, it’s harder to gauge the value of efforts that drive prospects to the web.

Big firms still try to measure what they can, however. They make efforts to find out where a prospect came from, and then store that information during the months that it may take for that prospect to become a client. But small firms seem to do this less frequently, and rarely seem to take action on what they do learn. Instead, they stick with their industry’s standard marketing tactics, regardless of their effectiveness. This is unfortunate, because in reality having fewer resources to work with warrants more focus, not less.

The specific techniques for measuring the value of various marketing tactics are too varied to go into here, but most of them are not particularly complicated. In fact, once you get into the measurement mindset you will find that most of them are actually pretty obvious. Ask people where they heard about you and record it in your database for future reference, use Google Analytics to evaluate the performance of your keyword advertising and SEO efforts, use an email marketing service that enables you to see how many people actually read and click on your emails, etc.

6. Dedicate Time to Marketing

Having one or more full-time staff members devoted to marketing may be the most important advantage that larger firms have over their smaller competitors. Having full-time marketing staff means that more content can be developed, more prospects can be followed up with, and more proposals can be prepared, all without cutting into the time available for billable work.

Even if you don’t have the luxury of focusing exclusively on marketing, however, you can achieve some of the same benefits by dedicating a percentage of your time to marketing activities. Rather than just setting a goal of x hours per week, try setting aside a block of time for marketing (say one hour per day, or two hours on Tuesday and Thursday). Put it in your calendar, and if something else comes up, don’t cancel it, move it.

You may feel like you don’t have enough activities to take up that much time, but that’s just because you haven’t taken the time to come up with a plan. Spend the first week on that, and then you’ll plenty of tasks to fill up your marketing time for weeks to come.

This really just scratches the surface, and I hope to be able to elaborate on some of these items in future posts. In the meantime, however, I hope that this gets you to start thinking about what large, successful firm do correctly when it comes to marketing, and how you now use some of these methods to improve the effectiveness of your own efforts. If you have your own thoughts or recommendations, I’d love to see them in the comments.

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Very thorough, yet concise, and has a flow that makes it clear that it wasn’t just pasted together at the last minute. Well worth checking out.

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