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Purpose
The art of storytelling dates back tens of thousands of years. It is an essential element of the advancement of our species. The telling of fables, parables, myths and legends was the vehicle of choice for passing on advice and guidance from one generation to the next.
It's not surprising that we are still very receptive to receiving information in story tale form. Yet the approach to the (relatively modern) phenomenon of written sales proposals rarely exploits the readers’ appetite for a story.
In the modern era we can look to Hollywood for inspiration. Before any film is made, the budding writer produces a script outlining essential elements of the story (stripped of everything that does not contribute to the story's key message). Should the script gain buy-in it is then embellished by creating a storyboard to show how the film might look visually. The power of the storyboard is that it conveys different information to the various roles involved in making the film, e.g. casting, camera positioning, set making, identifying the props which will be required etc. The storyboard is used to help plan who needs to do what when producing the film. Finally, before the film is released it undergoes test screening to gain feedback from people not involved in its creation to assess how well the story is received and where, if necessary, it can be improved.
Applying Hollywood film-making techniques can also help overcome one of the most dangerous tactics in proposal writing - the 'cut & paste' from your last proposal due to the stage fright of starting with a blank page!
The purpose of the Proposal Storyboard Workshop is to extract and organize your bid team’s creative talent in order to outline a highly persuasive proposal and to allocate the task of writing the proposal sections.
Service Details
The Proposal Storyboard Workshop will be carried out by an experienced Bid Manager with a good record of winning complex deals. The service is delivered in two phases:
Preparation
The Outperform consultant will meet or make contact with the Primary Sales Contact to gain an understanding of the client’s requirement, your relationship with the buyer network, competition, perceived issues or risks and the sales objective.
The consultant will then identify who needs to participate at the workshop, determine when and where it should take place, the specific objectives for the workshop and prepare and issue a workshop brief to all the participants.
Delivery
The Outperform consultant will facilitate a 1-day workshop using storyboarding tools, mind-maps and team decision making techniques. The output from the workshop will be the outline Storyboard.
Within 24 hours of the workshop the consultant will then issue the completed storyboard to the Primary Sales Contact (or Bid Manager) for review and onward distribution to the bid team.
Benefits
The Proposal Storyboard Workshop will enable your organisation to:
· Increase the clarity and unity of the bid strategy
· Decrease bid costs whilst increasing win chance
· Reduce proposal re-work and last minute changes.
· Win better contracts
Deliverables
1) Workshop brief
2) Outline proposal storyboard
3) Detailed proposal storyboard
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