New template for RFP (Request For Proposal)

Most of the RFP (Request for Proposal) answers are handled with Microsoft Excel that seems (wrongly) the most confortable and easy tool for most of us : on the first left column you get the customer requirements list and on the others you get the "Standard" column (Yes or No whether you software support or not the requirement), the "Specific" columns (Simple,Medium,Complex related to the specific development that is needed to meet the customer requirement ) , and eventually the "Comments" column in which you describe how the standard feature works or how long in mendays the specific development could be. Generally, the outcome of the RFP answers has to do with something like the following document in Microsoft Excel format :
What I would suggest is a more friendly template document based on Microsoft Word that will end up with a clearer and a more friendly design oriented answer to the customer :

This template will allow you :

• To write clear and understandable sentences rather abbreviation
• To check more efficiently the "spelling and grammar" of each section
• To add more easily free text from the format table
• To get an introduction and a conclusion
• To organize you document according the Word table of content so that it will be easier to read for your customer
• To get a better visual result

Feel free to download this template document with the link below

http://www.scribd.com/doc/8543891/Template-RFP

Finding time

That's indeed a big deal : you have a lot things to do that may overwhelm you : you have to answer complex RFP about businesses that some times you didn't suspect they did exist, you have to meet and interview the customer during the discovery process phase , you have to prepare the demo with a lot of customizing steps in order to answer unusual requirements, you have to create the slides and you need to add the value your product is supposed to provide to your audience's company, you have to make the dry run, working and sharing your work with colleagues and managers ... All that means one thing : it is time, a lot of time. And the only answer to that question and the only advice i can address to you is : you have to find the time.

Top 10 reasons why proposals fails

hi guy, i visited today a great site called instigator blog by Ben Yoskovitz. In it i have found the
post Top 10 Reasons why proposals fails i would like to share with you. Indeed, if we fail first the proposal (RFP) we won't have any outstanding demo to show. Anyway a lot of failure reasons you will get here could explain as well the main problems you may encounter with software demonstration. (too technical, too long, without reference to the prospect's pain, without benefits...)

1. They’re too long. Proposals aren’t meant for “shock and awe” - don’t try and overwhelm the prospect into submission. Edit and cut. Cut and edit. There’s no perfect length for a proposal, but how many of your prospects really read the whole thing? They scan and skim till they get to the price and timeline. Keep it short.
2. They don’t reference the prospect’s pain. Why did the prospect ask you for a proposal? You better have a crystal clear answer to that question. Too many proposals don’t reiterate the pain properly. Skipping that makes the prospect feel like you don’t get it.
3. They’re too technical. I know you’re the expert in your field, that’s why I asked for a proposal. You don’t need to inundate your proposal with buzzwords and industry-hooey. A prospect only knows a smidge of what you know about your business, and they don’t really want to know more. Your proposal fails when it sells industry mastery using language I won’t understand.
4. They’re not selling benefits. Proposals that miss out on #2 and focus too much on #3 invariably aren’t selling benefits. If you’re not selling benefits you’re sunk. And for the love of everything that is holy, spell these out as clearly as possible.
5. They’re not well structured. Proposals are stories. And every story has a beginning, middle and end. Think of your proposal as a story and write it accordingly.
6. They’ve got spelling and grammatical problems. A proposal with spelling errors is unacceptable, it’s as simple as that. Grammatical problems may be harder to catch. Three tips: Read it out loud. Write short sentences. Have someone else read it.
7. They’re poorly formatted and packaged. Style counts! On top of that, your proposal isn’t the only game in town. You want to stand out right? Take some time to format things nicely. Add some pictures. Use bigger headers, smaller paragraphs, and color where appropriate. Think jazzy. If you’ve got substance, sell it with nice packaging.
8. They’re missing testimonials and client references. I’ve rarely seen a proposal with testimonials or client references. It makes no sense. Pepper in a few testimonials to spice it up and add a feeling of success. Add in some client references with contact information to give your prospect a clear message, “you know what you’re doing and you can prove it.”
9. They’re missing a thank you. Proposals are personal. You’re not writing installation instructions for IKEA furniture are you? Unless you’re sending a proposal unsolicited (which makes little sense) someone’s given you that opportunity. Thank them for it.
10. There’s no call to action. You submit the proposal. Now what? Um…um…um…oops. Put in a crystal clear call to action. It could be a follow-up meeting, contract signature, or something else — it almost doesn’t matter. What’s important is that there is a next step and you’ve explicitly told the prospect what it is.

Learning from the art of judo

Yesterday i had a very challenging software demonstration because things just did not go as well as i have expected : response time problems ,a lot of errors have been done along the discovery process, no value added for the customer, hostile audience... After such a presentation i stayed a while wondering how to avoid this bad situation happening again and i found 2 or 3 things that i could check better in my next software demonstration.

But the main reason was beyond the demo skills and demo preparation, the main reason appeared to me as a very clear fact : the true is that things happens to go wrong ! Some times you have to experiment hard times while you are in front of your audience. At any time, a response time problem (or a bug one) can ruin your demo even though you have checked all the things a few minutes ago before starting the presentation

Yes sometimes things goes wrong and the question is how are we going to react to this bad situations ? Is the customer or the public the enemy ? no they are never the enemy, if there are any enemy at all, it is within us. Facing the adversity by showing irritation or defensiveness to the audience will lead usually to the defeat. On the contrary, adopting a quiet response to a difficult situation or an hostile audience will lead you to a point where engaging your audience may still remain possible and anyway showing self control will gain you the respect of your audience. Keeping your calm and nerves in the storm is an invaluable asset.

We can indeed learn a lot from the art of judo and specially about this precious state of mind that allow us to react in an appropriate way to difficult situations without feeling hurt or offended . In his book Presentationzen Garr Raynolds quotes judo guru H. Seichiro Okazaki "only by cultivating a receptive state of mind, without preconceived ideas or thoughts can one master the secret art of reacting spontaneously and naturally without hesitation and without purposeless resistance"
It's not about physical performances, it's not exactly about David Douillet's judo skills for whom i have a lot of respect , it's about the capability of being in the moment without any thoughts of the past or of the future, without thinking about success and failure option.
When you are engaged in any art or sport , you must get rid of the ego-consciousness and apply yourself completely, you must be in the state of mind (or rather "state of no mind" according Garr) where you are free from the burden of inhibitions so that you can contribute fully and fluidly in the moment. The idea behind it, is about contribution : what is my job right now ? How can i make a contribution in this moment in order to help others and to make my company a better place ?

The good news is that when you start thinking in terms of being in the moment and in terms of contribution, you are no longer in competition with others, with the audience or with your colleagues. Because in contribution there is no better. "You are just fully in the moment with your audience and you remains flexible totally aware and open to the possibilities as they arise"
(Garr Raynold"). As the talented conductor for the Boston Philarmonia orchestra Benjamin Zander said about musician (but it is true also for most demo presentations) :

"This is the moment--this is the most important moment right now. Which is : We are about contribution. That's our job is. It's not about impressing people. It's not about getting the next job. It's about contributing something" --- Benjamin Zander

oh, I hope you enjoyed this post that is very inspired ( am i a dangerous pirate? ) by the book of Garr Raynold (PresentationZen). But i am really enthusiast about how totally different topics like judo, art, classical music could be connected with the delivery of demo performances. Of course technical training are important but learning something about your job from unusual places is more.

A tutorial i did as a consulting help for my customer

As a pre-sales i am no longer dedicated into the consulting area, but sometimes, actually i did. Below you will see a tutorial i did in order to help the team of the book publisher Vigot-Maloine
(very well known french editor for medicine book) . The issue was to help them to customize into the system (SAP ERP) how to create automatically the book title master data in reference of the book project and how to calculate automatically its standard price based on all the costs calculated at the project level.

I did the tutorial trying to make it very clear for the Vigot-Maloine team, describing all the necessary steps to build this features in a simple and almost funny way. Additionally i checked that i have not missed some important steps for my customer that i would have judged not worth it because too obvious ( it is often the case with the tutorials : the authors forgot to mention some very important points that are too obvious to them and for which they assume everybody knows perfectly)
For instance, when it comes to my software SAP, i am tempted to say "go into the customizing" and then i describe in details how a given customizing point works. But the problem for a newbie is "how to get actually into the customizing ? where it is ? i can't go in it and i am locked !"

So here you will find this tutorail, it 's my work, i like consulting when i can help people. Vigot-Maloine team was satisfied with it :

Tutorial Mise à Jour Prix De Revient Dans Fiche Media

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: outstanding tutorial)

Why kids and babies are more creative than adults ?

Let's me introduce you Juliette (the little girl) and Manon (the baby), my friends Patrice and Catherine's daughters.

I would like to share with you some ideas about the innate capabilities that child have about learning and being creative. In a recent post from Garr Raynold "Play is good for you" i watched a video with the following experience made by Tim Brown the CEO of Ideo(a design company). Tim carried out an exercise with the adult audience : he got them to take a piece of paper and to draw the person next to them, their neighbour as quickly as possible. He told them "you have 30 seconds to draw your neighbour" . What about the results ? laughs and embarrassment ! Indeed if you do the exercise with adults, what happen every time is that you got a lot of laughters, a lot of embarrassment and a lot of "sorry" as a hearing.
Why ? Because as adult we fear the judgment of our peers and we are confused when it comes to share our idea to people we think they are our peers around us and that fear causes us to be conservative in our thinking. That explains we have sometimes a lot of good ideas we do not dare to communicate.
If you try the same exercise with kids, they have no embarrassment, they are just quite happy at showing their masterpiece to the others. But unfortunately when they learn to become adults they become much more sensitive to the opinion of others and they loose their freedom

So, as adults , we have to learn or relearn from the playfulness of kids :

• We have to learn how not being afraid by the way other people think about us and treat us. Not only we have to learn how not to be afraid by the opinion of others but additionally we have to build a strong self esteem and we need to acquire the ability to put self doubt aside. We have to relearn how to refuses (and so do young kids) to accept the limitations that others have tried to impose on us , and more importantly, we have to make our path by not accepting any of the limitations that we have previously imposed on ourselves. No doubt about our creativity and worthiness
• As kid do and behave in a secure and trusty environment we need to learn again how to break the bondage of fear of success and fear of failure. That's the ability of a given person to take the right decision for himself and his life achievement and afterwards to take the appropriate action without regard to how consequences affect the others (see also the book Thick Face Black Heart of Ching-Ning Chu)

All the best for juliette and Manon as creative and successful persons

"Looking for Richard" , the director and the demo maker.

Long ago, Aristote said that a well-constructed story should have a beginning, a middle, and an end; so should every good movie and outstanding demo as well.

Act 1 : The director usually does not want to spend too much time on this first movie act, it is important in it to include some elements of action that will grab the attention of the audience in order to present some key issues and pain points that the audience doesn't know whether they will be solved or not, that's how you prepare your value proposition and the emotional connection with the public

Act 2 : As the demo director you use this time telling the story in detail, supporting your main idea and eliminating unnecessary information. You spend this time covering the main features that are important for your prospect and the operational benefits they are expecting

Act 3 : It is the end of the story, the sum of the operationals benefits that you summarize turns to be a measurable value as an evidence for your customer. And do not forget that, at the very end of your story, something unexpected is going to happen called "one more thing" that will surprise your customer with additional value again.

So what ? inside the same framework act 1, act 2, act 3 , all the great movies are innovating and bring something new. What is interesting in Looking for Richard is the "story into the story" concept. In the first movie level you get the great masterpiece from Shakespeare "Richard III" and on the second level you get the life description of how the drama has been built with the american actors, you get too some exciting thoughts about differents aspects of Shakespeare, America and theather and such topics about how to communicate Shakespeare to american audience, how can you do being Richard III while you are a movie star ( like John Wayne playing Hamlet) are put on the table.

So do not hesitate to innovate and to use at the demo level the "story into the story" concept in order to interact better and to learn more about your prospect. For instance you can handle the whole value proposition and in the same time focusing only on certain particular pain points inside this value proposal, or for instance you can also demonstrate all the scenarios your customer asked for and on a second level telling the story of the discovery you made with them, the pain points you discovered, how the interviews went and some funny anecdotes about it. The main idea is to tell the left brain story ( Demo as usual, Richard III drama) and also to tell another right brain story ( Discovery, the actor's life) that will help you to share more additionnal value with your customer.

here the trailer of "Looking For Richard" by Al Pacino

What it the most important in a demo presentation ?

The Features you show them in order to meet their business requirements are important, no doubt about that.
The Value that your software, your commitment, your solutions and so on ... can bring to them does matter a little more than only features.
Finding out the main message you want deliver to your customer and demonstrating your Unique Business Value to the customer's eyes, is good.
But above all, you need a Story ! before working on a demo preparation you need to find a story that help you to deliver your main message., the one message.
The message is the goal and the story is the path. But how to create a story ? it 's not easy !

Euh ...you may have some brainstorming and often some solitude is needed for that. Do not start with the laptop and start rather having a walk alone thinking about your story :

1. You collect first all the ideas you can
2. You throw away all the ideas that don't support your main message
3. You keep the ideas that support the message
4. You connect them into a clear, concise story that talk about the main message

And ... by the way, when you have a great story, bad slides will not ruin the presentation but remenber that having great slides cannot improve a bad story( cf the slide above) When it comes to software topics it is the same : the great execution of the features of your software will not help you as far as you don't have a story that support your mean message !!!

To go further, have a look on slidesshare to the rethinking presentation design of Oliver Adria

Demo : How to improve User Interface

Let's me describe a demo i was involved in :

The goal was to demonstrate how the new version of my software ( SAP ERP ) would allow our customer to enhance the user interface of their current application. To prepare this demo I started to think about user interface and why it is important for our customer. I came up with this idea that user interface topic is not so much about a nice looking field but rather has to do with such higher values like :

• Leveraging the users acceptance
• Improving the users productivity
• Reducing the cost and the duration of trainings

For this presentation i decided to show them how the same process scenario could be enhanced by the software tools of my new release and so i created 2 demos : BEFORE the new version and AFTER the new version.

"Before the new version" is the story of a demo that is fine but challenged a little bit by some remarks from the users :

• "Why the relevant fields are located on 2 different screens ?"
• " I only want fields that are important and relevant for me"
• " It would be nice to be able to decide about the screens and fields sequences"
• " I would appreciate a web environment"

"After the new version" tells the story of how the user interface was improved, driven by creativity and new technologies. I tried to add some fun and simplicity in my slides in order to suggest that fun is also a part of my software.

This demo was well perceived by the customer from a usability perspective and helped them to choose my software for their new application. Our competitor was a Web 2.0 product with rather poor features integration but with a nice interface. Our demo proved that they will get both integration value ( reducing error and increasing visibility ) and a first class user interface that increases productivity, boots user satisfaction and reduces training duration.

Time management

Honestly time is a big deal. Time seems simple but it is not. Saint Augustine used to say " What then is time? If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks, I do not know."
How can we manage something that each of us don't really understand, something for which we are a part of. All of us appeared in time and will disappear one day in the time . As a matter a fact we don't understand the time that is a kind of machine that is continuously changing the future in past and between past and future there is something that we can't seize that is called the Present.

The Present doesn't really exist because each infinitesimal instant belongs either to the future or to the past and the paradox is that we do not live in another place that the present !

Anyway, Present Management should be a more appropriate definition than Time Management because again time is not under our control, we can't have a journey into the future and as well we are not able to move ourselves into the past in order to see our ancestors. Back to the future doesn't work... On the contrary we handle space and we are good at controlling space : we went to the moon and we are building magnificent houses and swimming poll in Aix-en-Provence (South of France)

But if you want to go further about time and if you appreciate deep thoughts on such topics like the big bang and the universe, if you are not only interested in God but also in love and art as well, if you want to know more about what does it takes to be a guy living a normal daily life and how this normality itself is incredible, i would recommend you to read some wonderful pages (very well written) from Jean d'Ormesson's books : "La Douane de mer","Presque rien sur presque tout", "C'était bien", and one of his main masterpiece : "La Gloire de l'Empire" which is available in English (Glory of the empire)


The video below is a great presentation and a first class lecture about time management given by Randy Pausch on November,27 2007 at the university of Virginia . When he gave his lecture Randy was aware he had only 3 or 6 month left to live because his previously known pancreatic cancer was terminal. And Randy told to his audience " i am gonna talk about topics on time management, the circumstances are, as you probably know, a little bit unusual, i think i am at this point an authority to talk what to do with limited time" !!!

So learn a lot about time with Randy and find :

• Why time is the most important commodity ?
• If you are not going to have fun, why do it ?
• Why managing your time well makes you successful ?
• Why are you doing it ? What happens if you choose not to dot it ?
• Doing things right vs. doing the right things
• Why you have to do the ugliest thing first ?
• Why your inbox is not your to do list ?
• Why doing the things at the last minute is expensive ?

The "too much" fatal error

In a demo presentation, this error might happen when you try to give a message that is :

• Far beyond the standard acceptance of your audience
• Far from their current expectations
• Far from their own reality

Somehow, the too much error happens when you do something that is unexpected but not in the good way, in the bad one . A few years ago, i heard for the first time about this too much stuff when i was told that, in the middle of a demo with people from a German company, a colleague of mine has suddenly screamed out very loudly "oh my god I love this product"

Of course it is normally a good thing to show himself enthusiast about his own product ( if you are not supporter who will be ?) but in certain cases you had better moderate a little your passion accordingly (to moderate but not to hide...)

If you feel your audience is not too much connected with you and with what your are doing, and if in the demo roor the silence overwhelms you as you can hear the flapping wind of a fly, try to engage them gently by some open questions ( what do you think about this features, will it be helpful for your company ...) but don't try to make them suddenly happy and connected and don't reproach them their behavior ("oh how are you this morning ! are you asleep ? ) because it is too much

The "too much" thing is rather touchy because it depends on the people : in France for instance it's quite ok if you kiss a woman colleague the first time you meet her whereas in other countries it is not correct : it is "too much"

The "too much" error is not fair because very often, those who commited this error have good intentions

Mathieu for instance had good intentions and good ideas : he wanted to release his CV video on You Tube and he was looking forward to sharing his passion for web 2.0 and the internet.

Unfortunatly he commited the "too much" error many times in this video :

• He says that he sent his first e-mail in 1986 !!!
• His video contains too much clichés (The area of the defense in PARIS, MBA,KPI,ROI,On Demand...)
• He uses a lot of globbish english even though he speaks french
• The music is poor and the sound track as well