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President of Ransone Associates, Inc.
Long Live the Storyboard Process
Like most organized proposal managers, you probably use some form of storyboarding to organize your authors’ planning of how to respond to a myriad of RFP requirements in a cohesive story that makes you look good. You may use a simple form that provides spaces to enter RFP requirements, win strategies, and themes, and a bulleted list of how you plan to respond. It may also have places to indicate — or even sketch — your suggested illustrations. At the other extreme, you may use a multi-page form that includes, not only the above information, but also asks questions or suggests information that you should collect to help you fine-tune your sales story and write your proposal draft. For most of us, storyboarding has been the proverbial life saver. When used correctly it can be a powerful tool for reaching management/author agreement on a proposal approach and a tool that can save enormous rewriting time and energy later. But even so, do you really like preparing Storyboards?
Storyboarding — Basically a “Mickey Mouse” Operation
The storyboarding process was reputedly invented by the Walt Disney studios in order to minimize wasted time, effort, and false starts on organizing and preparing their animated cartoon motion pictures. One theory on how storyboarding was brought to the proposals profession is that Howard Hughes, active in both movie and aircraft industries, utilized the concept in the early 1960s in Hughes Aircraft’s STOP (Sequential Thematic Organization of Publications) proposal methodology.
Storyboarding was great — in its day of manually prepared proposal draft. But, like the electric typewriters of its era, it has outlived its usefulness. Now, its greatest deficiency — time consuming and frustrating start and stop interruption of the proposal process — needs to be tolerated no longer. Now, there is something better!
“But why do I need something better,” you might ask? Let’s start by identifying the biggest problem with storyboarding: the process itself.
- First, program and proposal requirements must be identified from the RFP.
- Then take out a blank piece of paper and prepare your proposal outline.
- Next, on another blank piece of paper, prepare a cross-reference matrix of the RFP to the proposal.
- After that, take a blank Storyboard Form and outline how you plan to address each requirement in your proposal.
- After these storyboards are reviewed (you guessed it!), take out (hopefully for the last time) still another blank piece of paper and start writing your proposal.
OK, desktop computers, proposal management software, and word processors have eliminated some of the interruptions, but there is still the problem of starting with a blank Storyboard Form and, then, a blank proposal draft screen.
What we need is a continuous process that incorporates all of the benefits of storyboarding — and there are many, don’t get me wrong! — while avoiding the start and stop and blank-page interruptions. There is an elegant solution, something that can be called a “running start.”
A Running Start Continuum (RSC) Solves Storyboarding Deficiencies
In seeking to find a simple answer to the problems of storyboards, Ransone Associates, Inc., worked with other Engineered Proposals’ associates to develop a process called the Running Start Continuum (RSC). The RSC process effectively solves the problems with storyboards while retaining almost all their benefits. RSC exploits the productivity of computer-based proposal management systems for online proposal draft preparation, review, and revision. It retains the communications value of the storyboard process, but eliminates the start–stop frustrations through an online continuum leading from RFP requirements through storyboard organizing and planning to final proposal writing, review, revision, and publication.
In the RSC process, program and proposal requirements from the RFP, competitive information, and other proposal-relevant data are parsed to the proposal outline in proposal management software. Win strategies, developed in proposal management software, or directly in the RSC documents, can also be included. Then each set of data, correlated by proposal paragraph, is exported to a special word processor document template.
The document template displays the author’s name, the names of any assistants (usuallytechnical contributors), the page budget if assigned, the proposal paragraph number and title, and the full text of all of the RFP requirements assigned to this proposal paragraph. There is also a place where the proposal manager can provide specific guidance to the author regarding special features or benefits to be emphasized in the draft. The final essential part of the template is a place for authors to summarize their approach to addressing the RFP requirements, win strategies or themes. You can even provide places for the authors to enter useful information to be used in their proposal draft.
Once proposal authors complete this RSC form, all essential proposal guidance and plans are captured in a single location. Then each author completes the RSC form by writing the proposal draft on this form, directly after the requirements and storyboard guidance so the draft can be fully responsive. Since the entire RSC file is a word processor document, the author can put anything into the draft — figures, photos, tables, drawings, whatever.
RSC Facilitates Online Review
The RSC document concept facilitates online proposal draft review because the document includes all of the RFP requirements, win strategies, themes, and instructions used to develop the sales story. The reviewer can see all of the header, requirements, storyboard, and proposal draft text to verify content and guide improvement of the draft. If reviewers use the word processors’ change bars when making suggestions or entering comments to the author, each reviewer can see what other reviewers have said. This can be invaluable for a proposal team that is not collocated.
One particularly attractive feature of using this approach is that there is no special format required for RSC. If you want to get really fancy, you can integrate your RFP parsing program with a standard word processor mail merge to generate the requirements shred-out, then include macros to hide or redisplay the header, requirements, and storyboard information in any combination. For some reviewers, hiding all of those leaves only the proposal text, which is easier to read without all of the RFP and storyboard information. Reviewers can then redisplay the requirements and storyboard information to verify that the proposal draft is responsive.
RSC is a cost-effective, author-accepted, RFP-to-proposal continuum
If you’ve followed this so far but never tried anything like it, you’re probably asking yourself, “How does he know this approach works?” The answer is simple: Both Ransone Associates and Engineered Proposals have used RSC on a variety of proposals since its development last year. It has been welcomed and universally praised by proposal managers and writers alike. And if the writers like it, you know it’s got to work!
We at Ransone Associates call our implementation of the RSC process RunningStart™, and it was developed as part of our Proposals Organized to Win 2000™ (POW2000™) comprehensive proposal management process. (Editor’s note: See “persuasive INK” Issue # 14, 1st Qtr 1998 for a review of an earlier version of POW. We liked it then and still do.)
Client acceptance of our implementation of RSC has been gratifying. For example, on a recent major proposal for a Fortune 500 company, their own proposal strategy planning tool (a “Module Specification”) was substituted for the word processor template we normally use. We simply customized our template and then created separate forms for 491 proposal paragraphs. The first phase of the RSC process — allocation of proposal requirements to the proposal outline — was completed in about four hours. The forms were then e-mailed to respective authors, printed, and posted on the walls of the proposal center for continued development and review. On another proposal that included a number of teammates who were not collocated, our RunningStart™ forms were almost the only guidance that the authors had. Their comment: “This is really the way to go!”
The Running Start Continuum — a new approach to an old problem
Whether you use POW2000™ or your own in-house program, the running start continuum process can work for you. You’ll discover a way to capture almost all the benefits of old-fashioned storyboards (at least almost all the ones that most proposal teams ever really do!) while at the same time saving time, money, and team frustration. RSC is a new approach to an old problem. Try it — you’ll like it! And leave the old, start and stop “Mickey Mouse” Storyboards to Walt Disney.
Copyright © 2001 Ransone Associates, Inc. All rights reserved
Rob Ransone is President of Ransone Associates, Inc. of Wicomico Church, VA.
Please visit http://www.ransone.com
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