There are so many “experts” in the world today—people from every angle and media source. They are friends, clients, vendors, family, talking heads on TV, bleeps on Twitter, posts on Facebook and on and on…

Every once in a while it’s good to dial the noise back and ask the question: “Which voices should I let through and listen to…?” Here are my answers to that question, at least for the moment. I guess I should add that some of these voices are as much guilty pleasures as they are credible sources… (more…)

I’ve been working with a number of companies lately on big deals – deals up to $100M. The companies are on both coasts, in the midwest and in the southeast. They’re in very different industries and their customers are government, private, public and education groups. Diverse enough?

However, every one of these deals has had the following in common: they all required some sort of RFP response as a part of the process. In each case I served as strategist, RFP response coach and pitch doctor. There are bunch of great things to share with you out of these and I will over time, but today, I just want to talk about the RFP Frame. How do you frame your response? I use the 4 Cs of the RFP Frame.

Candidly, most people start with responses they used for past RFPs. Then they cut and paste and massage what they come up with and call it good. The problem is that they are thinking about the process of writing the response and what they want it to say, not the process of reading the RFP and what the readers are looking for. The 4 C’s focuses on building the guidelines for the response in the terms of the reader. Here goes… (more…)

*A small town in southern Indiana. What did you think I meant?

The power of words…

Grab attention, communicate an idea, provoke, engage, energize… If you hunt large sales, you know that the turn of a phrase or the capturing of a concept hinge on powerful words. I just read Frank Luntz’ article “Words That Pack Power” in the November 3rd issue of BusinessWeek. He picks out five words from the executive lexicon that should be used regularly in the current business world…

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Splashing the Vessel: v. An underused euphemism for the first stage of preparation in any situation.

The Inuit washed their boat, or umiak*, with fresh water from a stream far away from their village before they launched it into the ocean to hunt the whale.

How do you get ready for the big pitches? I spent a good amount of time last week helping teams get ready for big pitches. I noticed a couple of gotta-changes worth highlighting… (more…)

My mom always taught me- “Never talk sex, politics or religion with people…until they’ve had their second drink.”

Everyone has become a consultant in this year’s election. Constantly asking one another their opinions. People want to know what I think of the candidates as a whale hunter… AS A WHALE HUNTER! Reeeeaaalllllyyy? From that vantage point, I honestly don’t have an opinion. But, I do think about their harpoons… (more…)