In Episode 36 of The Shortlist, Pursuit Strategist Grace Takehara joins Wendy to discuss how to infuse creativity into the proposal process. Grace shares suggestions to help rethink the typical approach to proposal responses by crafting an environment that is focused on the reader, experimenting with different storytelling mediums, teasing out which elements are "set" versus what you can control, and using simple, shorter responses to make more complex sections shine!
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Podcast Transcript
Welcome to The Shortlist.
We are exploring all things AEC marketing to help your firm win The Shortlist.
I'm your host, Wendy Simmons, and each episode, I'll be joined by one of my team members from Middle of Six to answer your questions.
Today, we have Grace Takahara joining us to talk about how to stay creative in a criteria-driven world.
What a fantastic topic, Grace.
Thank you for thinking about this one and bringing it to our listeners.
Yeah, definitely, I'm excited to be back, and this is definitely a passion topic, for sure.
So you are a pursuit strategist at Middle of Six, which means you spend a ton of your time working on RFPs, RFQs, helping teams get ready to win the shortlist and go into the interview.
So you are taking the deep dive into an RFP and figuring out, okay, how do we make our team stand out, especially in this like super competitive field where you're not just up against maybe two or three or four other firms, but it could be a cattle call for tons of people coming to pursue some things really aggressively.
So being creative, something that marketers can kind of get worn out or tired or feeling like they've tried everything.
So your thought here is like, let's talk about some tips.
How can we inject a little creativity into our proposal world?
And I'm guessing beyond too, right?
I think as marketers or people driven to the architectural world and the business side of things, we're drawn to creativity and criteria and RFPs is essential for agencies and jurisdictions to get consistent criteria and to make sure that people are qualified.
But sometimes you can get in the weeds in that.
And so I think that it's helpful to just remind yourself of some helpful tips of how to stay creative and hopefully inject some some energy into your proposal process.
Makes your work more enjoyable, right?
When you're like, that was that was kind of fun.
You know, that's a new challenge to the same old same old question.
Well, where do you want to start?
What's your first tip?
Do you have a first hot tip?
Yeah, you know, we're working with architects and we're in this world of built environments and the people that we work with are conceptualizing, designing and building environments.
And I think that it's helpful to remind ourselves that we're crafting environments, too.
With proposals, we're generating this environment that helps the team articulate its qualities and qualifications, but then also can really create an experience for the readers.
And so I think one thing that can be really helpful is to put yourself in the shoes of the reader, the agency that you're submitting to and consider what the experience is like for your reader when you're developing a proposal.
What is the human experience of your proposal?
You know, this may seem familiar to teams when you're working with architects or other professionals in this environment, but does your proposal inspire and energize the reader?
Or does it feel overly corporate or cold?
You know, I think that there's ways to really put yourself in the shoes of the reader and make it pleasant and enjoyable and also educational experience.
This makes me think sometimes you go into a pursuit and there's a strong preference to have a theme, you know, not just a wind theme, but literally a theme.
Sometimes teams are really excited to take that very far.
Do you have any, I don't know, personal preference on that element for creativity and like when you know, you know, how to know how far to go with something?
What's the right balance of being fun and showing your teams like all in without being silly and kind of losing the point?
Well, I think that a really great place to start to gauge what is that message or theme that could be woven throughout the proposal and how it will connect with the agency that you're submitting to is researching that agency.
You know, one place that I have really found inspiration and storytelling throughout a proposal generation process is looking at, for example, a city, a city strategic plan, and just kind of seeing what their vision is for the future.
And a lot of times there's really great components of community aspects, those ideas of the city's goals for future planning, all of that, that can really resonate with your team that you're working with.
So I think that if you can use those strategic plans, for example, and align maybe what your firm values are or their vision and showing that connection, that can be a really great place to make sure that the message and theme is tied in to the client itself, but it still can be expressive and have those really great, I think, visioning and values tied into it.
Yeah, you can pull good inspiration from the early work that an organization has done to get their project through all the hoops that they had to get to to get to the point of going out for their team or even sometimes simply looking at an organization's website and seeing what their mission, vision, values are.
Sometimes they can feel a little bit dated or maybe generic, not as sharp as you would want, but every once in a while you come across them and you're like, wow, I can't really understand the voice, the people there, our values are aligned, those type of things that can be woven in.
We have a better understanding of what you're trying to do or accomplish, and you can bring that to your proposal and feel like you're connecting a little bit better.
Going back to your thought about putting yourself in the position of the reader, and as you're the proposal manager putting the proposal together, that can be really hard.
Do you have any tips for doing that yourself or maybe how to engage your marketing team or other people on your team to provide some feedback from a different perspective?
Yeah, I think that the great part about working in such collaborative environments is that you typically have a lot of different voices at the table, a lot of different perspectives at the table, and I think that it can be really helpful to kick off the project with a strong idea of what those themes could be, and receiving feedback throughout the process, I think, is really key to building that collaboration and creating a message that is woven throughout and also can be fed into by your team members.
So I think that a strong kickoff and sense of why we're pursuing this and making sure that you have a strong go strategy for a proposal just helps reinforce that storytelling and alignment with your team and making sure that it's that really collaborative environment where people can really add to those themes.
Right, so you're going to be thinking a lot about storytelling and I guess that's not just about the written narrative.
What other tips do you have for bringing really strong storytelling or maybe kind of enhancing the way stories are told in a proposal?
One of the really great exercises that our team has instilled or gone out of our way to do is look at other successful proposals that have been submitted specifically to SMPS at the national level.
And we've really seen some really exciting and different approaches to how to integrate different mediums into a proposal.
So graphics, of course, is a place where you can tell a story in less words and create a callout that can really help reinforce some of those themes and some of the highlights of the team.
So that can be infographics, callouts, like we said, and then testimonials as well.
Those are super strong when they align with the client type, and really speak to the criteria that you're trying to respond to.
But another area that I think is underutilized, and there's a lot of growth in room to explore and experiment, is video.
And video can be, you know, time consuming, but I think it can be really impactful if done in maybe small, bite size pieces at first.
One strategy that you could instill with video is, we see a lot of the time before and after project photos, but what about a before and after project video?
And, you know, this can include stills that you edit together and create that before and after transition, or it could be a video that you take from the same perspective of a job site before and after the project is completed.
So that's, I think, an opportunity that's bite size that could add some different visual interests to a proposal that maybe isn't being utilized by a lot of other firms, but could be something to try out, especially with more of these virtual submissions or PDF submissions and not having to submit hard copies maybe as frequently as we used to have to.
Another idea for video is to really give a feel of the team and their passion behind the project and create that strong introduction is you could create team introduction videos that could be accompanied on resumes.
And I know that that's resonated with us and that Wendy, you've experimented that with that with some of your project teams, but that can be just a short 30-second to minute-long clip of somebody introducing themselves, maybe saying why they're passionate about the project, and it can be submitted as a QR code or even hard linked if it's a digital submission.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, I would just say, don't be scared of video.
Actually, one of the ways that we've been using it more and more is not worrying about it being a highly produced production, right?
Because that barrier can mean that it's hard to get the people in the right place because you feel like you need to have them in the studio.
And, you know, I mean, literally just was working on an effort where one of the team members was on vacation in New Zealand and was able to take a video on their phone.
So by not having everyone needing to be like in their matching shirts and sitting in a certain seat in the office, that was helpful for us to just include this element, which would help to personalize the pursuit, but really kind of in a very genuine way.
It's going to be clear that those are the real humans who are going to do your job, and they're really kind of talking through their role and that they're excited to meet you.
So that's just a tip, I would say.
Starting somewhere can be a differentiator.
You do not have to wait for perfection to happen.
Yeah, and I'll add, you know, you get the question a lot about engagement in the community or commitment to DEI initiatives.
And that section, I think that people can approach it in their own ways, but I think that a way to maybe freshen up that content or create more of a human element to the community engagement and DEI involvement is through perhaps taking a video and showing community engagement and action at your firm to really tell the story of your firm's commitment to that.
Seeing your actual staff out in the communities, I think that just again, reinforcing and helping the reader get to know your team quicker in a more authentic way is always a plus and a positive.
And that's just another idea for how you could maybe capture video and include it into a proposal that may get away from what you've been using in the past or what you've been struggling to articulate.
So just again, maybe challenge yourself and try out video to help tell that story.
And then for anyone who hasn't tried this, it's not breaking news, but I just want to say that it's a simple right click on the mouse to insert a QR code into your proposal documents in InDesign.
Gone are the days of needing to go to freeqrcode.com and give all your data away.
You can just do it in InDesign.
It's a lovely thing.
So you can get it the right brand colors and all that business.
So use that if you haven't tried that tool, and it just makes it really consistent across all your documents.
We love integration.
Right.
Exactly.
Thank you, Adobe.
Beyond just using the tools in your tool kit, or maybe looking to SMPS, the national award, to see what kind of across the country other firms are doing, what other ways would you recommend teams get inspired to bring new ideas or just anything to the proposal process that they probably have been working in for so long?
Yeah, I think that it's so important to be inspired and get inspiration from a variety of spaces.
And I think that it's vital to look at other proposals in our industry and see how people are approaching the technical questions, schedule, budget, all of those types of things.
But we are in such a design driven field that I feel like there's inspiration everywhere.
So I would definitely recommend for people not to stay stuck in the AEC world when they're looking for inspiration and ideas.
And I'm just going to share some of my favorite places that I think is a nice balance of mediums and also some built environment examples.
So I really enjoy looking because we aren't integrating more and more into digital landscapes.
I think that the New York Times, they have some really immersive online experiences when you're reading that.
I think we can take bits and pieces to your point earlier, Wendy.
It doesn't have to be perfect when you start.
It can be bite size and maybe it's just one element of something that you see online of how they're telling stories through digital spaces that can be implemented into what we do on a daily basis through proposal work.
Also, I think that it's valuable to see how our work in the built environment and as marketers can be articulated in YouTube videos.
And I think that it can be really helpful to just remind yourself, we are really fortunate to work with all these creative people and help build the communities that we're in.
And sometimes we are too close to it, that we don't see how cool that story can be.
So I think it's been really helpful.
I've been watching Dwell and it's a really helpful.
It's an architectural channel and they also have a magazine.
But they, the way that they talk about architecture is particularly easy and inspiring to watch.
And I think it can really highlight how we can tell stories in a way that is exciting and also just brings in that human element of how spaces really do touch the lives of people and can be really inspired.
And then also I want to share that public spaces can be a great place to just get ideas for graphic design.
I really enjoy looking at way finding in public spaces.
I think that that's where you see designs just boil down to the most minimalist or simple and easy to understand ways.
And I think that that can be really helpful when you're designing a proposal to remind yourself, how can we make this easy for the reader, still really design forward, but just really bite sized.
Museum exhibits are also awesome to look at.
And then the Tillamook Cheese Factory is an awesome place for experiential design.
And honestly, they have a timeline there that I've been inspired by and have used in proposals.
And I think that just immersing yourself in the design landscape in a variety of different spaces can be really helpful and help you feel connected to what you do.
It's such a good suggestion to go to tourist attractions.
That might be like the zoo or the aquarium and see how they're telling the story of their mission and what they're doing and seeing how they pull out very technical content, if you think about it.
There's a lot to say to an not necessarily technical audience, but they have boiled it down so that six-year-olds can get the gist of the story and take something away.
And maybe a different type of exhibit could be at the art museum or something, you know, maybe more centered for adults, but you can still grab some really good ideas or at least just be inspired that there's more, you know, beyond what we do.
I have a client friend group within the Middle of Six circle.
They do, I think it's like one Thursday a month.
Maybe it's on a free Thursday or whatever, but their team goes to the Tacoma Art Museum and takes a little tour, has lunch and just talks.
And I don't think that it's meant to be seriously work related, but they know that it does feed that creativity.
So bravo to them and definitely that's not an idea that people can't steal and do it themselves.
All right, what else?
I think you have a longer list of places for you find inspiration.
Yeah, I think that magazines are a great place to look as well, particularly magazines that have some maybe whimsy and fun to them because I think that there are ways that proposals can...
We definitely are answering the criteria and want to make sure that we're responsive, but I think that there's opportunities to have a little bit of fun with it.
And so one of my favorite places that I've looked is old Bon Apetit magazines because they had a huge brand effort several years ago.
And I think that when that was fresher, it was really fun to just see how they were telling these stories, having these call outs that were very illustration heavy.
And it just made it an enriching experience for me as a reader.
So I just try to take some of those things.
What resonates with me when I'm reading a magazine?
Because it can be wall-to-wall text.
And seeing how they highlight certain elements of their copy, of their articles, and just seeing how they create those call outs in fun and creative ways that I think can emphasize and make the story more memorable.
Well, speaking of magazines, and I haven't had a subscription to this for a while, I'll admit, but I still have five years of issues on my desk that I can access if I want to, and I still think it's a great resource, is the Communication Arts Magazine.
I mean, what a treat to be able to subscribe to that.
And it's one of those magazines that's like close to an inch thick, if not more.
So there's so much content, it's amazing.
And then because it's about all kinds of communications, there's tons of links and directions to websites and videos and storytelling by really the best agencies all across the world.
And there's so much to see there.
And I feel like it is very evergreen.
You can look back and be inspired by packaging design and campaigns and public health initiatives, like all of these things that are in there.
And while it may not seem directly applicable to a proposal, it really is showcasing just some stunning art direction, photography, use of, I don't know, embossing and debossing and foil.
And just it feels like if the sky's the limit, that's where you will find those things, and it's a lovely resource.
So I definitely would recommend it.
There are a lot of limitations when you are looking at your RFP, RFQ, like, okay, I have to answer this in 30 pages or less.
The font size has to be 11 points.
The margins have to be one inch.
That's very common.
It could be even wilder.
It could be the A3 format.
So you have really two 8.5 by 11 pages to answer, hopefully, a reasonable number of questions.
Something that I personally wish that, I don't know, we'll ever get there in the proposal world.
But if they could say you can have, I don't know, 40 pages of space, but it has to be 50% graphics.
They're never going to say that in their requirements.
But I think the thing is, is that the reviewers, selection committee, they don't want to read 50, 60, 80, 100 pages of content.
But I bet they would love reading 100 pages of content if it was 25% text and 75% visuals to support the storytelling.
My personal preference aside, Grace, how do you, do you have any tips for the proposal manager when they're looking at those strict requirements and figuring out how do I tell a story?
How do I build an environment when I'm so limited in space?
Yeah, it's a very real challenge and it can be intimidating for sure.
I think that at that moment when you're kind of looking at this criteria, maybe it's super lengthy.
Like you said, Wendy, there's requirements regarding the look of the actual proposal.
I think that it's important to ask yourself, what can you control?
And there's some key things about a proposal that you can control regardless of criteria or specifications from the owner.
So my first area of what you can control is voice.
And I think that that's really key for us to remind ourselves.
What is the voice of your firm?
How can you instill that in your answers and make sure that that part of your brand stands out?
And I think that you can also, if your firm allows you to, that voice can be fun and help you navigate to the criteria that can be sometimes a little bit more rigid.
So I think that it's important to remind yourself, that's what I have.
I have the brand.
I have the voice.
What can I do with that to instill and put our stamp of kind of being authentic to ourselves with our response?
One really easy way to inject that voice, start off on the right foot is in the cover letter.
I think we are all saying the same thing, or the advice of all marketers is like, let's not start off with, thank you so much for the opportunity to submit our proposal, right?
That's not new news here, but how do you take a step back and think about, how do you want to introduce your team and the personality?
And it's not to the qualifications yet, but like actually the real human element of your firm or your design build team if there's a blend there.
So start with the cover letter as a place where you can inject the voice and then find ways, even very simply if you are using a lot of boilerplate for proven processes throughout your proposal.
But what about the headlines?
What about the section or when you get to a case study?
Does it just say case study or does it say something really kind of catchy and interesting and pull the reader in so that they can understand the unique qualities that you're bringing instead of just the facts?
The second element that we can control is graphics.
And to your point, Wendy, this can be something that can make a proposal easier to digest, more engaging, and definitely can be a form of storytelling.
So I think that graphics, to your kind of ratio suggestion, Wendy, finding a blend of 50 to 50 is ideal.
But I think that graphics is an area that I would recommend emphasizing throughout your proposal development process and really trying to take boilerplate to a next level through graphics and communication.
Right, so maybe if you're kicking off a pursuit, you might look at either scoring from a past effort that was similar, that you can get some real data and like, hey, they're not really absorbing this the way we intend or that we've missed points here.
We've said it, we answered it, but we missed some points.
Those kinds of things can be a great opportunity to push you over the edge and say, let's think about this more graphically.
How can we make this into a process?
How can we reduce the text but show them more than tell?
That's usually where I start on looking for opportunities to push graphics a little bit further.
And then finally, I think that we can be inclined as teams when we have a page limit, let's say 30 pages, to want to fill the 30 pages completely to the brim, and we don't have to.
That's something that we can control, is the length of the actual responses and how the question is being answered.
And I think that challenging your teams to not just fill space to fill space and to be mindful of brevity, I think that that can be underutilized among our teams.
So I think that challenging teams to think about content and what is the essence of what we're trying to get across, how can we communicate that in fewer words that are helpful for the team reviewing to get the message quickly and feel confident in our ability to perform, I think that that should be the goal, not necessarily filling all the pages, but answering the question concisely in a way that is digestible and engaging for the reader.
And maybe by boiling down your content, you have more time and availability to focus on graphics or weeping those messages throughout.
So yeah, I'd be critical of trying to fill pages just for the page count sake.
Right.
Everyone should just kind of like let that one pop up into their mind the next time there are storyboarding out their proposals.
Like we don't have to remember Grace's words there.
We don't have to fill them all up.
Well, those are some really good tips on feeling comfortable and recognizing what you control versus what the parameters are.
And I guess as a marketer, it's pretty fun and challenging to look at, hey, there are these restrictions or I'm not sure how possibly I could communicate that much information in this little space or whatever it might be.
You can see it as a challenge and also just have a little piece that you can't control everything, and you're doing the best you can and using it as an opportunity to push your team and what you can accomplish in that space.
So that can be a fun piece of it too.
See how the scoring goes once you've tried something new.
And the last tip, tip number five of how to be creative in a criteria-driven environment is about finding some balance between creativity and simplicity.
Do you want to share what you're thinking there, Grace?
We shared these different tips for instilling creativity into your proposal and proposal generation process.
But there are areas where you can create almost a palette cleanser within your proposal and embracing white space.
So those sections that are pretty standard where you can create those breaks of contents and answer questions simply but visually effectively is in the bonding and insurance sections or with pricing or tables for fees.
And if you have those established brand assets, just putting those in and letting them breathe and be their own, I think is really helpful to allow yourself space to dedicate to more of those sections that demand more of that creativity.
For example, like the approach section, and really trying to create those breaks within your proposal, I think is really helpful for yourself and the reader.
So as you're flipping through a 30, 40, 50 page document, I think having those palate cleansers, those places where there's the response, maybe just a very small quote to sort of support that answer.
Maybe there's a photo, but there can be more white space and just allow the reader to realize that, great, that's answered.
And then they flip the page and they go to maybe a more high impact, more graphical overview of the next section, and they realize that they are into something new, right?
You just have this break so that they can appreciate the areas that you have really kind of taken to the next level and done a lot of work on to make sure that the processes are clearly described.
So I think that's a really, that's a nice tip.
And it also means that if the proposal has 14 sections, you do not have to exhaust yourself by making 14, you know, wild journeys, you know, storytelling to the max.
It can be a balance, and that's pretty good.
Obviously, taking a step back and looking at your proposal throughout the process to see how is it coming together.
Have we gotten to a section that just feels like, well, that's really three pages of text when you're really looking at it and flipping through.
There's an opportunity to add a little bit more, or here's an opportunity to take away some of that.
Yeah.
And if your team is large enough, it could be really helpful to have somebody outside of the immediate project team take a look at the proposal, since they haven't been a part of the core team and integrated throughout the process.
And they may be able to help guide those conversations or things to take a look at that may stray from the message or those core themes, or may detract, maybe don't exactly help support some of those overarching themes.
So I think it could be really helpful if you do have those resources internally.
Yeah.
Fresh set of eyes.
It's one of the best tricks that they have out there.
Well, Grace, this is a really great conversation.
Thank you for putting your thoughts and suggestions together for our listeners, since you are in it every single day.
And I think you're a fresh set of eyes, and something new for our listeners to hear your experience and what you would suggest.
Just to summarize, because I feel like it's kind of a fun challenge to see if I can do that, is to, we talked about understanding that our teams are creative, they're building something, they're creating a new space, whatever that might be, and to think about our effort in the proposal as another built environment.
What is that environment like?
What's the experience going to be like for the reader and the people who are absorbing and trying to understand our team?
And to that end, then thinking about how storytelling through graphics and video can really support the storytelling journey in your proposal.
I think we're all aiming for that just as part of the kickoff to think about how can we do some storytelling visually and take them on that journey a bit more.
Pulling inspiration from places, I think the standout one was certainly some of our very favorite like magazines and wayfinding graphics through exhibits like museums or other things where you can see how they're like guiding you on a journey so that you can take away the most important things and realizing that you can't control everything.
There are limitations and so taking a breath and feeling okay about that, but then also realizing that you don't have to fill every page and making space for the reader to have a break in their experience too and to appreciate and reflect on what you've said and shared in the proposal.
All ways to make a really creative, enjoyable proposal process even within the confines of the RFQ, RFP process and rules and regulations and all that business.
Thank you, Grace.
This was lovely, lovely conversation.
And do you have any other things you want to say?
I felt you had a good summary tip there, but if there's anything else you want to share, the mic is yours.
Yeah, I feel like these are all really helpful tips and I hope that integrating even one or two of them, I think will be really helpful to keep, almost be like a spark plug to your proposal teams or your proposal process.
And I think that there's ample opportunity to continue to strive for that creativity.
And I hope that these were helpful suggestions for you all.
So thanks for having me, Wendy.
Thanks for being here.
The Shortlist is presented by Middle of Six and hosted by me, Wendy Simmons, Principal Marketing Strategist.
Our producer is Kyle Davis, with digital marketing and graphic design by the team at Middle of Six.
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Until next time, keep on hustling.
Bye.
Toodaloo.
The Shortlist is a podcast that explores all things AEC marketing. Hosted by Middle of Six Principal, Wendy Simmons, each episode features members of the MOS team, where we take a deep dive on a wide range of topics related to AEC marketing including: proposal development, strategy, team building, business development, branding, digital marketing, and more. You can listen to our full archive of episodes here.