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Clients aren’t the only ones who could use some advice to make the Request for Proposal (RFP) process go more smoothly. Over the years, I’ve seen plenty of good, bad, and ugly in vendor responses, too. To that end…

RFP Dos & Don’ts – For the (Potential) Vendor

• DO proofread! I’m not going to discount your proposal because of one or two typos. But one or two typos per page or serious grammatical problems lead me to question your attention to detail, your competence, and frankly, your intelligence. Even small shops usually have at least one person who’s a good editor. Have her give all your proposals a once over before they go out the door. If you’re the one in a hundred shop that doesn’t have anyone on staff who can copy edit, hire somebody.
• DO call me. The RFP process is kind of like dating. Signing the contract is kind of like getting married. I’d like to get to know you better before I make that commitment.
• DO be accessible. Let me know whether you like email, land line, or cell contact, and then when I do contact you, take my call. Answer my email. Call me back. I know you’re busy – I’m busy too. But don’t make me call out the FBI to find you if I have a question. However…
• DON’T hound me. If I tell you I’ll be letting all the vendors know one way or the other on Friday, don’t call me Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday “just to check in and see if you have any questions.” Just don’t.
• DO respect my process. Assuming I’ve read part one of this two part series, I probably wrote a pretty good RFP that includes information about the timeline and decision criteria. Subverting the process by going around me to my boss or my staff is a BIG no-no. If I say the proposal deadline is Friday at 5 pm EDT, have it to me by Friday at 5 pm EDT. And if that’s going to be a problem, don’t wait until Friday at 4:53 pm EDT to ask for an extension.
• DON’T talk about what your competitors do or don’t do. Nine times out of ten, you’re wrong. Even that one time that you’re right, it’s petty and doesn’t reflect well on you or your firm. When I’m reading your proposal or talking to you, I care about what you can and can’t do. I’ll worry about your competitors if and when I talk to them.
• DON’T send me the LONGEST possible proposal. DO send the SHORTEST possible proposal that answers my questions and addresses my needs. I’m probably reading 4-6 (or more) of these things. If they’re each 50 pages, that’s 200-300 pages. I’m not even going to remember who’s who by the end! Edit, edit, edit!
• DO skip the boilerplate marketing fluff. I’ve seen it. Everybody says they’ve got the greatest widget since sliced widgets were invented. It just pads up your presentation and wastes trees and my time.
• DO have good references in the market. Sure, I’m going to call your reference list (aka, Your Carefully Chosen Group of Only Your Most Blissfully Happy Clients), but if I know what I’m doing, I’m also going to ask around. Three glowing references don’t help you if the 10 other clients I find through my network all hate you. Remember: as long as your price is in the ballpark and I’m confident you can do the work, I’m buying based on relationship, personality, and reputation. Make sure yours is sterling.
• DO make sure I can open your files. Lots of us have switched to Word 2007. But not everyone. And, as usual, Microsoft changed the file structure so that Word 2003 chokes on Word 2007. You know what doesn’t cause problems? PDF. And if you send over your proposal and don’t receive an acknowledgment that I got it, drop me an email without attachments or give me a quick call to make sure I got it. I asked for your proposal. I want to get it. If it’s stuck in my spam filter, I want to know. It’s OK to check.

What’s the common theme? Relationship. We’re about to enter into a relationship. You don’t start a dating relationship by refusing to talk to the other party, withholding information, and putting them through a lot of silly, unnecessary tests (and if you do, odds are you’re single), and you don’t want to start a vendor relationship that way, either.

But don’t just take my word for it:

• RFP+MD: The Cure for the Common Proposal
• RFP Do’s and Don’ts, Kevin Lee, The Click Z Network
• MPLS Preparing an RFP, Robbie Harrell, SearchNetworking.com (free registration required)
• Top 10 Do’s and Don’ts for CRM, Dan Hooper, TechRepublic
• Winning the RFP Process, Diana Kruppstadt, Bnet
• How to Write a Request for Proposal, Instructional Designs, Inc. (This is a visually horrible site with good information. So if it makes your eyes bleed, don’t say I didn’t warn you.)
• How an RFP Can Help You, Freeman (yep, everyone’s favorite expo management vendor)
• RFP Strategy, Tim Greene, Network World

Edited September 5, 2008 at 12:10 pm to add:  There’s a debate on this same topic going on right now at ASAE & the Center for Association Leadership’s Acronym blog.  Check it out!

For many of our projects – be they technical strategies or builds - it is necessary to develop a thorough inventory of a broad variety of systems. It is important for us to understand the existing infrastructure, systems, and staffing at an organization to ensure that any solution or recommendation takes integration and existing support capabilities into consideration. If a solution cannot be supported by existing infrastructure and staff, the additional investment in these areas will need to be included in the final assessment.  While we undertake this effort to ensure that we are making the best recommendations for our clients, there are a number of other reasons that any organization should conduct a similar inventory. 

One compelling reason to periodically look at all of an organization’s systems from a holistic view is that these tend to grow and multiply over time, with disparate departments investing in systems more or less in a vacuum. This often leads to significant redundancies and difficulties in getting these systems to share common data.  By stepping back and taking an objective look at what each system is being used for and what its other capabilities are, it is often possible to reduce a great number of systems down to a just handful that readily share common data. Identifying these opportunities and taking action can produce significant cost savings while concomitantly improving efficiency and associated business processes. 

Clearly, there are upfront costs associated with taking this approach. It takes a significant investment in staff time to inventory all of these systems and document how they are being used, in addition to the costs of switching over to new systems. This kind of work also often requires outside consultants to facilitate it, which is another cost to be considered.

Before taking on a project like this, an organization should carefully weigh the ongoing costs of the current systems against the upfront costs of fixing them. Many times the direct cost savings and efficiency gains will offset the upfront costs in a relatively short amount of time, but this is not always true. Regardless, organizations should periodically at least evaluate whether a full systems review and evaluation should be undertaken.

We all want to do our best to make sure our Web sites and applications are used by the entire Internet-loving world. But organizations small and large are often limited by time, software, and/or budget when it comes to making Web sites that are accessible, especially for the blind community using screen readers. Screen reader software can be prohibitively expensive and limited to installation on one computer. So testing for screen reader compatibility will have you chained to the QA lab.

In comes the University of Washington to the rescue. The Department of Computer Science and Engineering recently publicized the Alpha Release of WebAnywhere. WebAnywhere is a free, Web-based application that allows you to hear your Web site. Go to the web, enter your Web site’s URL, click go, and listen.

WebAnywhere is not nearly as sophisticated as its more expensive counterparts. All your Flash and Rich Text Applications, accessible or otherwise, may not be accurately interpreted. If your Web application has an accessibility mandate, you still need to spend the time and money to make sure your site is in compliance. But, with WebAnywhere, you can get a good sense of how a screen reader may interpret your site, which basic accessibility items may have been missed (alt tags, anyone?), and which portions of your site may be troubling to those using screen readers.

Rather than trying to summarize everything that happened at the ASAE Annual Meeting in San Diego in one post, it struck me that it might be better to handle it as a blog roundup of the Best of the Association Blogosphere.

We should start with ASAE’s official blog Acronym.  ASAE did something clever this year:  rather than placing responsibility for officially blogging the meeting on the already-overburdened shoulders of ASAE staff, they recruited a series of guest bloggers to post items to Acronym.  And post they did - more than 60 separate entries over the course of the month surrounding the meeting.  If it happened at the Annual Meeting, somebody probably covered it for Acronym.

One of the best sessions I personally attended was Maddie Grant and Jeff De Cagna’s Pecha Kucha session on Tuesday afternoon, August 19.  Maddie’s comments can be found here.  Jeff’s can be found here.  My own take on the session is also online at this point.  You can also get the slides themselves through Slideshare.

BloggerCon and BloggerUnCon were pretty major events, which featured the launch of the A List Bloggers network and of the executive summary of the results of the Association Social Technologies Survey.  Ben Martin talks about the two sessions pretty extensively in his recap of ASAE post, and I wrote a pretty thorough recap of the two sessions as well.

Andy Steggles accidentally started a firestorm with his not-part-of-the-official-program Secret Session.  I figured it was a live test of social media at work in a real association community - and it really worked, as a Google search returns over 10,000 entries - but it also led to an interesting debate, referred by Andy, between Jeff De Cagna and Terrance Barkan on the future of social media in associations.  The whole thing was recorded and has been posted to YouTube.

Speaking of YouTube, ASAE also recorded post-session interviews with a number of this year’s annual meeting speakers talking about issues including diversity, global competition, innovation, and various types of social media.  I was honored to be included in the interviews amongst such luminaries as Patti Digh and Rohit Talwar.

Of course, no post about the 2008 ASAE Annual Meeting would be complete without a mention of the YAP 80s/90s Dance Party extravaganza.  The pictures are all over Acroynm, Flickr, and Facebook, but I think Bob Wolfe summed up the importance of this group best in his post:  Social Media is My Dance Floor.

In conclusion, all I can say is:  Fogdirog!  (And thank you, Captain Fogdirog, aka Jamie Notter.)

A while back, I wrote a review of the Amazon Kindle, basically concluding that it was neat, but not something I personally wanted to spend several hundred dollars on. However, I was willing to spend several hundred dollars on a first generation iPhone, and since the release of the fancy new iPhone 3G, my phone has been updated with the ability to do a lot more tricks. I was very excited to learn that I could theoretically use my iPhone as a reader, without having to jailbreak it,therefore voiding my contract and warranty, and running the risk of messing my phone up beyond repair without having the necessary skills to fix it. (For the uninitiated, “jailbreaking” the phone would entail hacking into it and installing applications it was never meant to have, creating something of a Frankenphone.)

I took a virtual trip to the Applications Store, and was pleased to find a free application called eReader. Sweet, I say to myself! This should be just the thing! The application works with hardware I already possess, and all I have to do is pay for the content! I’ll never make a panicked trip to Barnes and Noble, or have to express ship something from Amazon ever again! I’ll be the most literate person in the world, since I’ll have every book ever written in my little hand bag! O, the life problems this solves!

See if my literary hopes and dreams get squashed, below the fold…

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It’s easy to take web conventions for granted, like the fact that the logo links to the homepage, and is featured at the top left. Often, when we put our recommendations together, we put some basic information in about what should be where. Because our suggestions often reflect well-worn conventions, our clients accept them.

But once in a while, a client will ask the unthinkable: “How do you know that is the right thing to do?”

When this happens, you need to be ready to explain yourself, or you look like you are Just Making Stuff Up. Recently, one of our clients asked us about the search box – “Where should the search really be placed?”

In addition to our experience doing user testing (where we get to see people responding to various designs in real time), we look to studies like this one from SURL, and then look to build on our knowledge through documented experience where possible.

The SURL study shows the areas that the user looked to find internal search on a site, both for new and experienced users (the darker the area, the more likely a user looked in that area of the page).

Additionally, we can find case studies like this one (pdf), which walks through one site’s search change and the results. It shouldn’t be surprising that their efforts, moving the search box to one of the key locations identified in the SURL study, produced results.

So there you have it, for the search box anyway. Next up… well, what do you want to know about?

In 11+ years in association management, I’ve been on both sides of the Request For Proposal process more times than I can count.  My very first Big Task at my very first association Real Job way back in 1997 was to complete an association management software system selection.  Which, of course, included writing an RFP (after I met all the vendors, but that’s another post).  Flash forward to the past few weeks, when I’ve been inundated with RFPs that require responses (looks like everyone’s already focusing on the fall).  I’ve seen the good – the bad – the ugly.  I’ve seen it all.  You name it, I’ve written it, seen it, or responded to it.

I’d like to think I’ve learned a few things along the way.  The MOST IMPORTANT THING I’ve learned is don’t do an RFP unless outside forces (i.e., your boss or board) are conspiring to force you.  If you’re on board with that, you’re done.  Skip the rest of this post and go get yourself a margarita, with my compliments.

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Lately, when I’m in need of pictures of an online project, whether it’s a blog post, an email, or a landing page, I’ve been turning more and more to creative commons licenced work over stock photo galleries. Using resources like the ones named in this post, you can quickly find the images you need without the hassle or expense of licensing. Flickr makes this even easier, with a “creative commons” tag  search you can add to your search queries which includes whether it can be used for commercial purposes (which I generally don’t need) or altered (which is more likely).

Creative Commons is built on the idea of both serving the public and protecting content creators:

Too often the debate over creative control tends to the extremes. At one pole is a vision of total control — a world in which every last use of a work is regulated and in which “all rights reserved” (and then some) is the norm. At the other end is a vision of anarchy — a world in which creators enjoy a wide range of freedom but are left vulnerable to exploitation. Balance, compromise, and moderation — once the driving forces of a copyright system that valued innovation and protection equally — have become endangered species.

But Creative Commons only works if people contribute to it - I know that my photos on Flickr are always tagged as free to alter, but not to use commercially - I’m happy if someone wants to use one in a blog post, but if they’re going to make a profit off of it, I’d like to share in that. There’s a benefit for the content creator not only in contributing to society’s openness in general, but also in getting work out there, attributed to them.

This certainly isn’t to say that commercial libraries don’t have their uses - if I need a high-resolution photo, or a very specific one, particularly if it needs to include people, I generally end up at iStockPhoto. But photo libraries carry a liability that many creative commons licensed photos do not: the greater likelyhood that the photo you’re using is also being used by your competitors, whether that’s other non-profits in your space, the corporation you’re protesting or just a commercial product that people are familiar with. Good photos in a stock library can be recognized as such by more than just you and sharing photos this way can remove some of your authenticity. With the greater variety of creative commons photos out there, it’s less likely than with commercial houses.

As both a content creator and a content consumer, consider using the creative commons licence. For more information on Creative Commons, check out the FAQ here.

When a couple of Beaconfire folks got back from South by Southwest Interactive Festival 2008, we were talking about the minimal representation of nonprofit organizations and pondered, why can’t nonprofits “celebrate the creativity and passion behind the coolest new media technologies” too? Well we put our creative heads together about what we could do about it and came up with, what we think, is a really cool way to showcase some of the ways nonprofits can push the envelope to engage a wider, more active audience online. Now, we just need you to help us make it happen by voting (and commenting) on the SXSW panel picker!

Three teams. Two days. One special ingredient.
THIS is Iron Chef America…Battle Non profit.

Our nimble Chairwoman, the incomparable Beth Kanter, will bring together the best of the best for this epic battle at the 2009 South by Southwest Interactive Festival (March 13-17th). Each team of 3 web experts, chosen from the leaders in the non profit marketing and social media sector (including Beaconfire and Free Range Studios), will meet in the heat of Austin to offer one small deserving non profit organization a delectable 3 course meal featuring: a tasty new homepage, a well-seasoned fundraising campaign, and a perfectly balanced social networking & marketing plan.

We need your help to get there: vote for us on SXSW’s 2009 conference panel picker! Layered with explosive technologies, unique concepts and best practices like you’ve never tasted before, this will be a battle for the ages!

Before South by Southwest, the three teams, each consisting of a designer, a marketing consultant and a social networking guru from different companies, will have 48 hours to collaborate and produce the final “Dishes”, and document the experience. In Austin, at the SXSW panel session, each team will serve their final “menu” to the client and the panel audience, who will vote in real time according to the following categories: unique design & visual concepts, out-of-the box strategic thinking, and the best use of social networking technologies to support the goals of the “special ingredient.”

Who will prevail and change the future for one lucky organization? It’s up to YOU. Vote for us now so that we can whip up this meal and then join us at SXSW and vote for the best team!

It’s no small task to wrangle a website and its resources in one language - let alone multiples.  If you’re taking the time and making the effort to post multilingual content, you’re creating potentially valuable assets for your users around the globe.  You want to make sure that the content is represented accurately and is accessible. 

Recently one of  our clients asked us to weigh in on the presentation of multi-lingual content on their site - an organization with members around the world that produces publications, trainings and other web-specific content in a number of languages. The client wondered how to present the information in an accessible and useful way to their users.

While not an exhaustive list, these points can serve as a backbone for your multilingual content presentation.  The first distinction to make is whether the site is fully mirrored in multiple languages or if it is presenting a limited number of pages.

If the full content exists in multiple languages, providing tabbed navigation to each language (with the full built-out resources under each) is an effective presentation. The International Center for Journalists’ IJNet site does a good job of this. When you click a language tab, the entire page content and all navigation swap out to the language you’ve selected. You don’t want to promise more content than you can deliver, though, so be careful of setting up a parallel nav structure and re-directing users back to English content for non-translated content.  The effect is jarring and, frankly, inconsiderate.   

If your multi-lingual content is limited, you want to make sure you don’t portray the fact that when you click on a language, you’re getting the same content in another language. Presenting a limited number of resources is best handled by directing users to “Resources in…” (or Pages in or Materials in – whatever works best for the audience). A user can then click through to a landing page that aggregates the non-English content by type.

Link placement on the page is critical. Links to multilingual content (even if it’s not a full parallel site) should be displayed prominently and placed above the fold. Providing content in multiple languages takes a significant investment of time and resources. And if you are making the investment, you most likely want to showcase the international consideration and reach of your organization. What you don’t want to do is force users looking for non-English content to hunt around the homepage to find the link, effectively negating the time and energy you’ve put behind developing these resources.

The visual and functional treatment of links is vital as well. The easy one first, you don’t want to use as the visual representation of languages. While they may provide a dash of color, flags represent countries, not languages. What flag would you use to represent Portuguese language content – Portugal or Brazil? Don’t even get me started on the options for Spanish language content.

Another bad idea… including a drop-down menu with language choices. This treatment does save space within your page layout but it creates a challenge for languages that are character-based such as Chinese, Japanese and Korean.

While listing out each of the language options in their “native” spelling may take more space, it allows non-English reading users to identify their preferred language easily. Also, displaying each content language also serves to showcase your organization’s commitment to international audiences.  InfoComm currently does this on their site.    In addition, to ensure they appear correctly you should use images for the nav items, as opposed to text based labels, to ensure that the labels display as intended. Most computers can handle all language characters but some cannot.

Where should limited multi-lingual resources live on the back-end? I’d suggest they live in the file structure with the parallel English pages. That way, the file structure makes sense in terms of linking and, if (when!) the content grows to a level where a parallel or sub-site can exist, it will be easy to find & identify the resources.

If you are presenting multilingual content, Kudos!  If you’re considering it, bahati njema, Bonne chance,  Buena suerte, Danke, Good luck, Lykke til, Sretno and Желаю вам удачу!