Oh Lord, give me a white paper, give me technical specs, give me a god-awful press release -- send me any of that before you send me into proposal hell.
I'm working on one for a client over the weekend that we started early last week, and the funny thing is that every proposal I've ever done (probably about 40 of them representing a total of probably $200 million) comes down to the last frigging minute. What is that about? What is it about proposals that invite the most exhausting processes in all of cobbling content together? Even the big companies I've worked for that either 1) claimed to have a proposal writing process together or 2) gave me the authority to build my own, never seemed to be able to stick to a schedule, timetable, or process--except the Big D Deadline
It's as though every proposal is a big sack that you know you have to hand over to the garbage man on Monday and you cram as much important stuff as possible into it for as long as you can until you start to get nervous--then you start picking through to take out what just doesn't fit, a Kleenex here and a used condom there--right up to the moment the truck pulls up. And the poor person waiting to tie the bag. Never mind.
So that's what I'm doing today. Dealing with Kleenex and condoms and the wonderful world of proposal writing.
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