Laura Yribia is a strategic writing consultant and the Founder of Proseaire, a strategic writing service provider. In this episode, Laura talks about the key aspects of writing winning proposals including finding the right balance between providing straightforward responses vs. those that have more of a marketing-type style.   Laura also discusses industry differences, the importance of creating a "win theme," and how to write a winning cover letter.

You can find the whole episode of the Grow Fast Podcast with Laura here:

‍Youtube

Apple Podcasts

Spotify

TheGrow Fast Podcast is brought to you by Breeze, the fastest, easiest, and lowest-cost way to process RFPs, RFIs, security questionnaires, and other important documents.

‍

This is the transcript of this episode:
‍

Mark Shriner [0:01]:
Welcome to the Grow Fast podcast where we talk with leading sales, marketing, and personal growth experts about how companies can accelerate sales, optimize marketing, and grow their businesses fast. Let's go. Hey Laura, how are you?

Laura Yribia [0:16]:
I'm good. How are you?

Mark Shriner [0:18]:
Pretty good. Pretty good. I'm up here in the Pacific Northwest. Where about are you located?

Laura Yribia [0:22]:
I'm in New Mexico.

Mark Shriner [0:24]:
New Mexico. I've never been there. I've spent a lot of time in Arizona. My mom lives down there, and I do a lot of mountain biking. I love it. And I've heard that the mountain biking in New Mexico is amazing.

Laura Yribia [0:36]:
Yeah, it's great. I have just right out my window right now, I have an amazing view of the Organ Mountains, not the Oregon mountains, the Organ like church organ. And I mean, they're beautiful. I grew up in Colorado, and I need to have some good mountains around.

Mark Shriner [0:55]:
Well, Colorado has good mountains as well. That's awesome. I'm really excited to talk to you because you're the first, I would say, proposal writer that I've ever met face to face, virtually, I guess. And I want to talk to you about, you know, the art and science of writing proposals. But before we jump into that, maybe you can tell us what is a proposal writer? And how did you end up working as one?

Laura Yribia [1:23]:
Yeah, well, that's a good question. Because there's a lot of within our industry, there's a lot of people use the word proposal writer and proposal manager almost interchangeably, a lot of the time. I see them as two different two different jobs. Not that you can't I mean, a lot of people do multiple jobs in their job. But, you know, a proposal manager I see as the person who's sort of herding the cats, you know, making sure that SMEs are staying sticking to the timeline, reading the proposal, you know, doing the compliance matrix, all of that stuff, proposal management, a proposal writer on the other side, and I've done that, but the side that I was always more drawn to was the writing side. And that is sort of that just I call it sales, writing. I never hear anyone else call it sales writing. But we're business development writing if you don't like the word sales, but it's that sort of persuasive type of writing that I really like to just delve into where because it is sales writing more than marketing writing, we know who exactly it is that we're speaking to. So that really gives us the opportunity to dive in really understand what their problems are, and make sure that that is reflected very specifically, in what we're presenting to them with our proposal.

Mark Shriner [2:52]:
We'll definitely want to talk a lot more about that because I know there's a balance there between just factually responding to an answer. But then also kind of putting that sales spin on it. And I don't mean that in a negative way. It's just like your your, I guess packaging the answer in a way that speaks to what the requesters you know, what they're looking for. But before we do that, you again, you so you have worked as both a proposal manager and as a writer, but how did you What was your first foray into proposal writing?

Laura Yribia [3:24]:
Well, first of all, what my degree is in writing, I would I sort of every job I had coming up, I would always sort of volunteer to do any sort of writing that was needed. So I kind of, you know, got was able to have experience with doing a lot of different types of business writing. I also for many years worked in philanthropy. So I was reading a lot of proposals. So I knew exactly what it is I was looking for in proposals, you know, even though it's it's very different, you know, commercial nonprofit, definitely differences there. But so then, when I decided that I was going to be moving on from philanthropy, wanted to move more into onto the commercial side of things. I was sort of looking at, I'm like, What can I do that where I can, like, actually write for a living and make a living, you know, like, full time, right. And I sort of just through looking at, you know, the, the wanted ads, you know, I started discovered this world of proposal writing, and that sounds like me, it's like, it's, it's, you know, it's this very logical side to it, but there's a creative side to it. Like that's, that's me, so I that's kind of how I first got into it. Um, I also that first job I did not know it when I applied but it ended up being my first full time remote job. So once I did that, I'm like, there's no going back for me.

Mark Shriner [5:05]:
And that's one of the great things about doing sales and also doing proposal writing is, you know, these types of jobs, you can be remote, right, because they're paying for your, your, your output, and as long as you're accessible, I guess I assume it works. What types of proposals have you worked on?

Laura Yribia [5:25]:
So I've prepared proposals that are going to mostly commercial organizations, also, state local, transit agencies, counties, that kind of thing. I have worked on federal proposals. I'm not going to say that's the bulk of what I've done. I've had dabbled in that a little bit. And then as far as the organizations that I've worked with, I've done a lot of a lot of FinTech, you know, just sort of financing on technology separately, as well. I'm, oh, my gosh, my, my, about a year ago, I started working with the big insurance brokerage, and that has been, believe it or not fun, because one of the great things about consulting is you're always getting to learn about something new. So that was an industry I knew nothing about a year ago. And now I've definitely learned, learned a lot. But yeah, I would say, you know, software, SAS and even hosted and hosted programs, I've kind of been all over?

Mark Shriner [6:44]:
Well, are the requirements more or less the same? Or do they vary by industry and by company.

Laura Yribia [6:51]:
Um, I mean, there's definitely a difference between the government proposals versus the are really the government RFPs versus the commercial RFPs, I really like responding to the commercial ones, because there tends to be a lot more freedom to kind of really showcase what it is that you have to offer, the government ones are a little more, you know, you got to color inside the lines, and there's a lot more ways to just sort of get your proposal thrown thrown out before anyone ever looks at it a lot more just under rules and regulations,

Mark Shriner [7:31]:
Can you give a couple of specific examples, um,

Laura Yribia [7:33]:
you know, for example, I have seen on a, on a government proposal, literally down to the details of you need to use Times New Times New Roman font, or something like that. Whereas, you know, and if you don't, depending on you know, they can kick you out before you ever get started. I've never seen those kinds of requirements on on a commercial RFP.

Mark Shriner [7:59]:
And then in terms of, you know, how, how you respond, and, you know, you mentioned that, you kind of like to add a little bit of art to the, to the, to the answer, you know, put a little bit of more of a style in there. package the information are, is it same for every industry? Or there are certain industries? Are they more open to that? Or do they expect that?

Laura Yribia [8:26]:
I mean, it's all, it's all sales, right? When you're talking about proposals. So it's, it's all I mean, every proposal, it's going to be about persuasion, about you know, when I always say I sort of specialize in non icky sales, not we don't want that persuasion, where we're trying to beat someone over the head with it. But so I think, I think that really commercial or government, you're really just kind of trying to do the same thing, so that we're not, and you're, you know, I know some people when they're responding to government RFPs they're kind of they feel like they need to be a little more formal. And it's just know that it's, it's yes, you have to use your your business voice and your corporate voice when responding. But it's still a human being who's going to be reading it on the other side, it doesn't matter that they work for a government agency. So just, you know, understanding that you are speaking to real people.

Mark Shriner [9:32]:
write I mean, and a lot of times, you could just answer an answer question factually, or, you know, just give them the, the the bare minimum, but sometimes I'm guessing that the reader might not be able to connect the dots on what are the benefits for the feature that you just described, for example, so is that part of it, where you're kind of explaining, hey, yes, we have this and here's how it can help you or

Laura Yribia [9:59]:
exactly, you know, compliance and accuracy are the bare minimum. You know, and every, I'm glad you mentioned the word benefits, because that is what I spend most of my time doing is if we're saying, Okay, here's a feature that we have to offer you, you always got to follow that up with, and what are the specific benefits to you? Um, you know, right now I'm working on revising some content that was written by some subject matter experts, and they wanted me to go in and kind of, you know, pretty it up. Which is not, not, not what I do. But I really most of my time has been spent doing things like, you know, making sure that we are speaking directly to that customer benefits, benefits benefits, my sort of general rule of thumb is at least every other sentence, I want to try and get something that is a benefit statement statement in there, here's why we're the biggest in the world. Great. How does that help me, you know, getting not that information in there. And I've spent, I've been spending a lot of times, you know, just taking out things like graphics that just don't really make sense in this context, that maybe need a lot of explanation that you just can't do here, or that just don't really, they're pretty graphics, but they just don't quite fit here. Spend a lot of time with organization just sort of laying things out in a logical order. And, yeah,

Mark Shriner [11:40]:
you know, it kind of goes back to what you said before. Sometimes I think when we participate in an RFP, especially if it's a large organization, or the government, we just think we just send it in. And somehow they have these kind of cold bureaucrats that go through and analyze it. But what you said is these, they're all human beings, right? And people need to be convinced, and they need to be sold or excited about something that they are potentially buying. So if you can stress the benefits, because features at the end of the day can be, you know, you put together a long list of features bullet points, where you know, I mean, that can be kind of boring, but if you explain them all and say how this is going to make your life easier, make your job better, that kind of thing is super important. I'm curious, though, because you actually touched on something that I was going to ask you about, and that is rewriting. Because a lot of writers don't like to rewrite, and I do a bit of writing myself. It depends who I'm rewriting for. But most of the time, I don't like it for a couple of reasons. One is I if I read somebody else's style, it starts to affect my style. And I hate making corrections to somebody else's work, because I don't want to hurt anybody's feelings. So but but in your case, you're also dealing with all these different areas, and you're dealing with information where the subject matter, the smees have deep, deep expertise. And so how do you kind of balanced that? In terms of understanding? Because they might send you something that I'm assuming sometimes you don't understand? So do you just reach out and ask for clarification? And, and then how do you repackage it?

Laura Yribia [13:11]:
Yeah, so the, when I get stuff that has already been written, a lot of my time is spent on creating one voice, right, because you have this subject matter expert, that subject matter expert, all kinds of doing their own thing, we need to present a unified front. Some organizations have their own sort of branding guidelines, which to be honest, typically have to do more with like design, which I don't get involved with, but sometimes they do have actual branding guidelines around language, you know, this is mean, just basic things like, this is how we talk about our customer, are they customers? Are they clients, Are they members, you know, so making sure, and also, making sure you're on the set. This sounds so basic, but I can't tell you how many times I've been reading things from different subject matter experts, and their own products are spelled in multiple different ways. You know, so it's like, bringing everything together from the really micro level like that, to just the macro. This is this is our organization, these are our values, these, this is our mission, and bringing all of that together so that it sounds like we are one organization speaking.

Mark Shriner [14:33]:
Now, it makes a lot of sense. Do any of the organizations you work with, do they ever have their own, like terminology database, so you can see approved terminology or disallowed terminology? Or is that that a little more structure than most have?

Laura Yribia [14:51]:
Well, that's a little more structure. And the thing is, you know, even sometimes when you come up with those kinds of guidelines, how many People are actually really reviewing that stuff and keeping up to date with it. So you, you really do kind of have to rely on, you know, whether it's the proposal writer or the proposal manager to just sort of harmonize everything.

Mark Shriner [15:16]:
makes sense. I've heard that, whenever possible, you should reach out to the RFP issuing organization to ask clarifying questions. But also, if possible, just to kind of make that human contact, because you know, that that's part of the sales side as well. Right? Is that something that you do from time to time? Or is that something that the you would work through the business develop manager or sales manager to kind of to reach out to the issuing organization?

Laura Yribia [15:44]:
Yeah, so I have never had contact with the actual organization that I'm sending it to, in most organizations? That's the salespersons responsibility to be that kind of point of contact? I'm sorry, can you say the rest of your question?

Mark Shriner [16:05]:
Well, I was just gonna say, if you if you ever reach out to them, because it does help with with the relationship, but it sounds like that the the salesperson is going to be doing that for you. If you had a question, they could ask clarifying questions.

Laura Yribia [16:18]:
Yeah, generally, proposal teams are responsible for putting together their their clarifying questions. And if I have any, I'll definitely, I'll definitely ask. Okay.

Mark Shriner [16:30]:
You know, you've worked across a wide variety of industries. And I'm assuming, but you can tell me that it's, you kind of have to know some of the the industry specific and maybe even company specific terminology and jargon. And you want to kind of interweave that in there to demonstrate your, your company's expertise are your you know, your ability to kind of navigate those waters? Is that something that you work towards? And how do you do it when you're going into an industry that you're not familiar with?

Laura Yribia [16:56]:
Um, yeah, so if you're kind of lucky, a lot of your proposals are going to the same. I'm going to organizations in the same industry. So for example, several years ago, I was working for a big fin tech company called Fiserv. And pretty much all of the proposals that I worked on, were going to credit unions. So I got to know all about this specific credit unions, very different from banks, they are very proud of the fact that they're different from banks, they are kind of walk this line between being, they're basically a nonprofit, but they're still kind of a bank, their customers are members, they're not customers, you don't have a checking account, you have a draft account. So in that case, it was you know, when you're working with the same industry over and over again, yeah, you better be an expert on what their terminology is. When you know, you're sort of bouncing around and sending proposals to different industries, you know, you got to do things like first of all, rely on whatever intelligence your sales team is providing to you. Hopefully, if there's anything important along those lines, they'll share it with you. And, you know, also just taking a basic look at their, their website, how do they talk about themselves? You know, what kind of terminology are they using, and and you know, you don't want to necessarily weave that terminology in, just for the sake of doing it, you still need to be authentic to, you know, your organization and what your voice is. But of course, when you can let them know that we understand your business. Do that where you can?

Mark Shriner [18:43]:
Yeah, that's I always assume that's, that's very important. You've, you know, worn the hat of both proposal manager and mostly no proposal writer. And we work with a lot of small and medium sized businesses where oftentimes they don't have a the resources a dedicated resource for either for a proposal manager, definitely not for a proposal writer. What would you say are some best practices, if you put your proposal management hat on, right now, let's just say, you know, what, I've got, I worked for a small medium sized company. And whenever a proposal comes in, I have to be the one that kind of manages that. So that makes me the proposal manager, but I also have my other things my my regular day job, maybe I'm the sales manager or something like that. What are some best practices that you would coach me on?

Laura Yribia [19:35]:
Um, I'd say first of all getting together. This is not really on the writing side. This might be a little more on the management side, but I would say getting together what we call a compliance matrix. Right. So making sure you're reading through the RFP, making sure that you know exactly what it is that they're they're asked asking for, you know, just what they need from you. Because you don't want to find out, you know, at the end of the process like, oh, shoot, we were supposed to, we have to mail this in, and we thought it was, you know, some other submissions. Just, you don't want to be in that situation. You know, but beyond that, I would say, in my world, when themes, please start to learn a little something about when themes. Because that's where I sort of everything that I do in a proposal hangs off of that. So when theme is basically just your kind of like, and it can be called different things at different organizations, but it's just sort of your top three, sort of three or so bullet points of how are we going to win this contract?

Mark Shriner [20:53]:
Can you give some examples of wind themes that you've seen in the past?

Laura Yribia [20:57]:
Yeah, so for example, I mean, first of all, you're fine. You're you're figuring it out based on the RFP and what they're saying they want what they're saying they're going to evaluate you on, very important for that all to be aligned. And, and also, again, sales, intelligence, anything, that's maybe not the unwritten stuff that they're looking for, right? Because a lot of times there's there's that that side of things, but I would say, you know, a win theme would be something like they you have, let's just go back to credit unions, you know, they have, you know, they haven't replaced their system in 20 years, it's an onsite system, they really need to move to the cloud. But obviously, there's a lot of security issues around that, right. So you kind of sort of figure like, okay, security is going to be one of our big win themes. You know, they, I don't know they have to go to tellers have to go to, you know, three different pieces of software just to be able to deposit your check, and the teller line, hey, let's bring, we can bring this all in screen, the one screen and, you know, two mouse clicks, and they're done, right? So you can you come up with just sort of some things like that, and then you're able to sort of take that, hey, this is what's going to the gonna win it for us, you can then use that to help build your cover letter, you know, this is this is how we can help you. And then that cover letter, those three points, you take that, and you can just expand on what you're talking about in your cover letter around those win themes for your executive summary, you know, and then because you don't have a lot of staff, you can then you know, where to focus your time on the actual responses to the question that they've asked, you know, you know, like, you know, this is something that we don't need to spend as much time reviewing and making sure it's perfect. But these questions, oh, yeah, we want to really put our time here and really show what we what we have to offer.

Mark Shriner [23:09]:
I think that's, that's amazing advice right there that that's great. And I haven't heard of the phrase as when themes before, but by putting that, you know, out front, so you know, everybody, we were all aligned on this. And it's kind of our guiding, I want to call it principle, but it's kind of lead us in the direction that it kind of shaped the way we respond. Makes a lot of sense. So in addition to the compliance matrix, and then, you know, in establishing those win themes. Do you have any advice in terms of managing because a lot of times, you know, you will need three, four or five different SMEs who will have to contribute, right? And they're all busy with their day jobs, right, as well. So what have you seen in terms of how best to kind of manage that collaborative approach to, you know, to getting this RFP completed?

Laura Yribia [24:03]:
so yeah, I'm kind of out of that, that business these days. Proposal management business, like you said, but I do know that one of the best experiences I've had working with subject matter experts, is when I was at an organization where they had truly fully implemented their proposal management software to actually manage proposals. Too many it's, it's just so often at clients, you know, they they have this this sometimes very expensive proposal management software. I mean, there's, there's all different types, but, you know, they all they do is use it as a content library. And I'm just like, No, you can do so much more with this. And when we fully implemented it, I mean, with for example, the SMEs most software will have like a dashboard. And you can see, okay, Mary's completed 74% of her questions. And, you know, Amanda's completed, you know, 20% of her questions, and this stuff is due tomorrow. So it's, it's sort of that type of tool creates what? Something that I really like to use with subject matter experts is positive peer pressure, right? Like, what else is done? Even Start, and then you're kind of on that check in calling you're like, oh, yeah, you know, you sort of see where you stand. And you, you, I think people needed less prodding, because they saw it there right on the screen where they stand. So that's a tool to yours.

Mark Shriner [25:52]:
Yeah, and I think you mentioned earlier that, or before I hit the record button, that you use a variety of tools, and it's basically it's whatever your customers are using, is that is that right?

Laura Yribia [26:02]:
Right, right

Mark Shriner [26:03]:
Yeah. Do you do you like using the tools?

Laura Yribia [26:07]:
Um, I do. These days, just because I'm doing more writing, I do tend to just work within Word mostly, which is, I think our I would say it's our industry standard for proposals, I recently worked on something that I needed to do in on a Google Doc, which I haven't done in a while, but I just sort of realized how the tools that are in Google Docs are just not as effective as what we have in Word. So.

Mark Shriner [26:38]:
So when you, I'm wondering how you balance that because a lot of the tools, including ours, they'll work off of a basic kind of process of, you know, if an if a question, if a similar question has been answered before, we're going to serve you that response. Okay. So simple ones is, you know, when was your company founded, established, created, etc. And it was founded, created established in 1989. I don't need to, I don't want to revise that I don't want to make any changes to it. I don't want to spend any time on it at all. So I just accept right? Now, I could ask for a longer kind of describe your platform or service at a very high level, something like that. And, and then I might get an answer. Now, as a proposal manager, I'd be like, excellent. It's done. But as proposal writer, are you going to take that and see how you can if it's been used before? And you know, and improved? Are you just going to accept it? Or you're going to kind of massage it, polish it? And how do you manage that?

Laura Yribia [27:38]:
I mean, I would definitely, at the very least, you know, everything that we do is always time dependent, right? You know, if someone gives this to you, five hours before it's due, it's you're gonna have a different process than if you get it five days before it's due. But I would say at the bare minimum, I would check it for just some of those basic things that can kind of slip in, maybe, maybe that response was kind of really personalized for the for the last customer. So just make sure none of that sort of personalization slips in, we put the wrong industry in there, or God forbid, the wrong name. You know, a lot of that stuff, a lot of organizations do use, you know, merge codes for that kind of stuff. So it's, you know, it's going to be right. But yeah, I mean, I definitely will take a look also, just dealing with the one voice issues, you know, I don't know, this content library has probably been created over the years by dozens, if not hundreds of people. So always checking on that we're all speaking in the same voice. But yeah, I would definitely, you know, certain things, if you're if you're doing if you're doing, you know, tons of proposals. Yeah, you probably don't need to check the one that's like, what's your company history, you know, you've read that a million times before, although every once in a while, it is good to refresh that, you know, that's not necessarily part of the process for this particular proposal. But just as far as your basic content management processes, you know, just ongoing refreshing your information, it can get kind of stale after a while and, and when you think it's stale, that's gonna, your clients are gonna be able to see that.

Mark Shriner [29:32]:
Sure. You know, it's funny because I have been working in the workforce probably longer than the average person in the workforce. And what I've noticed over the years, is things have become increasingly casual, especially I would just say email communications, and that, you know, I get people don't know me, and they'll be like, Hey, Mark, I thought I'd send this over and I'm like, Hey, Mark, and when I first saw that, I was like, Whoa, it because that was like a very casual way to dress somebody when I was getting started. And I find that in kind of many areas of business, things are just becoming much more casual, you know, the whole suit and tie, Nobody wears a suit and tie any more than I know, unless you're in one specific a couple of specific areas of finance, maybe law. But when it comes to proposal writing, how do you do you do notice a general trend towards more casual phraseology? Or do you do you tend to keep it do things that are things to expect it to be to maintain a certain amount of formality?

Laura Yribia [30:35]:
You know, that's kind of the the line you walk, right, you need to present yourself as, you know, serious professionals, but you also, part of persuasive writing is just kind of keeping it a little friendlier and conversational. And really, you know, sometimes I think people think formal writing means you're going to use a lot of big words and show everyone how smart you are, you know? No, please don't. We're not here to show people how how smart you are. You're here to show them. Like I said before, this is how we can help you focusing on the client. So yeah, I would I would say, I don't have like a formula for that. But I, yeah, definitely, things are a little more conversational than they used to be.

Mark Shriner [31:37]:
Do customers ever have like, readability requirements, in a lot of industries, the public facing documents, so for example, with pharmaceuticals, and medical devices, in the financial services, when they have documents that are facing the public, there are readability guidelines and rules that they have to adhere to. So for example, in some in some domains, the content has to be readable by a person with an eighth grade education, okay? Because if you want to take this drug device, whatever to market, you want to make sure that people can understand what it's going to do for them to them, etc. You're dealing with b2b situations, or B to government situations. But are there readability standards and guidelines that you follow?

Laura Yribia [32:21]:
I've never come across those and RFP. I do know that I definitely use like what's called a flesh score, F Le s, ch, which is available in in Word. And sometimes if I just have a, say, just a paragraph that I'm like, this is like, this is way too complicated. Like, I'm sorry, you know, let me let me just say, I think it's too complicated, but I don't know, maybe I'm crazy. They've been using this, you know, language for years, and then I'll just run a little flesh score, and it'll tell me Yeah, like, what is it? Is it on, you know, 14th grade reading level, you know, well, there is no 14th grade. That's right. So then, you know, a lot of times to fix that, a lot of times, it's just things like, using shorter sentences, that one sentence, that's three lines long, break it up into two or three different sentences. You know, using a lot of, a lot of times, it's just using a lot of fluff words, just just delete, just get rid of all the fluff, you know, just say what you need to say, move on.

Mark Shriner [33:32]:
I'm glad you said that. I've Mark fluff words are annoying. So we mentioned tools earlier, but I forgot to ask you about AI because a lot of writers are using it in a variety of ways. So how about you? Are you using chat? GPT or any other LMS? And if so, how?

Laura Yribia [33:50]:
Um, I, I'd say I'm still in the experimentation phase. You know, most of my clients, they're paying me for the human touch. Right? So if they want to create content from Ai, great, and then have me take a look at it. You know, I'm, I'm definitely comfortable with that. But as far as using it on client work, the most I really do is, it has helped me to help organize my thoughts. Because when I start, I sort of just start with a blank sheet. And I end up with just this riot of ideas. And then I'm like, how am I going to organize this? It has helped me to at least begin thinking about how I'm going to organize it. And you know, and then I use little AI things that are kind of helpful, but not big AI tools like I constantly am using it to what's another way to say blah, blah, blah, because right then word there's a synonyms feature, but it tends to just be single words. I'm like, What is this phrase, this phrase is being overused or it's a tired old phrase. How else can I say it? I've been using AI a lot for that. But otherwise, yeah, I don't think my clients aren't paying me to produce AI content.

Mark Shriner [35:14]:
Yeah, I mean, I agree with you in terms of how I'm using AI as well, a lot of times, sometimes I'm looking for some, what's the word? Inspiration, or just kind of like, I want to brainstorm with somebody, and I'm by myself, and so I'll brainstorm with chat GPT. And, and sometimes it works. And it'll give me oh, you know what, maybe I could do it like this. It's not necessarily doing my job. But it's helping me kind of think of different directions that I could take it so quite helpful.

Laura Yribia [35:43]:
Yeah. And I actually, I did recently speak with someone who's a proposal consultant who is using AI, you know, I think, I think they would consider themselves more of a on the management side than the writing, but they do need to create writing for their proposals. And, you know, they told me, they are very upfront with their clients, they're going to be using AI to create content. And so as long as you're upfront with whoever it is that's paying the bills, fair game.

Mark Shriner [36:12]:
Makes sense. I asked you to give some, you know, some thoughts or advice about the the proposal management role. What about somebody who is not a professional proposal writer, but they've been given that responsibility of, you know, what you've got to go through here. And I think you've already given some really good advice. But if you could summarize it, say, Okay, you're not a professional proposal writer, but here are the top two or three things that you should be looking at, when you're going to go through and rewrite these, the responses, what would those be?

Laura Yribia [36:43]:
Okay, so they're rewriting their responses, they're not rewriting or creating,

Mark Shriner [36:47]:
I should, there, they're, they're responsible for getting this content out the door.

Laura Yribia [36:54]:
Okay, I'm a huge fan of. So once you've done your compliance matrix, I'm a huge fan of timelines, make sure you got a solid timeline so that you are you know, where you work backwards from the date that it's due. On the writing side, I would say, please, when it comes to cover letters, please never start your cover letter with thank you for the opportunity to, okay, that no matter how much time you put into your letter, as soon as someone sees that first sentence, it's not going to get read, they're going to say this is that I this is a cover letter, I've read a million times before it's gonna get skipped over. I know this from back when I was reading proposals,

Mark Shriner [37:41]:
cool, what would be a better way to start it?

Laura Yribia [37:44]:
something about them something about their successes, your your, your customer, you know, maybe they've been, there's been something about them in the media recently, hey, lead off with that this is, you know, this is great to see that you, you know, win this award or whatever it is also starting off with the problems that they may might have, you know, we understand that you didn't Well, you don't want to say we understand, but starting off with, you know, your your issues are x, y and z, which you've taken from the RFP. These are your issues at x, y and z. We'd like to help. Right?

Mark Shriner [38:29]:
You're demonstrating that one, you've done a little research, you understand the organization and and you're also not just starting off in a generic generic sales kind of met may have thank you for this opportunity. We were really excited to for this opportunity to partner with you and blah, blah, blah. Yeah.

Laura Yribia [38:47]:
Because that's about you. Right, that's, you know, the opportunity to you know, yeah, you get it to try to make sense.

Mark Shriner [38:58]:
What industry resources, organizations, events, periodicals, websites are out there, for people who want to learn more about proposal writing.

Laura Yribia [39:12]:
I mean, a PMP is, you know, the primary organization that supports proposal management professionals. They have a huge library of blogs and articles that you can access. If you if you join the organization. They also have regular webinars. And some of those might be free. I don't I'm not sure but the some of the webinars can be really, it's just, it's just a good, it's good to be involved with an organization like that just so you kind of know what's going on outside of your own organization. You know, just so you see How things are evolving? Because obviously you don't, you don't want to get left behind. So yeah, I would say a PMP is a great resource. You know, aside from that, there, there are some great people on LinkedIn that you can follow who give a lot of good advice around proposals. So definitely seek them out and follow them.

Mark Shriner [40:28]:
Excellent advice. And then just the last question here is, you know, writing is somewhat subjective, right, in terms of judging the quality? And how do you evaluate, you know, what you've created? And do you do? Do you have, like, have a writers group? Do you have mentors? Or do you just get you get feedback from your customers? I mean, how do you like, get feedback? And then, you know, and then grow or develop your skills? Yeah. So

Laura Yribia [40:57]:
I love getting feedback from my clients. But nine times out of 10, I give them something. And they're like, Yep, this is great. And they run with it. And I'm like, Really, there was a change, you know, like, I know, I know, you said earlier, you know, you're afraid, not afraid. But giving feedback, you're kind of think, boo, how are they going to take it? Believe me, I have a thick skin around my writing. I can, I can take whatever feedback you have, even if it's try and be kind about it, but getting feedback, because it helps me get to know specifically what it is that they're looking for, you know, I understand proposal writing on a on a global scope. But you know, to really drill down to what they want, please, like I love getting direct feedback.

Mark Shriner [41:52]:
That I totally agree with you and that doesn't, it's not limited just to writing I think it's an all aspects of what we do. And you know, and how we operate in many different kinds of arenas, if we can get that kind of honest, open, and hopefully, you know, can improve. So that's, that's awesome. Laura, I really appreciate you taking the time to come on the grow fast podcast. I mean, what you're doing is super valuable. Interesting. And, yeah, thank you so much.

Laura Yribia [42:23]:
Okay, thank you.

‍

‍