Improving Your Odds of Winning a Project

This is Building Better Developers, the Develop-a-newer podcast. We will accomplish our goals through sharing experience, improving tech skills, increasing business knowledge, and embracing life. Let's dive into the next episode. Well, hello and welcome back. We are continuing our season looking at three things each episode to improve some facet of your life, your professional or personal one. This episode probably crosses a little bit between both of those. We're going to talk about three things you can do to help you win that project, land that job. These are probably things that I think they get covered recently or often enough. But the interesting thing is that even mid-level, senior level people that I talk to don't necessarily get it. Maybe haven't done this exercise enough times and gotten enough feedback that they pick up on, hey, here's a couple of things we can do to improve our odds of winning a project, winning a bid, contract, landing that job. They're sort of obvious, I think, once you think about them, once you hear it. It's like, oh yeah, that makes sense. Knowing it and doing it is slightly different. And so we'll talk a little bit about getting these things done as well. The number one item, and probably the most important of these, is addressing details. You have to remember that when you go into a, when you're creating a proposal or you're trying to step into a position when you're applying for a job somewhere, there are certain things that are desired. There are holes that need to be filled or there are requirements that need to be met or both. If you've spent the time, done your homework, looked through the, whatever the posting is, the job post, the project post, any references that they have, then you're going to be able to find, should be able to have access to requirements and what they really want. Now it's a slightly different conversation if they don't, but still, that means that actually works in your favor because that's going to open up an opportunity for you to ask some intelligent questions. And by intelligent, I mean, it's just, these are things that they are, they're probably going to be to some level impressed that you care enough, that you've read it, that you've looked at the details. And also that's going to show that you've thought through them to some extent. And it's actually going to show a little bit of what you bring to the table because you're going to ask questions about things that they didn't include, whether intentionally or unintentionally. And thus, either it was partially to just see who's out there and to test the candidates or maybe they just, an ignorance on their part. And now you've essentially been, with those questions, you're going to educate them on what it is they're looking at, what it is they're looking for. And this is not uncommon at all in the technical world. Whether it's a job posting or a project, there's often that disconnect where you've got a business owner or business manager or product owner that doesn't really, they don't really have a technical background. They don't have the technical know-how to sometimes define to the detailed enough level what it is they want. They know what the features are. They can help with requirements, but there's going to be things they're not going to think about because it's either overly obvious to them or they just haven't gone through this exercise enough times to think about it for it to become an issue. And we've talked about some of these sorts of requirements in the past. Things like an application where if you read between the lines, it obviously needs, let's say a user authorization or user registration and authorization, a login, log out, forgot password, maybe an admin site of some sort. Those are the things that people aren't really going to think of very often. want our users to log in, but unless you've got somebody that's a little more technical, that's really spent some time working through stuff, there's going to be gaps. That's okay. And that may be part of the first steps of your project, of your job, of the interview process is that they may have left some things open to allow you to sort of put your own stamp on it or to just get an idea of where you're coming from. They don't want to lead too much into some areas that maybe they think you know. So look at the details that are in that proposal, walk through them and make sure you understand it. Don't just like glance at it, which is easy to do, particularly with projects where they've got a sentence or two, paragraph or two, and maybe they've got a couple other pieces of information, but it's easy to just sort of glance at it, read a sentence and go, oh, okay, this is what they want and move on and not pay enough attention. Flip side, they may have a very lengthy proposal. Read every bit of it. The more you're educated on what they want, the more you're going to be able to find out and to position yourself to be the best possible match that you can for that project or that position. Step two, or the second item, so the first one, we want to address the details of the request. Step two, when we provide a solution, when we go to the interview, when we create a proposal, then we want to remove fluff. We want to focus on their needs. We want to put in front of them a proposal that says, ideally, says, this is what you want. This is what you stated you want. And actually, a little bit with this, this is what you stated you want. Here are some things that that implies, and here is our proposal to address those. Now, by removing fluff and focusing on their needs, this is where it becomes sort of challenging for a lot of technical people because we want to go into a lot of best practices and industry standards and latest technologies and some things like that and sort of throw that in there and wow them with what we know. Skip it. Yes, that is possible at times. There's cases, there are going to be cases where you can wow them with your skills, your knowledge of the latest technical stuff. But more often than not, your better approach is going to be how I, assuming I'm applying to this job or for the filling out this proposal, how my solution or me stepping in here is going to help you guys with your needs, that we're going to meet your requirements. You have these problems, you have these challenges. This is where you lay out for them how you are going to give them a solution that addresses those challenges. And that goes back to that first item, the details. Probably the best way to respond to a request, whether it's a project proposal or anything else, is to essentially go through the line items of requirements that they have and in each case address how it is, why it is, or what your thoughts are about each of those and providing some sort of solution for it, some sort of a fix or a workaround. And the more you can simplify that and get it to you have problem A, I'm proposing solution B that addresses that. Keeping that simple, the better. Now it may be something where you say, well, what you're asking for doesn't really work. There's some reasons why. There could be industries and industry regulations and government regulations and customer experience. There's a whole lot of things that you can sort of hem and haw your way around it or try to steer them in a different direction. But I think the more you can avoid that, the better. Whatever level they put together requirements, you want to match that and then just maybe a little bit more. Like I said, you want to address every item. Think of it as a laundry list or line items that they've put out there. You want to make sure that you addressed every single one. Now, if you're in an interview, that may be a little more difficult because they may drive it. They may have certain questions, but definitely in a written proposal or a job application or something like that, it will not hurt you to say, particularly if they say, why are you good for this job? Why would we hire you or whatever? Say you want A, B, C and D. I am going to provide you these things, this solution that covers A, B, C and D. And this is how it does it. Just very simple. Draw a direct line from your solution to their problem. This basically cuts to the chase. And that's not a bad thing. Now there are some fluff kinds of things that you will see on a fairly regular basis. But it may be, hey, we're a great company. We're great to work with, blah, blah, blah. Just marketing kind of stuff. That's fine. But if you really feel you want to include it, throw it at the beginning or throw it at the end. It should be easy to go directly to the core proposal and see where you either did or did not list out, understand what the requirements are, and then provide a suitable answer to that and suitable solution. This is probably more important the more respondents there may be to an application or to a proposal or to an RFP or something like that. If you just got one or two potential groups or respondents, then they're going to be able to spend a little more time and they've sort of narrowed some stuff down. So then that marketing stuff may come into play a little bit more. Generally speaking, think about it. If you've got 50 responses to go through and you start seeing stuff that's just going off far afield, those are the ones you're just going to be like, forget it, forget it, forget it, forget it. You're going to jump to the ones that say, this is what you want. This is what I'm going to give you. And this leads us to the third one. We start out by getting our details and then we make sure that we focus on those details. We focus on their needs and how we're going to address those. And then the last piece is really where we do the marketing kinds of stuff. But rather than fluff, you want stuff that's very objective, not subjective kind of stuff as much as possible. So that includes references. If you can include some references or reference projects that are as close as possible to what you are stepping into, then that's going to help them see that you can do it, you have done it, and how you did it. Basically to say, hey, is this somebody that's a good match based on past experience? Likewise, if you have examples of work that you've done, of sites you've been on, applications you've built, industries you've been in, and maybe white papers you've written or presentations, things like that. All of that is going to be useful particularly or I guess most specifically if it does address the requirements, if it addresses the details of what they're looking for. For example, if they want you to build an e-commerce website and you've built an e-commerce website in the past, but instead or even included, you throw some examples of let's say a music artist's personal site, like their, sort of their, the artist's site where they're selling themselves and schedules and shows and stuff like that. It's a very different market. So they're probably not going to care. I mean, it may be neat. It may be that you've got some big name you can drop, but that's really not going to help. That probably in some cases is going to hurt because it's like, one, I don't know that I want you name dropping my name if I'm a big enough company or a big enough customer. Two, why can't you do this on your own instead of trying to drop a name here or there? Or just sometimes people throw everything at the wall. So they'll have all sorts of examples and references that have nothing to do with a given project. And for example, if you want that website and this person sends you all of this stuff that's about all of these neat little mobile applications they've done, like, well, that's fine, but that doesn't do me any good. I don't want a mobile application. I want a website. So don't muddy the waters. Don't throw too much in there and then end up basically diffusing and that's D-I-F-F, diffusing, weakening your primary experience and references that actually do address their requirements, what they are looking for. It's like if you want a quarterback in football, you want somebody that can throw the ball basically. They can find receivers and throw the ball. If they come in there and they start talking about how good they are at tackling other people, it doesn't really, like, I don't care. Fine. Great that you can do it, but it doesn't really matter to me. That's not what I'm looking for. You've got to think about that when you're applying for these positions and specifically when you're writing proposals for projects. If you've got a whole lot of, like, a bucket of stuff that you just sort of throw at every project and say, oh, and by the way, here's a whole lot of other stuff about me that doesn't apply, then pretty often you're going to end up in a situation where you're going to sort of turn the light away from the things that you really want to highlight, which is why they should hire you to fix their problems. And then with that, you got references, you got examples, and I think suggestions, which goes back to a little bit we've talked about with the, we're talking about the details. There's going to be some gaps. There's going to be some wiggle room and some things like that. Now, yes, you don't want to give free advice necessarily in some of these cases. And some, honestly, some vendors or there's some people out there, that's what they do. They put these things together. They get people to propose something, learn enough about it, and then they just decide, oh, well, we're going to go do it ourselves. There's always that risk, but I think there's ways that you can do, you can hint at suggestions. You can provide some suggestions that are not maybe complete or, and even then, if that's your concern, ideally go ahead and throw them a bone. Say here, based on what you're doing, what you said, here's some extra things that I think you have to realize are going to be part of this project. Help them be successful and they may not pick you, but they'll appreciate that. That is going to bump you up at some level in the likely respondents or the people that are more likely to win because you've said, hey, I understand what you're doing. You don't understand it enough, which is why you're coming to me or to whoever it is that you hire. Here's some things that I want to point to you to say, okay, I am going to be able to bring you some additional experience, some skills, some insight, some input to help you be successful and not just be somebody that's sitting here waiting for you to tell me what to do because more often than not, that's not what they're hiring. They don't want to hire somebody that they have to handhold through the process. They've listed out some problems. They have some challenges. They need somebody to fix it. If you can come in there and say, I can fix it, and by the way, here's some other things you need to know about that solution, it's probably going to be impressive. I've had many times that I've had some really good calls in a prospective type of situation where there's no guarantee that they're going to hire me or not. There's no guarantee that I'm going to work for them. We spend 30 minutes or an hour talking about stuff and both come away knowing I know more about what they need. They know more about what I can provide. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't. In some cases, that's been a great selling point. In other cases, we get to end of it. This is not a good fit. And that's okay too. So that's our three. If you're struggling, landing that job, getting that project, especially thinking about your Upworks and your gurus and stuff like that, where you feel like you're always writing proposals and you're never winning, you don't feel like you're just spinning your wheels, there's three things that can help you. Address the details. Look at exactly what they want and make sure that you have responses for those as part of your response. Get rid of the fluff and focus on them, on their needs. Don't throw a bunch of, blow a bunch of sunshine. Just say, here's what you need. Here's what we can provide. Keep it simple. Make sure you do the best you can to respect their time and their desire to find somebody that can address those needs. And then the third thing along with that, give them reason to trust you. Provide references. Show examples of your work. Give them some suggestions on how to approach things. That kind of stuff will help you if not win this project right now, it will help you down the road. I guarantee it. Those kinds of things will come back around and there'll be situations that say, you know, this person wasn't quite right for us before, but I really liked how they presented themselves and let's go give them a call. Maybe you get on the short list next time. And that's part of what it is, is you have to sort of chip away a little bit and get closer and closer and then you start winning some and then you can start using those won and concluded projects and jobs to parlay into other ones. Those become references then that you can step on and build on later to get other projects and newer projects and bigger projects. Challenge of the week. When is the last time you put together a proposal for a job or a project? Even if you don't have the time or you really don't want to, that's the challenge of the week is spend a few minutes and just find a job that's out there. Just do like five minute search on Monster or like a guru or an upwork or something like that and just think about it and find just anyone, any project out there, any request and just take a look at it and just do the thought experiment of walking through what they want and just, you don't have to get formal or anything. You just sort of sit there and go, how would I address this? I think it's great practice. It's great exercise to go through and it can help you. You don't even have to go out to external sources. There may be something in your job right now where there's some problems and somebody needs solutions and practice a skill. I think this is one of the quintessential skills of very successful developers is the ability to talk to somebody about their problems, identify the problems and then talk to them specific about ways that those problems can be solved, that they can be remediated so that that person can move on and find other problems that they've got, other challenges and get away from those. There's always going to be challenges. We just want to move you on to the, essentially to the next level of challenges. That being said, it's time for you to go on to the next level of your day. As always, go out there and have yourself a great day, a great week and we will talk to you next time.