Measuring proposal graphics and visual communication

Visual communication is more effective than text. Studies show that graphics get read first and lead to faster and better message comprehension. Most proposal specialists know that and seek to use a lot of graphics. They usually start by asking questions like “How many graphics should I have in my proposal and where should they go?” Some don’t get any further because if you don't have the skills needed to create the graphics, it seems difficult and time consuming. Plus it's hard to make it high enough up Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs applied to proposals so you can focus on graphics.

People toss around ratios, like one graphic for every three pages, or even one graphic per page. If I could make my entire proposal a graphic, I would. While those are good goals, the truth is they are artificial and the message should drive your use of visual communication and not some ratio. And besides, the ratios don’t help you conceive the graphics.

Proposal Content Planning helps you figure it all out

When we developed the Proposal Content Planning methodology as part of the MustWin Process, identifying graphics was just one of eight steps. But since then, we’ve found that Proposal Content Planning helps with developing graphics in a number of unique and interesting ways.

Content Planning involves using a document as a container to hold instructions and placeholders for things while you are trying to figure out what should go into your proposal. It provides an information flow from pre-RFP intelligence gathering into proposal writing. It provides a means to ensure that you consider what it will take to win and build it into the proposal. It also gives you the foundation you need to decide what graphics you should have, what should go in them, and what points the graphics should convey.

Because Proposal Content Planning involves creating bullet-level instructions for proposal writers, it is easy to scan a content plan and look for items to convert to graphics. Instead of trying to read a draft proposal and find inspiration for graphics, Content Planning makes it quicker and easier to see the lists, sequences, comparisons, and relationships that could be shown visually. And because your content plan should provide the points your proposal writers should substantiate, it also sets up the points your graphics should make.

If you start the planning by thinking of the graphics first, Proposal Content Planning gives you a mechanism to track what will be communicated via graphics vs. what needs to go into the text. It’s much better to replace text with a graphic than it is to add a graphic and keep the now redundant text. Content Planning gives you a way to achieve this without the extra effort of writing text and throwing it away after the graphic is ready.

Content Planning also enables you to flag the items that are potential graphics, without having to draw pictures (yet). You can track them, pass them around, get input, and even show them to graphics designers if you can’t figure out how to render them as graphics. So it makes it easier to collaborate as well.

When you have a potential graphic, the Content Plan gives you a place to collect the information that the illustrator will need to render the graphic. So it not only facilitates tracking, and collaboration, but also communication and specification.

Because the Content Plan gets reviewed before being converted into a written draft, it also provides an easy method for obtaining approvals. If budget is a concern, you can see how many graphics are planned and how complicated they are.

But wait, there's more...

Proposal Content Planning lets you go way beyond simply figuring out what graphics you should have. It enables you to quantify how much of your message will be communicated visually. You can see how many items in your content plan will be communicated via graphics vs. how many will be communicated in text. Forget about crude graphics per page metrics. You can actually derive the percentage of your message that is communicated visually. If you actually track this metric across multiple proposals, you can formally establish the amount of impact that graphics have on your win rate.

You can also use Content Planning to prioritize your use of visual communications. Are you using graphics to address routine or unimportant items, or are you using them to address the items that are on your “what it will take to win” list? This can also be turned into a ratio or percentage, tracked across multiple proposals, and then correlated with your win rate.

Once the plan is complete and the writing and illustration have begun, the Content Plan gives you a better way to track progress. In addition to the simple metric of how many graphics out of the total are complete, you can track how many items in your content plan have been addressed and what percentage of your total message has been addressed.

What if you can't draw?

All that is great, but it still leaves you with the problem of how to actually draw the graphics. Once you identify the graphics, getting them rendered is a solvable problem. If you don’t have the resources to do it yourself, you can always outsource it to a company like the 24 Hour Company. But when you use Content Planning, you can flag all the potential graphics, and then render only the ones that you are capable of drawing or have the time for. Out of all the potential graphics, you can pick and choose which ones to take on.

Flagging potential graphics in the content plan means that when reviewers compare the draft to the plan, they also see whether people followed through on the development of the graphics. It also gives you a better way to evaluate the quality of your graphics, by assessing how well they reflect the messages you want your proposal to convey. And instead of this being a matter of opinion, this can be assessed by comparing what got written to what was put in the content plan.