Rule #1 (from journalism) — The average person has the reading level AND attention span of a 6th grader. Use short sentences and small words. The important information goes first, the less important goes last.

Rule #2 (from marketing) — We are bombarded by more than 30,000 persuasive messages per day (this is more than just advertisements). To cut through the clutter, even for smarter people, you need to follow Rule #1.

A good RFP is only a couple of pages and will only address that particular need the client has, not talk about the responding company, their process, or include lots and lots of materials. If you do, include them in an index, but only include the materials you absolutely must have.

Your conversation with Mark definitely encouraged this blog post and I agree with you. Given the volume of material we needed to push to this particular prospect in a short period, I even think going beyond images would have been necessary - perhaps a mix of images, recorded demonstrations and live demonstrations.

We were definitely put at a disadvantage from the start - the other company already being embedded without our knowledge - but the fact that we have the better product would have stuck out much more had we left all of the participants with the vivid memory of our products’ better capabilities.

Thanks for the inspiration!
Doug

Powerful video = great story + great execution ]]>