EP102: Using Visuals to Tell Your Story in an RFP Response – with Ama Cobbina & Megan Skuller
We process visuals 60,000 times faster than we do text.
And yet, most proposal teams see graphics as a nice-to-have. Something you add in at the last minute to make a response more visually appealing.
But what if you leveraged the visuals to support the story you’re telling in an RFP? What if you were just as strategic in planning the graphics as you are in crafting the text of a proposal response?
Ama Cobbina is the Cofounder and Marketing Director at mAt, a strategic visualization and marketing group. As a Creative Strategist and Business Development Professional, Ama has 13 years of experience in go-to-market strategy, acquisition response and solution designing.
Megan Skuller serves as a Senior Graphic Designer and Project Lead at 24 Hour Company, the nation’s premiere visual communications firm. After 17 years in the business, Megan has developed an expertise in solution-driven design for the proposal industry.
On this episode of the RFP Success Show, Ama and Megan join me to discuss the art of telling your story through visuals and describe the purpose graphics serve in a proposal response.
They explain the benefit of developing a design template as part of your content strategy and discuss when it’s okay to use SmartArt or stock visuals—and when it’s not.
Listen in to understand why it’s crucial to involve your designers early in the RFP process and learn how to partner with a visual strategist to plan the text and graphics for your proposal response.
Key Takeaways
The role of a visual strategist and the value they bring to the proposal process
How Megan defines solution-driven design and its role in the RFP world
How graphics demonstrate an understanding of the client’s needs and create cohesion and meaning in an RFP response
Why every graphic in a proposal should have a clear purpose
The benefit of developing a design template as part of your content strategy
When Megan & Ama suggest using SmartArt or stock images
The best online tools for developing your visual language in the proposal process
Examples of graphics Megan & Ama have created that made a big impact
Why it’s crucial to involve your designers early in the RFP process
Why you should plan both the text and graphics for a proposal response
Connect with Ama
Connect with Megan
Resources
RFP Success Show EP102 Transcription
You're listening to the RFP Success Show with eight time author, speaker and CEO of the RFP Success Company, Lisa Rehurek. Tune in each episode to learn what today's capture and RFP teams are doing to increase their win percentages by up to 20, 30 and even 50% and meet the industry trail blazers that are getting it right. Let's get started.
Lisa Rehurek (00:24):
Hello everybody. And welcome to the RFP Success Show. I am your host, Lisa Rehurek, founder and CEO of the RFP Success Company. So I want to introduce you today to my two guests. We are going to be talking all about using visuals to tell your story and these are two visual powerhouses, graphics powerhouses. I'm so excited to have this conversation. The first person is Ama Cobbina. She calls herself a creative strategist, business development professional, director of marketing and founder for MAT, which is a strategic visualization and marketing group. Ama, did I say that... Is it MAT or is it MAT?
Ama Cobbina (01:02):
Either is fine. I usually say MAT, but it's MAT. Oh my God [inaudible 00:01:09] but MAT Is fine.
Lisa Rehurek (01:10):
I love it. Well, welcome to the show. You've been here before so I'm really happy to have you back.
Ama Cobbina (01:14):
Thank you. Thank you.
Lisa Rehurek (01:14):
Wonderful. And then our second guest is Megan Skuller. Megan works as a senior graphic designer conceptor and project lead at a company called 24 Hour Company. We've had 24 Hour Company on before, but not Megan so she's new to us and she also does select freelance assignments. So Megan, welcome. Welcome to the call.
Megan Skuller (01:34):
Thank you.
Lisa Rehurek (01:35):
All right. Now, the reason that I wanted to have both Megan and Ama on is because we process visuals 60,000 times faster than we do text. And when we're responding to RFPs, a lot of times people dial in their graphics. They kind of just throw something in or they throw in like a really heavy, arduous graphic that doesn't tell any sort of a story. And what we want to impart to our listeners today is really some powerful things that you can think about and do, getting a little bit of a glimpse into Megan and Ama's brains of how these graphics can really make a big difference in your responses and tell the story that you're trying to tell via text. So they're going to be amazing and I'm just going to go ahead and jump in and ask the first question. And Ama, I'm going to actually start with you. To set the baseline of this episode, would you tell us really what does a visual strategist do and how does that relate to RFPs?
Ama Cobbina (02:35):
Yeah. That combo of words I pick as a way to push myself to research how I can pinpoint the value that not only my role and responsibility as a graphic designer as part of a proposal team can bring to the entire proposal process and how I can stretch that beyond just sort of the two week to 63-month timeframe. 60 day, three month or six month timeframe for when we are sort of in the trenches and putting together a proposal. So a lot of the times I found myself at the table people are throwing concepts and ideas at me and I have no idea where they came from. And I'm asking questions and people are sort of giving me strange looks like why would that matter? Words in boxes, do it, put it together, make it look pretty. However they want to sort of express the idea.
Ama Cobbina (03:40):
But a lot of times it was just very unsatisfactory for me. So I was looking into visual strategy as a way to conceptualize and bring together ideas that I was exploring about graphic recording, graphic facilitation, sort of generative scribbling or doodling, note taking. Just ways in which people use visuals in their day to day and they don't really realize it. A lot of people talk about the different ways that people learn, visual learners, auditory learners, tactile learners, et cetera, but it's not a direct path, it's not a direct swim lane, right? We all sort of use whatever tool is at hand and it's quickest. And there's nothing as quick as a pen, a pencil, right? Or pen a pencil or a paper.
Ama Cobbina (04:32):
So visual strategy was a way to get people to think more broadly about what they bring to a graphic designer as part of the team and how that graphic designer can add value to the not only the process, the capture and sort of the general production of the proposal, but how we can inform business development altogether by sort of tapping into not just what skillset I have, but what skill set people bring to the table any anyway and that will eventually come down to me so that when I'm sitting at that table in that conversation, I have a set of doodles to look at, I have some interconnected thoughts and 80% of my job is kind done because I am committed to ease.
Lisa Rehurek (05:16):
Love it. Committed to ease.
Ama Cobbina (05:21):
Committed to ease like everybody else. Right? So this, it's very big difference between sitting there and somebody saying okay, I have this idea and I wish you would use this color and that line and da da da. And they're sort of talking through a lot of the things that I would usually do, but there is no why you would choose any of those different elements, there's no how this came about. It's just very nebulous and floating.
Ama Cobbina (05:49):
And the strategy really adds to a way of thinking about how those things are connected. What appeal does it have? What benefit does it have and how does it sort of push the narrative and the story forward? So I wanted to call myself that to break away from the idea that really a graphic designer is just one thing or one other thing you have to do not to disparage other roles like writers and solutionists and things like that, but I really just needed people to think more broadly because text is a visual, text is a graphic, right? They're fonts, they're styling, all of that are thought of. And when we choose it, we choose it for all of those reasons even though those decisions are quicker. So I was hoping to push that.
Lisa Rehurek (06:47):
Yeah. And it's really interesting what you say too because for everybody listening, what's really important is that graphic designers are not just something that come in at the end. It's not just this thing. Right? And Ama, I know this from you, from our prior interview that we did a couple years ago and Megan, of course, I know this from you because we worked together on a couple of big projects is the questions that you guys ask are so powerful that it goes beyond. The questions you ask seem to go so far beyond just like you said, on the color and the shape or whatever, you guys ask great questions around what are you actually trying to say here? What are you trying to achieve? What message are you trying to send? And it is part of the bigger strategy. So Megan, now I'm going to go to you. Your specialty is in solution-driven design. Probably very similar to everything we're talking about, but break that down for us and where does that come into play in the RFP world?
Megan Skuller (07:45):
Design is a process and deciding what the goal of the graphic is is part of that process. And I use the word solution driven because everything is connected in a proposal. And that's part of how we tell the story. So we need to first ask what is the goal of this graphic? And before we even get to this graphic is meant to show the process of X, Y, Z, first and foremost, that graphic is there to help the evaluator. It is guiding the evaluator through the RFP and we have to remember that. We're not creating or ourselves. We have an audience. And it's really important to keep that in mind every time we set up a graphic.
Megan Skuller (08:28):
So first and foremost, this is to help the evaluator. Well, how is it helping the evaluator? What are we telling the evaluator with this graphic? How is it connecting back to my overall solution? How is it telling the story, helping tell the story in the proposal? So these are all the things that we need to think about. So I'd say solution driven because it starts way back with your story boarding. It starts way back before pink team even start to think about what are all of these messages that I need to bring to the forefront in my proposal.
Lisa Rehurek (09:04):
That is so powerful too because what's so funny is sometimes Megan, you'll ask us a question, not even really about the graphic, but you'll say like what does this process even mean to the question that they're asking? Why do you even have this process in here? Right? So the questions again, that it's like this objective viewpoint of one of you coming in and being able to see things from a different perspective and say okay, I'm happy to put a graphic together for this process, but what's the purpose of this process? It's not even the purpose of the graphic. It takes you back even to before that like what's the purpose of the process or what's the purpose of this message to your point? So really, really power powerful stuff. And so when we talk about purpose, let's dive a little bit deeper there. What purpose, and you kind of said it, but I want to ask this question again, what purpose or reason does a graphic have inside the RFP? Is it simply just to get the evaluator's attention? What's the real purpose there. Ama, you want to take that one?
Ama Cobbina (10:06):
Sure. I feel as if, and I don't want to really rank it in a hierarchy because I think that leads us to some traps, but I feel as if one of the purposes that has to be on our radar is really showing and indicating to the evaluator and hopefully to the client and to the customer when they get those evaluations back is a real intimate knowledge about the project and about what they need. Right? So since you mentioned, we perceive graphics much quicker than reading through text because I feel as if in our mind when we read through text, there are things we're looking for. Tone, we're trying to piece together what we read before, what's going to come. So the mind, the brain is doing a lot of work.
Ama Cobbina (11:01):
Versus a graphic when you're looking at it, you look at it for its patterning, you look at it for what's calling your attention and colors and sizes and all of those things sort of direct your eyes. And further into that, your mind just sort of make meaning that way. So the graphics and the visuals are really to support that underlying hey, we know what you want. We know that you have to spend this amount of money and get value from it. And it has to be beneficial to not just yourself, but your end users, to people that are stakeholders on your side. And you have to feel confident in whatever we are bringing to the table. Right?
Ama Cobbina (11:47):
So I think that's one of the big ones. The next one, I feel as if it's cohesion and meaning so that there's not very much left out in the nether about what could be going on in the story. Because then it's like okay, it creates confusion and frustration at the end of the day, even when evaluators have to sort of look at things piecemeal, you want to be able to help them form links as easily as possible. And I think those maybe are the top two that come to mind for me.
Lisa Rehurek (12:25):
Great. What about you, Megan? Anything else to add on that one?
Megan Skuller (12:29):
Yes. And all of that was fantastic and we should keep in mind that visuals are reinforcing our messaging. So throughout the proposal, because they grab our attention, we're able to highlight things that might get missed if it's just buried within the text. I actually see this quite a bit when I review proposals. I go through and I'm like that's important. We need to highlight that. Let's pull that out of the text. Or whoa, there's a little process here within the text and we really need to bring that out and put it in a visual format because now the evaluator's going to understand it. And by the way, what is the purpose of this? Let's tell them why we're even talking about this process. What are we telling them? How does it connect back? So yeah, they're really important. Even a simple call out is a signal to the reader that hey, pay attention to me, this is important.
Lisa Rehurek (13:24):
Is there such thing as too many visuals? How many visuals is too many visuals?
Ama Cobbina (13:30):
I don't think so.
Lisa Rehurek (13:32):
No. Okay.
Ama Cobbina (13:33):
Because I think people think about visuals and they think more about sort of infographics or process charts or charts and all the other stuff that you could build with most AD visualization tool, but your tables are visuals, the fonts you use are visuals, your call out boxes, how you lay out your pages, it's all a field and a pattern that you have to provide the meaning to. Otherwise then yeah, you're just throwing a bunch of things and you're making a collage and you're saying here's our museum of stuff. Make meaning where you can.
Lisa Rehurek (14:16):
Like you have to figure out. We're forcing them to figure it out. [crosstalk 00:14:18] Then that's messy, they won't figure it out.
Ama Cobbina (14:19):
That's messy. Nobody has time for that in sort of an acquisition environment. Right? So you need to make sure that the information that you're providing has that meaning so that it can be to knowledge and then wisdom and have that decision made with your client, customer end user from a place of confidence. Right? And that's the end goal so that when they're spending that money, they know they're spreading it with a good person or with a good group, a good corporation.
Lisa Rehurek (14:56):
I see Megan nodding her head so it seems that they're in agreement there. Anything else to add?
Megan Skuller (15:00):
Absolutely. Yeah. I think as long as there is a purpose or to be there, it should be there. We're not just designing for the sake of design in proposals. Everything that we do has a reason for being.
Lisa Rehurek (15:14):
And so there's also kind of this consistency in the messaging through graphics, right? It's not just like let's put this graphic here and then three pages later, let's put something completely different. It looks different. It feels different. How do you suggest companies work to sure that the consistency of their graphics throughout not just in messaging, but also in visual appeal. Megan, let's go to you for that one.
Megan Skuller (15:43):
So, you want to start with a template. So the template is going to include these colors. These are the colors that I'm going to use. I'm going and to decide what box style I'm going to use and I'm going to use that same style throughout so that each graphic that includes boxes is going to have that similar feel to it. When I create icons for benefits and those benefits are used over and over and over again throughout the proposal, I'm going to use the same icon for each benefit that it represents over and over and over again. Let's say it's low cost. I have an icon that I select to use for low cost. When I talk about it five pages from now, I'm going to use that same icon again for low cost. I'm not going to create a new icon for that.
Megan Skuller (16:33):
Our lines. Our lines should all have the same thickness. You should have maybe have five different lines that you need to use throughout your proposal with specific arrowheads or maybe you have a dotted line to represent a type of communication in your org chart. Are we going to use gradient or are we going to use flat? Are we a little bit more modern or are we a little bit more traditional? These are all things to decide when setting up the template. And then that's your guide. You use that as a guide throughout the proposal whenever you make a graphic. You go back to that guide.
Megan Skuller (17:12):
And then what's really awesome is to take a look at it together and it's like is anything standing out that seems out of place? Because even when you have a template, if you're working with multiple graphic designers, that template might get used a little differently between graphic designers. And so just double checking that we're all on the same page and how we're using our colors, how we are using our lives, how we are using our shading is also good.
Lisa Rehurek (17:41):
Great points. What do you have to follow up with that Ama? Anything else to add to what Megan just said?
Ama Cobbina (17:47):
The template development doesn't have to fall squarely on your designer because inevitably the entire process has to be collaborative. So I believe before a kickoff meeting, you really should have a content strategy meeting. Not necessarily outlining the proposal, but how do you want it to look? How do you want it to feel? What are your points of emphasis? So that you can create that template that has that customer intimacy and it's beyond oh, let's use this blue because I like this blue and fellow colleague, you like this blue. Already it's taking a look at what the kind of collateral your client, customer, end user is using to see what their visual language is, right? It's part of that strategic framework that you're putting together for the proposal.
Ama Cobbina (18:44):
So having your content development strategy meeting, blocking out an hour or two hours. If it's a larger pursuit, give some time and effort to actually developing it and bringing down that intelligence from capture to really sort of understand okay, these are the kind of news fields that these people release, this is how their website looks like, this is what we've used in our marketing and sales strategy beforehand and this is what they responded to. So all of those elements can make it into the templates so that again, the people that are going to be evaluating can see that okay, there is some familiarity that they've done some of the work. And then after that, making sure that you commit to doing an outline so that all those elements of the template make it into the actual story so that when you're storyboarding, those things come with you because you can do all of that prep work at the beginning and it's just like whoa, that was fun. [crosstalk 00:19:53] Kidding. I'm going to leave that there. But it's a living, reading document.
Lisa Rehurek (19:59):
Yeah, it is. And I love what both of you were saying and it reinforces a message that I kind of said at the beginning of the call, but I want to make sure that everybody hears this. It's so important to have your graphics team on from the onset. You've got to have them included in the strategic conversations around your win themes and how you're trying to position this for a couple of reasons, not just because you're going to help really define and design those beautiful graphics. But again, because you ask really important questions that people aren't thinking about and coming out of from a perspective that people generally aren't thinking about until oh, the last week, this is due in three days, it'd be really nice if we had a graphic here. I know I've done that to Megan before. We hope to not do that, but it's really important to bring them in on the front end. So with that, just we're going to take a quick commercial break and we will be right back with more from Megan and Ama.
Speaker 1 (20:55):
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Lisa Rehurek (21:20):
All right everybody. Welcome back to the call. We are here with Megan Skuller from 24 Hour Company and Ama Cobbina MAT and we're talking all about how visuals will impact your RFP response. And I want to really, again, emphasize how important it is to think about this more strategically versus just let's throw in a graphic the last minute. And with that, my next question is I mentioned at the beginning of the call that we process visuals about 60,000 times faster than text, but when we start talking about graphics, a lot of times, companies kind of see it as a secondary nice to have or they'll pop into Word and create some quick smart art graphic or they'll, God forbid, put in clip art. Don't ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever put in clip art. But what would you share with our listeners why some of those kind of basic things are ineffective and what they might be able to do to become more effective with that? Megan, let's start with you.
Megan Skuller (22:28):
Okay. Well, first off, smart art when working up a concept is not a bad thing. That can really help the author, if they're not comfortable creating a sketch or doesn't quite know how to handle what they're trying to do, smart art actually allows a lot of idea at generation. So I don't think it's actually a bad thing.
Lisa Rehurek (22:51):
Very good. I love it.
Megan Skuller (22:55):
And if it is the only thing that you have at your disposal, it's better than nothing. The one thing I would say is make sure if you are the designer, you're not really a designer, but you're the designer for your little document that you need to put together, make sure your graphics are consistent. You're popping in that smart art, there's different fields that you can choose from and different colors you can choose from, it's super exciting, be consistent with your choices. And then think about how the smart art elements that you choose are matching to the message that you're trying to portray. So that would be my guidance for using smart art if you were the one that needs to handle it.
Lisa Rehurek (23:42):
So it sounds Megan like it's just a tool, right? It's just a tool.
Megan Skuller (23:46):
Yeah. Exactly.
Lisa Rehurek (23:46):
And it's all about more about the message and the consistency of the look than it is about the tool necessarily that you're using.
Megan Skuller (23:53):
Exactly. If it helps you get to where you need to go, use it. Why not? For larger proposals when you have designers at your disposal, use that to communicate with your designers. You have an idea that... The Funnel, everybody loves the tunnel. And it should not be used for everything. Everybody loves the funnel. So you know what I'm talking about if you've messed around with smart art. So maybe if this idea where you're like oh, this should be a funnel. Well, that could start a conversation with your designer. I'm thinking about using this funnel for this message. Does that make sense? And maybe the designer is like yeah, sure, a funnel. Yeah, we can work with that. That makes sense. We're eliminating stuff. We're putting stuff in this funnel and it comes down and we're eliminating it throughout, we're figuring out and then here are the steps that we have that go through the funnel. And then at the very end, this is our product.
Megan Skuller (24:50):
Okay, cool. Yeah. That could be done. Or maybe the funnel is not quite right and the designer has other thoughts to give you and can guide you in a different direction. So use it as a conversational starter with designers if you're not sure how to get started with your graphic.
Lisa Rehurek (25:10):
I love that idea so much because sometimes, for me, I'll be in my head and I can picture it in my head and I'm trying to describe it, I'm trying to articulate it, but I can't quite do that. I think it's a great idea to use. Sometimes I try to sketch it, which is also a bad thing because I should never be able to sketch anything. I was not born with that talent so I love the idea of smart art to help with that, And Ama, what else can you contribute to this question?
Ama Cobbina (25:37):
Yeah. No, I totally agree. Smart art, even the dreaded clip art, you can use those to convey those thoughts, right? If you're going to use clip art or smart art or things that are sort of stockish, adjacent or stock image adjacent, I suggest putting it in a Word document, put a field of whatever it is your thoughts are just to see. And if you're going to scale, make sure you hold Shift.
Megan Skuller (26:12):
Oh yes, please.
Lisa Rehurek (26:15):
Oh, you know what? I always forget to do that? Tell our listeners what that is because I always forget to do that and my team makes this too.
Ama Cobbina (26:22):
Yes. If you're working on a Windows, hold Shift. If you're on a Mac, I believe it's, yes, Shift also. Yes. So hold Shift and make sure that you're scaling up proportionally because that's all-
Lisa Rehurek (26:33):
So you're holding? So it's like when you're scaling, instead of just grabbing the corner and scale, you're going to hold Shift to make sure that it scales it the right way and it doesn't skew it.
Ama Cobbina (26:42):
Yes.
Lisa Rehurek (26:42):
It doesn't shrink it or widen it?
Megan Skuller (26:45):
Right.
Ama Cobbina (26:46):
Exactly. For your images, for your clip arts and your smart art. And put the field of it. If you have to, just write it out first, right? And then think about what those words ring up in your mind. It might seem like a little weird to sit there and try to visualize a word, but I promise your brain is working at that level as well. So visualizing the word first before you go out looking for clip art may seem a little strange and counterintuitive, but it'll help you when you're researching it even if you're Googling up stuff or images to add. It'll help you sort of find that one image that will work best. And what you want to do when you're putting it all up in Word or you can use online tools like Mural or Mira, which I think have free use of their boards, if you're trying to see whether you can find that consistency that Megan talked about. Right? You're trying to figure out if you are creating a visual language that makes sense.
Ama Cobbina (28:00):
So that even if you are using those ready made items, it's not feeling like there's not very much thought pot put into it, that you just sort of picked up a bunch of random things. And if you are going to do a screenshot, do a screenshot at a high resolution. Don't use print screen because that will keep you at a 702 DPI, which for printing is just not going to work as well as you think. When you're looking at it on your screen, the screen is formatted for that, right?
Lisa Rehurek (28:37):
With like a clipper. Like my clipper, is that better than screenshot?
Ama Cobbina (28:42):
I think some clippers, you can change the resolution if you look into your settings. Forgetting how to do that offhand, but look for those kinds of tools where you can-
Lisa Rehurek (28:55):
And what were those tools?
Ama Cobbina (28:55):
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Lisa Rehurek (28:57):
And what were those other two tools that you mentioned a couple of minutes ago?
Ama Cobbina (29:01):
So Mira is M-I-R-A. It's an online board, vision board kind of situation, but you can put different images, you can put notes on it, you can add comments, you can put little icons, drop stuff. So it's very useful if you're collaborating and you're just sort of trying to get these visual out there. I've attended a couple conferences where they've even used it to run workshops and work sessions. So very useful. I think the second one was Mural, M-U-R-A-L. And for people that have access to some user experience type software, Figma is a good one as well. Usually use that to design apps, but you can also use it to pull in visuals so that you can lay it all out and see whether you see a pattern, whether you're making connections in your own mind. And you're able to, again, pull away and think more strategically about what it is you're trying to achieve/
Lisa Rehurek (30:10):
Like use the visual tools to help you plan the visual also, right?
Ama Cobbina (30:14):
Yeah. [inaudible 00:30:14] If all that fails, paper and pencil is fantastic.
Lisa Rehurek (30:20):
Unless you sketch like I do, which is horrible. But I also want to say I think I have PTSD from like corporate days of cartoon clip art, right? So it's cartoon clip art that drives me crazy and drop in like a question mark, but it's very cartoony. Don't do that. But to your point, they have gotten much better and icon and those kinds of things you can use stock clip art for so that's pretty funny. All right. So I'd love to hear from both of you, will you share with us a specific visual or graphic in which had a positive impact? Some kind a story you could tell us about something that made a positive impact and Megan, I'm going to go to you first.
Megan Skuller (31:00):
Okay. So as you know, proposals aren't always written the way we would like them to be written and there's a very memorable one where in a scenario, the way it was written, there are three tasks and task three should actually have happened in the middle of task two.
Lisa Rehurek (31:24):
Yes.
Megan Skuller (31:24):
So we had to figure out how to show that visually so that the reader would understand that actually hey, your little task three over here that you need us to do actually happens over here in task two, but we had to keep it in order. So 1, 2, 3. And this was on 11 by 17 so we had thankfully plenty of space. It was also a very complex process. So what I ended up doing is using a broken shape to show that we're splitting the pieces. And then I transferred half of the shape over to the third task and kept in the space where it was supposed to go in the second task and then using an arrow, a mixture of an arrow and a blowout and a little bit more of a shape on the task three to encapsulate that information, I created the visual idea that task three is actually coming from this area in task two. And that client actually still brings up that graphic to this day and that was a few years ago. So I know it made a big impact.
Lisa Rehurek (32:44):
What I love about that so much is that a lot of times people will just throw their hands up and say well, this RFP is all screwed up. We can't respond to this question because it's not in the right order and people get all up in arms. And I love so much because you came up with a solution to kind of redirect them and teach them hey, this actually goes here, but also be responsive, answer the question that they've asked it. So what a great solution to that. I love that. Ama, do you have a story for us?
Ama Cobbina (33:16):
Yes. Mine isn't proposal related, but I think it speaks to the idea that visuals can sort of inform the direction and the path of a project. I'm part of a collective of folks that are history books. We call ourselves black to school. And what we do is we take different topics. Well, I should back up a little. What we do is we talk about the history of black people in a larger contextual framework. So as much as we celebrate sort of Eurocentric and American focus, black leadership, the effect that that has on the diaspora is kind of drowns out everybody else. So we kind of used that kind of known history to bring out and amplify other stories. And the thing that I kept talking about at the beginning was this constellation, right? And I love space science and that much [inaudible 00:34:23] all day, every day.
Lisa Rehurek (34:23):
I wouldn't guess that about you, but I love it.
Ama Cobbina (34:28):
Yes, love it. Love it. But the idea of a constellation and just sort of looking up at the stars is this really weird dissonance that at least happens for me between how insignificantly small we are and how much a part of this massive universe and how our role is just even more important, no matter how significantly small we are. So the visual that I created was just sort of taking these different kinds of constellations and forming sort of our imagined links whether it's for the little dipper, for example, and assigning that to a topic let's say, computing and taking it and pulling out the different stars and calling those stars moments in time from like the [inaudible 00:35:17] that was discovered in Southern Africa that's one of the very first indications of arithmetic going on globally to [inaudible 00:35:29], which I hope I'm saying his name correctly. I apologize if I'm not. He's a Senegalese scientist.
Ama Cobbina (35:35):
And he invented a way of computing that uses heat instead of electron movement. So that invention is allowing us to imagine what it's like to gather data from the sun. So being able to visualize that in a constellation and sort of re-orient yourself when you're studying history, when you're trying to understand even things that are happening around you right now and that relationship between where you are standing on earth and looking up at the sky, that visual sort of brought it all home and I can just send it to you.
Lisa Rehurek (36:14):
Yeah. It's such a big message too, right? And you're able to distill that down using a graphic. And I think that's such a key message here too for our listeners is that you can take a big message and the graphic can help you take that big message that you want to send to the world or to the buyer, right, and distill it down into something that they can immediately look at and feel. That to me is something that we want our graphics is to feel something when we look at that, learn something or feel something. There's an emotion involved a lot of times as well.
Ama Cobbina (36:53):
Yeah. It's important to trace it down to a wisdom, to a grasp of a knowledge or an idea, right? So that when you're making your decisions and you're making your decisions, whether it's in an acquisition environment or with Black to School, for example, within the release of a newsletter, you're sort of inadvertently and intentionally, going back to so thematic focus, right? You're trying to figure out what that message is all the time and asking yourself with every word that you write, every sentence, every narrative, how does this proof something show of benefit highlight a feature?
Lisa Rehurek (37:38):
Beautiful. Beautiful. I love that. Megan, I want to ask you if you... Really, are there any pitfalls or common mistakes that people make when including graphics in RFP? So I'm kind of shifting focus here a little bit, but what is pitfall or something that you're like please stop doing this. What suggestions do you have for our listeners?
Megan Skuller (37:58):
Putting in graphics for the sake of a graphic. There should be a purpose to the graphic. Sometimes I'll see people just put in icons in space because there's empty space. That's okay. Let there be empty space.
Lisa Rehurek (38:13):
Yeah.
Megan Skuller (38:15):
There's nothing wrong with that. We like negative space. It helps us read. So you don't have to fill up every single space just because there's white space. There's no reason to do that. So make sure there's a purpose for the graphic or visual that you're putting in.
Lisa Rehurek (38:34):
That's so good. We've had people tell us before this page just feels too text heavy, put a graphic in there and it's like right, that's not... You can find things to do, but we don't just want to put a graphic in to put a graphic in. That's funny. Ama, what about you?
Ama Cobbina (38:49):
I would say definitely always have a purpose for your graphic and think about it beforehand.
Lisa Rehurek (38:56):
Yeah.
Ama Cobbina (38:56):
Because you don't want your graphic production to become a bottleneck. And unfortunately, that's sort of the undertow, I think, for why people sort of think about graphics as a nice to have or think about graphics at the very end when it's just like wow, there's a lot of texts and you don't want people to read that. And then you're sort of as a designer, you're just like well, this field of text, I don't know what to do with it and you're not giving me a purpose for this graphic so therefore I can't make some decisions.
Ama Cobbina (39:32):
Thinking and involving your designers as early as possible at capture, at solutioning, even in strategic sort of marketing conversations because if you can create that link between your first encounter with a client, with a market, with the industry, then you can create consistency, you can allow there to be exploration because as graphic designers, the room to play and experiment is so vast. Right?
Lisa Rehurek (40:08):
Yeah.
Ama Cobbina (40:08):
And even though these are sort of business driven and depending on your market and your industry, there's a focus look and feel for everything, there's still so much room to play. So if you give your graphic designers that room, they'll be able to really impress you and do something that's compelling that can support your narrative.
Lisa Rehurek (40:34):
I wholeheartedly support both of those. Yes, yes, yes. And from what we see too and we make the mistake too of sometimes not pulling the graphic designer in early enough And it's always a mistake. Right? Because that conversation up front and the strategy of it is so important. All right. So as we wrap up this episode, do either one of you have any last kind of golden nuggets or words of wisdom for our listeners when it comes to graphics in their RFP responses?
Megan Skuller (41:03):
When you are storyboarding, make sure that you are including your messages and graphic concepts. Text and graphics are meant to be a marriage. They should go together. They're not, as Ama said, an afterthought. You want to be thinking about them early on in the process. Even if it's just the authors, be thinking about it. Think about how you are planning your writing, planning your graphics.
Lisa Rehurek (41:30):
Yes. Love it.
Ama Cobbina (41:33):
Think about your designers as the left hand of the proposal manager. If your coordinator is your right hand person and they're out there sort of helping people stay on task, coordinating activities, meeting the layouts and however you choose to use that role, have that graphics person be that mirror to think very visually about everything, to translate your thoughts, your ideas into a doodle, a scribble, something that can start to develop something else. Because as much as we love iterations and reviews and all of that stuff, they are tedious.
Lisa Rehurek (42:15):
Yeah.
Ama Cobbina (42:18):
And proposal fatigue is a thing.
Lisa Rehurek (42:21):
It certainly is.
Ama Cobbina (42:24):
So as much as you can use your graphic designer and utilize them in documenting that process, because as soon as you start documenting something, you start to leave a trail of data and information. And as much as we like to think that that's all stuff that doesn't matter, somebody's going to say something and it'll start to mattering.
Lisa Rehurek (42:52):
And I think too graphic design is not just a task, right?
Ama Cobbina (42:55):
It's not. It's a skillset.
Lisa Rehurek (42:57):
And everything we've been talking about on this call so far should hopefully is resonating with the listeners to say look, this has to be part of the strategy. And I love how you said that to be the left hand to really come in and be a partner and a strategic voice in all of that that's happening. And as I've said a couple of times already, 60,000 times faster, people process visuals. 60,000 times. If you didn't hear it the first time, hear it the fifth time. 60,000 times faster. You can't afford to not take your graphics seriously. So I want to thank both of you, Megan, Ama for being here. Oh, Ama had something else to say, I can see it. Go for it, Ama.
Ama Cobbina (43:39):
Graphics also are not social media posts. So be careful when you want to comprehend a graphic in 10 seconds, 15 seconds, 30 seconds, whatever that metric is because at the end of the day, visuals are not just there to sort of pop out an idea and help you comprehend it. They are part like Megan said, they're a marriage and marriages need attention, right? So you want to pull that attention. You want people to actually stop and look at, digest and even study your graphic. So it's not a social media post, that ten second rule in a proposal context doesn't quite make sense, even though a lot of people think that it should.
Lisa Rehurek (44:27):
And I have also learned that there's a huge difference between somebody that can just technically do the graphic versus people like both of you who are conceptual conceptours. I was going to call it conceptualizers, conceptour is much better, shorter term, but right? You can conceptualize what that graphic is and then the actual physical act of creating graphic is probably the easier part, but you got to have that first part. So not all graphic designers are created equal. You've got to have people that can really understand that conceptualization to bring in the huge power punch and the value that's there.
Lisa Rehurek (45:05):
So thank you both for being here. It's been such a joy to have you and great conversations. I appreciate you. Thanks everybody for listening. As always rate us, subscribe to the podcast, share with your people. We love to have new people join us and we appreciate all of you who continue to tune in. So on behalf of my fabulous guests and myself, I want to thank you for listening to the RFP Success Show.
Speaker 1 (45:30):
This is has been another episode of the RFP Success Show with Lisa Rehurek, eight time author, speaker and CEO of the RFP Success Company. Thank you for joining us. If you have feedback on today's episode, email us at podcast@rfpsuccess.com, no matter your business size or industry. If you have an in-house RFP team or need outside support, the RFP Success Company helps increase RFP win ratios by 10, 20 and even 50%. Learn more at the rfpuccesscompany.com.