Somewhat belatedly, I wanted to quickly blog on the APMP annual conference this year in Denver. This was our first time at the conference and it was really great to have the opportunity to exhibit and meet so many new friends.
The VisibleThread team was 3 strong; Jeff from sales, Evan from marketing and myself. The show provided Proposal Professionals a great opportunity to find out what industry colleagues are up to as well as network. Some quick stats from ourselves:
- Our booth at the show attracted over 80 people, most of whom took time to view a brief (or not so brief) demo. Typical demo scenario in the picture to the right.
- We had about 100 people attend the ‘No Bad Language’ happy hour. That was a lot of fun. Picture below.
- We had 102 surveys completed assessing the state of proposal writing. We will publish the results in the coming weeks, suffice it to say they are very interesting indeed.
As ‘chief demo giver’, I was completely hoarse after day 2. Thanks to Raymond Span for the ‘sage’ infused lozenges, a life saver. Sage, as it turns out, is an excellent cure for throat ailments!
We talked to a lot of folks who were interested in automating the proposal development life-cycle. One takeaway from my own perspective was the very real possibility that automation can shave cycles from mundane tasks and ensure a better response.
As I talked to people a particular challenge I noted was around win themes. How to ensure consistent win theme language & message across response volumes/docs? Interestingly, when we sliced and diced the survey results, this was further re-enforced. One specific question asked about biggest challenges in the life-cycle. Fully 42% of respondents said win themes are the most critical part of a winning bid. Team Collaboration and review was a distant 2nd place at 33%.
Not too surprisingly therefore, the VisibleThread capability that got people most excited was tied between ‘scanning response docs for Bad Language’ and ‘win Theme Validation and Discovery’.
From taking the pulse of attendees, the conference tracks were generally pretty well received. A few a little spotty, but you’ll have that at any show. Overall it was a well organized and run conference. It was a fun week for us and we were thrilled to meet such an excellent group of people and make so many new acquaintances from attendees as well as fellow exhibitors.