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Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Choosing Between Prepaid and Postpaid Plans

A shopper looking for reasonable cell phone plans must spend a lot of time and dedicate a lot of effort to ensure that they get the most suitable plan for their lifestyle. There are people who prefer to have plans where they pay their cell phone bills at the end of the month, while others prefer to load the air time on their phones each time they need to make calls. All these plans are available to any interested individual as long as he or she can fulfill the requirements and maintain the plan of their choice. There are people who do not do well when bound by a contract, or their credit history does not allow them to acquire a prepaid phone; then the reasonable option would be to go for a postpaid cell phone plan that does not have too many limitations. Prepaid plans constitute most of the new cell phone plans which are devoid of the many complications of the postpaid plan, which is considered to be more traditional.
The advantage of using a prepaid plan includes freedom from obligations. These plans do not require the user to sign a contract or produce documentation concerning their credit history. Users only pay for the amount of services they actually use, so hidden charges do not come up. In addition, the prepaid phones come with a lot of features that the user can use to complete more than just their communication tasks. Because users purchase their credit on a regular basis, when they do not use their phones their expense is much less.
This plan, however, also comes with its drawbacks. Because users have to fill up credits to use their phone, it can become a challenge when they want to make a call and their credit is limited. Furthermore, if they are in a situation where there are no dealers nearby and they have an emergency, the phones become useless if they do not have enough air time left. Another disadvantage has to deal with the expiration of the credits on the phone, whether or not they have been used. Some companies simply terminate the service until the user fills up on credits and this can be a big inconvenience for people who planned to manage their bills.
Because each plan has its advantages and disadvantages, the wise thing to do is to consider the details of each plan and then decide which best suits your needs.

Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Creating Job Security, Higher Pay, and Developing

Where could you grow from a proposal writer? In this field, there is always a way to command higher pay, be more in demand, and ultimately become a more successful professional with a high success record -whether you are an employee or a consultant.
We got a question from one of our class attendees as to how she could expand into other fields in the proposal profession. Where could she grow from a proposal writer? Truthfully, in this field, there is always a way to command higher pay, be more in demand, and ultimately become a more successful professional with a high success record -whether you are an employee or a consultant. Today’s article is about how to go about it – but it is also relevant to you if you run a team of business developers and proposal professionals because this is how you will develop your “regular” BD capability into a high-functioning machine.



The market is getting more competitive – not only for companies competing for the same work, but also for people who help in business development – from strategy to proposals. Greater competition means prices falling, and proposal work becoming commoditized. Proposal professionals narrowly specialized in one field (for example, proposal coordination, proposal management, or desktop publishing), who have always been in high demand, find themselves in less secure positions, getting smaller raises – and if consulting, seeing more gaps between jobs, and not seeing any opportunity to raise their rates.


The ones who will find themselves in consistently higher demand are those who will venture into adjacent fields to maximize their chances to increase capabilities, and with these capabilities, their pay grade.

There are natural career paths for certain professions:

Proposal manager would expand their demand and value by adding a capability of capture management, and perhaps even orals coaching if your customer set uses orals; technical writing, pricing, desktop publishing, and graphics skills would increase a proposal manager’s versatility and value for an all-in-one type of solution which now comes in handy even in large companies.
Capture manager would add proposal management or on the other end of the spectrum, business development and even business development strategy.
Technical writer should consider proposal coordination and proposal management as a career path if they are comfortable with higher levels of responsibility over the team.
Proposal coordinators could venture into DTP and graphics, or step up and become proposal managers (adding leadership and solution development skills to their repertoire).
For department heads, investing into a more versatile proposal department means several things:

Higher success rate in winning proposals because of a better quality staff – which is definitely worth a relatively small investment into cross-training and rewards for high performers.
Ability to rotate personnel from one role to another on a variety of proposals, preventing team burnout; for example, someone tired from leading a high-paced proposal could play a technical writer or a capture manager role on the next one, getting a much-needed reprieve.
Let us know what you think, and if you have any questions about your career path or how to grow your business development teams in the most efficient way.