Lohfeld Team’s Favorite Business, Proposal, and Design Books

Welcome to Lohfeld Consulting Group’s new blog. We started this blog to share our proposal development and capture management-related tips, hints, and tricks—and to share our thoughts on best practices in proposal development. Check our blog frequently for new postings of interest to folks in the proposal industry—and sign up for our monthly eZine. Our eZine shares even more capture and proposal best practices, hints, tips, and articles (and shares our upcoming training and events calendar).

For our first blog postings, I surveyed our Lohfeld Consulting Group team for their favorite capture, proposal, and design-related books. There were a few – like Mike Parkinson’s Do-It-Yourself Billion Dollar Graphics: 3 Fast and Easy Steps to Turn Your Text and Ideas Into Persuasive Graphics and Mark Amtower’s Selling to the Government-What it takes to compete and win in the world’s largest market – that appeared in many lists. Others were new to me, and I’m looking forward to adding them to my ever-increasing reading list (some made it directly onto my iPad as I prepared this post!)!

My personal favorites include the following – all available on Amazon.com. I’ve noted whether the book is available as hardcopy or Kindle format (for my fellow iPad aficionados!).

I’ll share our Lohfeld team’s favorites in our next post.

Please share your favorites with me. I’ll add your recommendations to our favorites and update the list in future posts.

• The Jelly Effect – How to Make Your Communication Stick (hardcopy and Kindle) by Andy Bounds. Provides “simple, memorable, and costless ways to win more attention and more business” – basically tells how to structure presentations and communications so folks pay attention to your message.
• The Mind Map Book – How to Use Radiant Thinking to Maximize Your Brain’s Untapped Potential (hardcopy) by Tony Buzan. Definitive mind mapping book with practical advice and examples for taking notes, organizing presentations, and writing documents.
• The Back of the Napkin – Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures (hardcopy and Kindle) by Dan Roam. Shows how to conceptualize and present information visually using simple rules and tools (great for non-artists).
• Unfolding the Napkin – The Hands-On Method for Solving Complex Problems with Simple Pictures (hardcopy and Kindle) by Dan Roam. Provides a clear process for analyzing problems, developing solutions, and gaining consensus using pictures.
• Presentation Zen – Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery (2^nd edition) (2nd edition) (hardcopy) by Garr Reynolds. Shows how to “think differently” about presentation design and format – less is more, simple design is better.
• Presentation Zen Design – Simple Design Principles and Techniques to Enhance Your Presentations (hardcopy and Kindle) by Garr Reynolds. Provides design principles for using text, graphs, color, images, and video in presentations.
• Government Marketing Best Practices – Real World Tactics On How To Grow Mindshare To Grab A Bigger Slice Of The World’s Largest Market – “Fortune One” – the U.S. Federal Government (hardcopy) by Mark Amtower. Distills 20 years’ best practices in simple, frank terms – very readable, no-nonsense advice.
• Design Essentials Index (Kit) (Color Index 2, Type Idea Index, Design Basics Index) (hard copy) by Jim Krause. Includes color combos for print and web with RGB and CMYK formulas, helps  conceptualize use of type and has 650 typography examples, and provides fundamentals of design with multiple examples.

by Beth Wingate