Bidding for business (B2B) often but not always public sector business, is difficult. It always involves risk: financial risk (the cost of the bid); sales risk (what chance do you really have of winning this?); the risk associated with making up the numbers (how do we know that the customer hasn't already made the decision but needs to be seen to be going through this procurement activity?); and the risk associated with the opportunity cost (if we devote company resources to this project, what other projects are there that we might have better spent those resources on?).
As a general rule of thumb, if the first thing you know about a bid or tender document is when it lands on your desk then you should bin it. It's highly likely that it has a competitor's name on it and you'd be wasting your time and resources if you went for it. So, clearly, the ones to go for are the ones that you know about and which you are expecting. Ideally, you'll have had the chance to influence what's in it and, in a perfect world, it's got your name on it.
Even better, you've had the chance to run it through whatever sort of qualification matrix you use and it's already scored more than 70 out of 100. So, however you've arrived at your decision, you've decided to go for it. In a larger organisation you will have appointed a bid manager or director, in a smaller one you'll be responding to it yourself/with your team, etc. All good stuff, but what are the tips and tricks that you can use to improve your chances of winning?
First of all, you need to decide what theme you are going to use. In a large organisation it may well be that you will be collating parts of the response from different parts of your organisation from around the world. In a smaller one, you might have asked the FD to contribute a piece, the Engineering Director to do a chunk, etc., etc.
To reduce the amount of work that you will need to do when it comes to incorporating different parts of the response together you must ensure that everyone understands the theme that you are using. This could be as general as “cost reduction” or as specific as “cost reduction through the use of lower cost manufacturing techniques”. Once you have developed your theme, you should think about the specific language you want to use. You can develop your own glossary or lexicon where you can suggest particular words that you want to use and others that you want to avoid. In this way you find that when everybody submits their own section of the response the amount of work needed to stitch it all together will be much reduced.
The next step is to create two different teams to review the bid. Ideally you will have four or five people in each team and with a specific role (finance, engineering, etc.) but in a very small business you could have a team comprised of one or two people. One team, let's call it the Red Team, is responsible for pitching or selling the bid to the other Black Team. The Black Team's job is to find as many reasons as possible not to buy, to pick as many holes in the bid as possible. These holes, flaws, errors then need to be corrected and the process gone through again until the Black Team feels that it can find no fault with the bid documentation. Then, and only then, is the bid document ready to be sent to the client.
One of the tricks that vendors can utilise is in the accompanying letter. Basically, some ITT's (Invitation to Tender) are written in such a way that they require yes/no answers and little else. This is deliberate and it is meant to exclude you from putting the sort of free form text that you would like to include. Answer? Put it in the accompanying letter. There may be instructions restricting you to the number of characters or pages that you can supply so you need to be creative! In an ideal world, which this isn't, you will know in advance which potential clients are about to issue ITT's or RFI's (Request for Information) or RFP's (Request for Proposal). All public bodies will have a date on which the shutters will come down and their ability to talk to you will cease. Know this date, and complete any discovery activity prior to it.
The Sales Controversy
www.complementary-solutions.com
@SalesControvrsy
As a general rule of thumb, if the first thing you know about a bid or tender document is when it lands on your desk then you should bin it. It's highly likely that it has a competitor's name on it and you'd be wasting your time and resources if you went for it. So, clearly, the ones to go for are the ones that you know about and which you are expecting. Ideally, you'll have had the chance to influence what's in it and, in a perfect world, it's got your name on it.
Even better, you've had the chance to run it through whatever sort of qualification matrix you use and it's already scored more than 70 out of 100. So, however you've arrived at your decision, you've decided to go for it. In a larger organisation you will have appointed a bid manager or director, in a smaller one you'll be responding to it yourself/with your team, etc. All good stuff, but what are the tips and tricks that you can use to improve your chances of winning?
First of all, you need to decide what theme you are going to use. In a large organisation it may well be that you will be collating parts of the response from different parts of your organisation from around the world. In a smaller one, you might have asked the FD to contribute a piece, the Engineering Director to do a chunk, etc., etc.
To reduce the amount of work that you will need to do when it comes to incorporating different parts of the response together you must ensure that everyone understands the theme that you are using. This could be as general as “cost reduction” or as specific as “cost reduction through the use of lower cost manufacturing techniques”. Once you have developed your theme, you should think about the specific language you want to use. You can develop your own glossary or lexicon where you can suggest particular words that you want to use and others that you want to avoid. In this way you find that when everybody submits their own section of the response the amount of work needed to stitch it all together will be much reduced.
The next step is to create two different teams to review the bid. Ideally you will have four or five people in each team and with a specific role (finance, engineering, etc.) but in a very small business you could have a team comprised of one or two people. One team, let's call it the Red Team, is responsible for pitching or selling the bid to the other Black Team. The Black Team's job is to find as many reasons as possible not to buy, to pick as many holes in the bid as possible. These holes, flaws, errors then need to be corrected and the process gone through again until the Black Team feels that it can find no fault with the bid documentation. Then, and only then, is the bid document ready to be sent to the client.
One of the tricks that vendors can utilise is in the accompanying letter. Basically, some ITT's (Invitation to Tender) are written in such a way that they require yes/no answers and little else. This is deliberate and it is meant to exclude you from putting the sort of free form text that you would like to include. Answer? Put it in the accompanying letter. There may be instructions restricting you to the number of characters or pages that you can supply so you need to be creative! In an ideal world, which this isn't, you will know in advance which potential clients are about to issue ITT's or RFI's (Request for Information) or RFP's (Request for Proposal). All public bodies will have a date on which the shutters will come down and their ability to talk to you will cease. Know this date, and complete any discovery activity prior to it.
The Sales Controversy
www.complementary-solutions.com
@SalesControvrsy
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