7 Wily Ways to Win More Tenders
Article on proposals best practice
By Scott Keyser of invitation2tender.com
I spent three years as one of Ernst & Young’s (E&Y) National Proposals Consultants, helping
audit, consulting, tax and training teams to bid for major tenders. During my stint the firm’s
win-rate doubled. I distilled that experience and post-proposal research into seven
principles, which represent best practice and form the skeleton of my workshop. They are
gold dust. I guarantee that if you apply them systematically whenever you tender, you’ll win
more contracts.
Principle 1: Pre-Qualify Every Opportunity.
This is the process for deciding whether or not to respond to a tender opportunity. It’s about
finding the reasons both why you should and should not bid, then weighing them up to
reach a decision.
The benefits of pre-qualifying? A higher win-rate: you go for fewer opportunities, but win
more of them. Better use of limited resources: it’s a rifle-shot, not a scatter-gun. A higher
return on investment (ROI): tendering becomes a more profitable activity as you get a
better return per unit of effort. Lower opportunity cost: by doing fewer tenders you’re less
likely to lose existing clients or miss easier sales opportunities.
Top Tip: don’t confuse this principle with the ‘Pre-Qualification Questionnaire’ or PQQ, which
is the first hurdle you must jump in most public sector tenders (see my ‘Glossary of Tender
Terms’).
Principle 2, Select the Team.
Having decided to bid, choosing the right people is your next vital decision. Our research at
E&Y showed that clients buy the team, not the firm. Your firm’s reputation can get your foot
in the door, but the team you field to the client is what counts.
Use people who can not only deliver the technical and commercial needs of the contract, but
who also do it in a way that suits the client’s style, ethos and culture. There must be
chemistry. The client has to feel they can do business with you.
So, if you’re bidding to a conservative firm of accountants, you probably wouldn’t assemble
a team of wacky extroverts. And if you’re bidding to a creative ad agency, you’ll most likely
want to keep your wall-flower types, well, against the wall.
The best team combines strong professional and personal qualities, such as competence,
confidence, charm, calibre, credibility and communication skills, to name a few.
Finally, answer the client’s critical questions:
Who’s the captain of your team?
Whom will I see most of?
Whom do I go to if things go wrong?
Top Tip: fielding your best team differentiates you from the competition and signals to the
client that you mean to win.
© Scott Keyser 2010
Principle 3: Manage the Process Strategically.
Understand that a tender is not a document, but a competitive influencing campaign. Each
step builds on the previous, progressively influencing the decision-makers who will often
base their decision on marginal differences between the bidders.
This principle is about performing outstandingly from start to finish, through excellent
planning, teamwork and communication. Every contact with the client – no matter how
small – counts and will contribute to their overall assessment of you.
Managing the internal process is also key. Get that right and you’ll go into meetings with
decision-makers prepared and confident, submit a compelling document with time to spare,
and deliver a slick presentation.
This is where your bid manager comes into their own. Responsible for the logistics of the
process, they arrange internal and external meetings and agendas, rehearsals and de-briefs,
produce the bid document and help prepare the team for the ‘beauty parade’. A good bid
manager is worth their weight in gold. Treat them well.
Principle 4: Perform Well in Meetings.
This is how to unlock a winning bid. Meeting the client decision-makers allows you to build
rapport with them, impress them with intelligent comments and questions, uncover their
real needs and the service delivery they want, demonstrate teamwork and differentiate
yourselves from the competition.
Always ask (politely) if you can meet the client before you submit your bid: the worst they
can say is ‘No’. And if they ask ‘Why?’, tell them you want to fully understand the issues
they are looking to solve and how they want them delivered. What’s in it for them? A
stronger proposal and, ultimately, a better service.
If you fail to meet the client and a competitor does (and it goes well), you’re already on the
backfoot. If you don’t meet the client, you can’t influence them. If you can’t influence them,
they won’t vote for you. And if they don’t vote for you, you can’t win.
Tenders are often won or lost at this stage. Neglect it at your peril.
Principle 5: Document a Joint Proposal.
The role of the document is to respond to the ITT (Invitation To Tender), using what you
learnt about the client’s business and needs in the meetings to tailor it to them. So the ITT
and what was agreed in the meetings determine the content of your document.
We call this principle a joint proposal, because ideally it’s developed with the client’s input.
So when they receive it, there are no surprises and they recognise it as their own. Strong
bid documents often act as the blueprint for how the supplier will deliver the contract to the
client.
The better your meetings, the more tailored your document. Not meeting the client means
having to second-guess what they need and want (most ITTs are unclear about this). Your
document will be generic and boring (as most bid documents are). The more generic the
documents, the more the client will use price to shortlist the field.
Your bid document must offer a compelling proposition and be crisp, concise and clear.
Hen’s teeth are more common. Most tender documents use long, complicated sentences in
slab-like paragraphs littered with jargon, buzzwords and management-speak. Big turn-off.
Though there are no pills you can take to cure this writing epidemic, you can come on my
28 February Winner Takes All workshop, where we cover the art of writing bid documents
(see below for more detail).
© Scott Keyser 2010
Principle 6: Present Effectively as a Team.
The ‘beauty parade’ is about delivering a winning presentation that convinces the client to
hire you. You do that by:
-
inspiring them to see you’ll give them something extraordinary and that you are as good
as you say you are
-
bringing the document and your credentials alive with war stories, anecdotes and case
studies
giving the client a feel for what it will be like working with you
demonstrating teamwork
showing them how robust your value proposition is
impressing them with your keenness to work with them
-
The oral presentation (or ‘pitch’) is all about your performance on the day. The client will
use that to judge what it will be like working with you. So you must plan, prepare and
rehearse. Especially the senior people in your team, who either think they don’t need to or
feel exposed doing so in front of their troops. If so, tell them that rehearsing together helps
bond the team – which clients value highly.
Finally, research shows that the Q&A session accounts for 75% of the final decision. That’s
where the client sees you ‘in the raw’, unplugged. So allow 75% of your allotted time for the
Q&A, and only 25% for your presentation. Plan for the most likely questions and prep your
answers to them: not like a script, but so they’re clear in your head. That way you’ll
verbalise them clearly.
Principle 7: Research every Major Proposal.
Win, lose or draw, you need to know how you did.
When we win, we tend to assume we know why. Or we don’t even wonder, as we pop the
champagne. Often we win for completely different reasons than we think. And if we don’t
know why we won or lost, we won’t know what to do more of, less of, or stop doing
altogether next time.
Alongside systematic pre-qualification, doing post-proposal research properly will have the
greatest impact on your win-rate. Finding out what clients wanted from you and what they
got is invaluable. So take it seriously. Don’t let the client get away with a short e-mail
masquerading as feedback. Speak to them, or better still, get someone non-involved with
the bid — like an independent research agency or consultant — to speak to them.
What you want is candid, unadorned, honest, shoot-from-the-hip feedback. That way you
get continuous improvement, where each bid is better than the last.
1400 words
Scott Keyser runs invitation2tender.com, which helps organisations across the board to win many
more private, public and third-sector contracts and grants. Ex-Ernst & Young,
PricewaterhouseCoopers, J Walter Thompson and Saatchi & Saatchi, Scott has distilled his vast
proposals experience into seven simple principles, which guide his training, consulting and coaching
work. Find out more at www.invitation2tender.com, or contact him directly on 020 8671 0457 or at
[email protected].
© Scott Keyser 2010