Whether you’re ‘in with a chance’ should be your first bidding consideration.
This sentence leapt out at me from
a (non-bid-related) book one night
… and catapulted me into bid
strategy mode.
Why? Because I’ve seen numerous
companies insist on investing huge resources
in a bid they didn’t have a chance of winning.
And most times that bidder knew it.
They knew their pre-sales engagement was
inadequate (or non-existent). They knew
their insider knowledge of the prospect
organisation was insufficient. They weren’t
even sure who they were really up against, or
the competition’s standing with the prospect.
They were aware of many other knowledge
gaps they’d left it too late to address by the
time the expression of interest (EOI)/request
for proposal (RFP)/request for tender (RFT)
was released. And they couldn’t put their
hand on their heart and say they believed
their company could do the best job for the
client organisation.
In my last column, I addressed the need for
transport operators to “de-commoditise”,
and to differentiate, their offering from
the competition.
The reality sometimes, though, is you
either haven’t done the homework in time to
provide the required understanding of the
client’s business to enable you to do that.
Or, maybe, the competition is such that
you quite simply can’t put a differentiated,
and still competitive, offer forward.
With the pricing practices of some of
the larger operators in certain markets,
this latter scenario is, sometimes, an
unfortunate reality. And certainly, if you
haven’t done your background research and
engaged with the relevant client personnel
regularly and meaningfully, you’ll be
firing shots in the dark with regard to
competitive differentiation.
I see these scenarios more often than
I’d wish to. Scenarios in which the
bidding company has quite simply refused
to be realistic.
These keen bidders have
insisted on going through the resourcedraining motions of producing
a submission — only to be demoralised at the
inevitable outcome.
So why does a company make the decision
to enter a contest it has little chance
of winning.
some of the reasons: • To be seen to be “in the game” because
primary competitors are, or are assumed to
be, bidding
• Their inadequate background/pre-sales
research failed to identify a bad fit (that
bad fit being the case for numerous reasons
e.g. presentation, client expectations versus
resource or simply cultural misfit)
• The contract is with a high-profile
organisation that would look impressive
on the bidder’s client list and/or represent
a valuable reference
• “The company needs the business”
• Unrealistic thinking, plain and simple.
Let’s consider each of these “reasons”.
To be “in the game”: If your competitors
have done a better job of their pre-sales
research and relationship-building and —
assuming they can put together a halfway
decent proposal — how will it behove your
cause to have your half-baked bid laid out
beside theirs in front of the evaluation team?
Failure to identify a cultural, resource,
or other form of mis-match: A mis-match
of any real proportions is likely to be
evident in the answers you provide in your
submission (unless you lie, which is definitely
not recommended).
How is that going to make you look?
Aside from that, any management teams
who are seasoned in the evaluation of
submissions don’t like wasting their time
any more than you’re going to, ultimately,
have appreciated squandering your
own resources.
The ‘if we can get this one’ and ‘we
need the business’ syndromes: At any cost?
Does it fit with your overall company/
corporate marketing strategy? Is it genuinely
taking you places?
The higher you fly, the harder you fall. If
a deal’s high-profile enough to “make” you,
imagine how quickly it can break you if you
do win it and you’re not really up for it.
There’s so much downside and very
little upside when you decide to enter
a bidding contest you should have gracefully
declined. Wasted budget, demoralised staff,
compromised corporate image …
One simple piece of advice: Be realistic.
Think of the opportunity cost in other areas
where resources might have been far more
profitably invested, and your corporate image
enhanced rather than compromised.
Think of the comparative ease of those sales
efforts versus the effort of trying to put up
a convin
