Prominent social commentator of the Victorian era,
John Ruskin, famously observed: “There is hardly
anything in the world that some man cannot make
a little worse and sell a little cheaper, and the people who
consider price only are this man’s lawful prey.”
Ruskin’s words are nowhere more applicable than in the
world of high-value tenders. With rarely an exception, those
organisations that issue market calls with the sole or primary
objective of sparking price competition (and getting a cutthroat deal), inevitably pay the price in some other form.
That’s not news. But it doesn’t apply to all potential
customer organisations . . . and the ones to which it doesn’t
apply are, obviously, the ones smart transport operators
want to be targeting.
The trick is to give those organisations a solid reason –
other than cost – to choose you.
Differentiating in A Highly-Commoditised Space
You know what’s coming, right? You guessed it: The
predictable admonition to differentiate your company and
your offering on something other than price.
That’s all well and good, those readers from the transport
sector (and other highly commoditised industries) will be
thinking, but – when the competition offers exactly what
we do and can do everything we can – exactly how do you
propose we differentiate?
The answer: You think from the client’s head. The point
of self-focus from which the vast majority of bidders come
when responding to an Expression of Interest (EOI) or
Request for Tender (RFT) or Proposal (RFP) renders it hard
to see what’s most meaningful to the client. Sure, it’s usually
- to some degree – articulated in the selection criteria . . . but
these criteria are usually pretty bald and (often, if the client
documentation is template-based) not nearly as contractspecific as they could be.
You have to dig deeper . . . way below surface level.
A Courageous Pursuit
Recently I conducted a series of bid strategy sessions for
a rapidly growing mid-tier organisation in a somewhat
courageous pursuit for a very large mining consortium’s
contract.
After leading the senior management and the appointed
bid team through a comprehensive and in-depth analysis of
the competitive landscape, the surprised and humbled team
made the collective observation that, “We’re not anything
special after all. We don’t do anything more or anything
different than anyone else.”
I assured them they did. They had done something very
different indeed by conducting a series of detailed, in-depth
analyses of their prospective client’s world, of its priorities,
and of their own capabilities in the context of their newfound knowledge.
There’s A Tangible Value to A Client-Focused Bid
That made them immeasurably different. Unlike their
competition which would undoubtedly present the same
old template-style, supplier-centric dross as everyone else,
they would – through a now-deep understanding of their
client – produce a bid that clearly demonstrated a superior
knowledge of that organisation’s operating environment
and challenges. Critically, my client would demonstrate
that it had formulated its service proposal in direct (and
comforting) accordance with these.
A response of that quality offers a value to the procuring
organisation . . . a value in terms of risk minimisation,
frustration avoidance, value maximisation, and general peace
of mind. And all of these, in turn, ultimately have a monetary
value – especially in a long-term service provision contract. ■
For more on how to overcome the “price” mentality (either
yours or the prospective client’s), please see my book,
Think and Win Bids: Winning High-Value, High-Stakes Bids
through Superior Questioning, Listening & Thinking Skills.
www.bidstrategist.com/products/think-and-win-bids
