Key to ensuring quality inputs to a bid strategy effort is, in turn, ensuring the relevance, sensibility and comprehensiveness of notes (and verbal accompaniments) provided by the bidder’s BDs and other customer-facing representatives.
And the key to ensuring this relevance, sensibility and comprehensiveness is for these information-gathering parties to have first done the following:
- Planned their conversation outline and any questions they asked of the client from the perspective of each of the specialists whom will ultimately shape (a) the bid strategy, (b) the proposed offering, and (c) the submission document.
- Reviewed their notations to ensure that any vagaries are corrected with the required clarity, any information holes are filled adequately, and any obvious questions anticipated and answers sought.
Before, during and after all communication opportunities, those in these frontline, client-facing roles must be cognisant that they (and sometimes, they alone) are tasked with ferreting out critical bid-winning insights on behalf of all the various specialist roles in both the bid and delivery teams.
