Last month I wrote about the
advantage corporations create for
small and medium-sized enterprises
when these larger organisations
exercise an arrogant attitude – as,
unfortunately for them, they so
often do.
This month I’ll give you a window
of insight into how arrogance shows
up in bid documentation tabled by
arrogant B2B enterprises.
It comes down to this: if those
frontline personnel responsible for a
company’s sales think they already
know it all then, in general, they’re
unlikely to listen with the required
intensity to pick up the vital clues
that will help them differentiate
their offering from those of their
competitors. And they’re unlikely
to have developed sufficient
understanding of the client or
customer organisation to feed back
to their bid teams the quality of
information and depth of detail
required to produce a genuinely
client-centric Expression of Interest,
Request for Tender, or other form of
proposal.
So let’s see what the end-product
of a know-it-all approach looks like
in practice. For the purpose, let’s
discuss the most valuable piece of
proposal real estate: the Executive
Summary.
There are three fundamental
flaws that show up consistently in
this all-important front piece. Each
is the product of an insufficient
appreciation of the client or
customer organisation’s bigger
picture, its priorities, its concerns
– and all the other elements
of understanding that would
have resulted from competent
information-gathering and a humble
mindset.
Fundamental Flaw No. 1:
‘We, Our, Us’
Most Executive Summaries I see are
self-focused to some degree – some
to a considerable degree.
I once evaluated a bid, the
Executive Summary of which
featured the seller’s name no less
than 17 times in a short series of
introductory paragraphs.
You might laugh at that, but
a large percentage of Executive
Summaries end up with the seller’s
or service provider’s name (or “we”,
“our” and “us”) at the beginning of
most paragraphs.
Other Executive Summaries start
out talking about the client, but
only as a prelude to a monologue
about their own capabilities and
credentials – often not taking the
time to fully draw out the clientspecific, contract-specific, or projectspecific relevance of these.
Fundamental Flaw No. 2:
A No-WIIFM ‘Win Theme’
Many corporate bid teams wax
on about ‘win themes’. Yet their
‘win themes’ are usually all about
themselves, their product or service,
and what makes them so superior.
And all in the most self-focused,
self-congratulatory, unsubstantiated
manner.
What they fail to recognise is that
the interest a prospective client or
customer has in any service provider
or product supplier, is directly
proportionate to how relevant that
provider or supplier has made itself
to that client or customer – the
“What’s in it for me” factor.
To draw that relevance requires
listening skills. And to be a truly
effective listener requires an open
mind and an attitude of humility.
And so there results an Executive
Summary – and often, in fact, a
whole proposal – that is peppered
with empty ‘brochureware’
statements such as “best in class”,
“world’s best practice”, or “cuttingedge technology”, and precious
little clue as to what value this selfproclaimed grandeur brings to the
client organisation in its specific set
of circumstances.
Fundamental Flaw No. 3:
Fluffing out with filler copy
“We are excited by the opportunity
to embark on this project with XYZ
Corporation, and we look forward
to bringing unparalleled skill and
experience to drive your objectives
forward.”
Or, how to spin 29 words out
of nothing to fill space at the
beginning of an Executive Summary.
Do executives and bid teams
really write this sort of filler material
in all-important pieces like the
Executive Summary? Yes. And, yet
again, they do it because they
haven’t listened to the client, asked
quality questions, and formulated a
bid strategy from a position of true
understanding of that customer’s
world. If, in fact, they have
formulated anything that represents
a genuine bid strategy at all – since
they may have considered such an
activity expedient, given their selfperceived knowledge of the client or
customer.
Such are the very common
weaknesses of large and supposedly
highly skilled corporate bid teams.
And such are the competitive
advantages of the nimble and
more attitudinally flexible SME that
recognises the value of assuming
nothing, taking the time to conduct
quality research, crafting highvalue questions, adopting an
attitude of humility and employing
strong listening skills, then taking
detailed heed of the answers and
using these as the foundation of a
customer-centric bid strategy.
Even if that SME’s offering was no
better in any tangible regard than
its larger competitors’, all else being
equal, its proposal would stand an
excellent chance of hitting enough
hot buttons to pip the bigger guys
at the post.
