In Hot Pursuit: Tactics for Winning the Bid

In Hot Pursuit: Tactics for Winning the Bid

For many years, I delivered training that focused on grant and proposal writing for a Canadian college. When developing the curriculum, the particular focus I took was drafting winning proposals for published bid opportunities, primarily in the public sector. I spent years working in the public sector and handled many aspects of the procurement process including drafting RFPs, drafting, and negotiating contracts, and managing vendors. When I left the public sector, I found myself in a position where I was responding to the very bid opportunities I had previously been posting – and was in pursuit of winning the bid on behalf of my organization. Over time, we developed a tried and tested methodology to add to our playbook regarding handling the pursuits process – a process that aligns with the activities of both the buyer and the seller and embeds best-in-class practices and relevant measurements.

So, what’s involved?

There are several recommendations we would make to ensure your pursuit methodology is successful. It all starts with a dedicated, skilled, and focused team: the pre-sales bid manager and bid management team. The pre-sales bid management team is primarily responsible for the story, write-up, and presentation of a formal proposal in a response to a request from a customer (or proposed customer). This team identifies many aspects of the potential opportunity, including:

• An overall understanding of the customer and their market segment or sector,
• A detailed description of the opportunity and related requirements to ensure a clear focus during the pursuit
• An owner of the overall process (for example, a strategic account manager) as well as additional key, internal stakeholders
• Target close date, and
• The capability and capacity to win

The next recommendation that we would make is that you should consider treating your pursuit like a project – and drafting a project plan. Often, timelines are tight, and we are bound by specific deadlines already established by the customer. As a result, it’s never a bad idea to develop a high-level project plan and related timeline to provide some structure to the pursuits team, but to also provide updates and clear communication to your internal stakeholders (as they will surely require status updates!) As well, in most cases the customer will require a notional timeline embedded within the proposal response that provides information related to project initiation and planning, contract negotiation and management, technology deployment, process change and organizational or behavioural change.

Requirements, requirements, requirements.

When delivering the aforementioned course, one thing I couldn’t stress enough was to ensure that the proposal prepared addressed – exactly – the requirements the customer had outlined. In most cases, when a bid document is drafted and shared, it is done so with diligence and specific requirements in mind. To ensure no detail is missed, it’s important to consider all documented requirements and the detailed specifications of the customer. Ensure you respond to every question that is asked, and make sure to tailor your responses – the proposal review team takes note of when responses are generic, or in some cases, auto-generated!

Global firm Ernst & Young (EY) refers to the importance of “driving quality and efficiencies through the creation and implementation of rigorous process and controls” – we translate this to simply ensuring you take the time to review and edit your proposal response. Taking this extra bit of time (that has already been built into your project timeline) will ensure nothing critical is missed and that – also – there are no embarrassing typos or other requirements that have not been adhered to (i.e., in some cases, customers require a specific font size, page numbering scheme or template be filled in). Taking the time to properly edit and refine your response will ensure it is polished and presentation ready. Once ready, hit submit!

After the proposal has been successful (and we hope that it has), now is the time to review and refine your sales playbook to ensure the pursuit methodology you have followed was as seamless and effortless as possible. Once refined and revised, where needed, your team’s process and approach can continue to be scalable, repeatable, and successful.