Winning bids and proposals
Winning bids and proposals
Early customer engagement to create winning bids and proposals - Part 1
Many organisations seem to think there’s no need to engage with customers prior to putting a successful bid/proposal together. The norm is that those organisations who don’t engage with customers prior to being asked to respond to the RFP/ITT, usually fail and fail badly.
This episode, the first of two parts, deals with some hints and tips to help you get prior customer engagement up and running and how to use that engagement to help you create winning bids and proposals!
Download the full fact sheet for both episodes Part 1 and Part 2 here.
Let me know what other areas you would like me to cover by contacting me at www.willsconsultants.co.uk
Hello there, my name is Jack Wills and welcome to creating winning bids and proposals, where you can pick up hints and tips from my 35 years of writing bids and proposals, so that you can use them in your proposals to win more business. In this episode, we're going to be looking at using early customer engagement to create winning bids and proposals. And I guess the first question that crosses anyone's mind is, well, why bother with early customer engagement when you're putting a bid and proposal together? Well, a lot of organisations I speak to seem to think there's absolutely no need to engage with customers prior to putting in a successful bid and proposal. I guess the reasoning well, certainly the ones I speak to anyway, the reasoning goes on on the lines of well. why not just wait for the ITT or the RFP to come out? After all, the awarding body, the customer will know who you are, otherwise they probably wouldn't have asked you to put a bid in in the first place. And another reason and goes along the lines of well, if it's in the public sector, it's a public sector ITT you're developing a proposal for, you've probably completed some form of PQQ or SQ. So they'll know all about you anyway, weren't they? Well, some of you out there might have been lucky on a few occasions, and you may well have won a competition without some form of prior customer engagement. But industry best practice and experience tells us that this isn't normal at all. In fact, it's far more likely that the winning organisation will have had some form of relationship with the customer for some time, an emotional connection perhaps. Quite simply, the norm is that those organisations who don't engage with customers prior to being asked to respond to an RFP or an ITT, simply fail and fail badly. So, some form of prior customer engagement must be the norm if you stand any chance of raising your game in the bid and proposal world. As usual, there is a fact sheet that goes along with this episode. And you can download that from your podcast provider. Or, if you can't get it from there, go to www. willsconsultants.co.uk. and you can get it from there. And of course, don't forget to subscribe if you don't want to miss out on future episodes of creating winning bids and proposals. Okay, so in this episode, we're going to be looking at some ways in which you can use early customers more engagement to help you create an environment where it's much more likely that you will be able to develop a winning bid and proposal... to help you win that competition. Along the way, we'll give you some hints and tips as we normally do. And we'll look at the general principles behind the whole process of early customer engagement. I decided to break this episode down into part one and part two. So the part two will follow on from this episode that you're listening to now, because there's quite a lot of ground to cover. And actually, this is an incredibly important piece of your bid and proposal life to get right. So we'll cover five principles in this part one episode, and here we go with the first one. And that is that early customer engagement has a positive and informative impact on the development of a proposal. There's still a lot of truth in the old saying that people buy people. And really what that means is that early engagement with the customer, also sometimes known as early positioning, or capture planning, is crucial for many reasons. And here are a couple of ideas that perhaps you should consider. First of all, you can influence a customer's thinking especially when they don't really have an idea about what it is they want. Indeed, if you get this right and the customer relationship is solid, you might even be able to suggest some potential solutions to customers problems or issues that they hadn't yet identified themselves! And when these situations arise, emotionally, that customer will have already decided that you're the organisation they want to work with, even after a formal ITT or RFP process is underway. Indeed, you may be able to help scope the ITT or the RFP contents. And it's always a good thing to see that if an RFP or an ITT comes out, and there's language in it that you recognise. This will give you a surefire indicator that they are listening to you as a potential partner, I guess allied to this is that you can develop a very strong feel for what's keeping customers awake at night. Now, you know, in the industry, this is called hot buttons. You'll hear colleagues describe this all the time. These are the things that really matter to customers and sometimes they have an emotional content. You'll start to appreciate what's really important to the customer very early on in the business development cycle. Again, if this relationship with the customer is right, they'll be much more likely to confide in you and share details of any of their concerns and that knowledge can help you enormously to shape the thinking and logic in your proposal. I tend to think of some of these things coming from carpark conversations. Those of you who've been on training courses with me before will know that I use that phrase quite a lot. Those are the sort of conversations that you get from a customer. Once you've had a formal presentation from them about a particular opportunity, and they're walking you back to the car, and you say to them,'Well, hi, Jack, good to talk to you anyway, today, really good. How's it going?' 'Oh, well, it's not going that well. If I don't get the meantime between failures of these pumps down by at least 10% in the next six months, then my job's at risk. Well, there's a hot button. It's got an emotional quality to it. It's something that you can use in your proposal. And lastly, I suppose, in this section is about forming a bond with the customer. Forming a bond with them increases the emotional decision making process during evaluation, if they have been working with you for some time, and they get to know and trust you and they know they can confide in you. And this isn't always easy, believe me in the public sector. I know that, but certainly in commercial environments it is. But you've got to be....you've got to be imaginative in the way that you try and get across to people. But if you can form that bond, suddenly it becomes a competition for you to lose rather than you having to win it. So, early engagement has a positive and informative impact on your proposals. And naturally, all of this activity and the sentiment behind it can feed across into the proposal development, and it will influence the approach on how you deal with key aspects within the document. For example, when answering questions in the proposal, you can take every opportunity to underpin and reinforce, not only how your solution will meet the customer's requirements, but also how you can mollify any concerns, worries or issues that they might have. This is really powerful, if you get it right. Now, my colleagues at Shipley run a really excellent capture planning course. And I can recommend that to you. The whole business of capture planning early on is something that they do deal a lot with. And I have to say, I've put a link in the factsheet for you to look at that and consider it in more detail. So let's go on to the second principle. Never rely on the fact that the customer knows who you are and what you're capable of delivering. Now, it's very, very rare for a customer to know everything about you. Take it from me. Even if you're a household name, you'd be surprised how much they do not know about you. You may think think they know all about you because they've asked you to bid? Well, the message here is, don't assume that the customer knows anything about you at all. Now, there are several things that you might consider here. Your organisation may be highly innovative and could have developed a new offer or solution to a need or a requirement. But does a potential customer know this? Have they heard about it? Do they know anything about it at all? Do they know your track record in other contract deliveries? Are they aware of any initiative that you might be taking a lead in, for example, you might be taking a lead in environmental or social impact initiatives. Do they know about that? Are they aware of where you are positioned in the sector when compared with your known competitors? And I guess are they aware of any awards and things that you may have won? Now this list I've given you there isn't exhaustive. But this could be a good point to base an analysis on where you think you stand with a customer, and what is their perception of you. You will need to lean on the business development team... and believe me, sometimes they don't like that. But you'll need to lean on them to help you with this process. After all, they should be the people who have contact with the customer. And they're much more likely to be able to give you some feedback on where you stand on these things. So never ever, ever assume that the customer knows about you, who you are, and what you're capable of delivering. It's a mistake that a lot of people make, believe me. We'll be dealing with this in a lot more detail in part two of this episode where we look at innovative ways of keeping your organisation in front of potential customers. But you can see where this is leading. It's a general principle of getting your face in front of the customer early on so that they get to know all about you. They trust you, they confide in you, and you start to create that emotional bond with them. So that's the second principle. The third principle is, and we alluded to it right at the start of the episode is don't leave customer engagement until the RFP or the ITT is actually put out. If you do that, it's going to be too late. The main reason is that, in many instances, an ITT or an RFP is sent out with a potential winner in mind. Now, you might not believe me when I say that, but it's true. Someone who is putting together a business need in an organisation who has had contact with someone before, who's potentially going to supply them, just as we talked about in that first principle, if they've formed an emotional bond with them, then it's much more likely that they will have in the back of their mind an idea of who they are. are going to use to provide the solution. One of your competitors will, without doubt, have been assisting the purchasing organisation with the scoping of the ITT and the RFP in the early stages. So, why not let that organisation be you in that sort of situation? If someone has been there before you, you're going to be in second place right from the word go. Moreover, you're always going to be on the backfoot throughout the proposal development process, and none of the emotional aspects of customer engagement activity is going to feed into the proposal. Yes, you may be able to meet the requirements exactly. But you'll never be able to demonstrate that you have understood what's really important to the customer. Additionally, you can't influence anything with the customer at all at this late stage. Chances are, you're only being asked to submit the proposal to create the competition... to be what we term affectionately in the trade as bid fodder! Lastly, you'll waste loads of resources, including cash and time, chasing an opportunity that you don't have much chance of winning. So, leaving customer engagement this late in the process, at the point when an ITT or an RFP comes out is a complete recipe for disaster. A key message to leave you with here is that if you haven't had any customer engagement before an ITT or an RFP arrives, actively consider a no bid. Now I get called into organisations, often at a very late stage, to help them out. And the first thing I always ask is, have you had any customer engagement prior to the point when the ITT or the RFP came out? If the answer is no, I still, even at this late stage, say to them, do you think you've got an opportunity of winning? Do you believe you're going to win this? Have you considered a no bid on this? It doesn't make me very popular. But believe me, I've saved customers a lot of money and time and effort by getting them to come out at this late stage if they haven't had any previous customer engagement. So, I guess now is the right time to start talking about developing a formal process for customer engagement that everyone can follow. On to the next principle. Well, before we go on to look at developing a formal process for customer engagement that everyone can follow in your own organisation, I guess we really ought to answer a question that's closer to home for a lot of you. And that is, accepting that customer engagement is crucial, and that it should happen very early in the process. The next question might be, who should take responsibility to control the process? Should it be a business development person? Should it be the bid manage? Or should it be some other appointed person? Well, the straight answer to this is that it doesn't really matter who takes control, so long as there is a process and the customer engagement plan can be developed. More about customer engagement plans. later on. Some organisations will have proper Capture or Engagement Manager roles. Others will have completely ad hoc arrangements, where someone will dual role. And I have to say, in all the organisations I go into, the latter is probably true. It will be someone who dual roles and takes responsibility for early customer engagement during a process. However, once someone has been identified, a clear process does need to be put in place, detailing how customer engagement will be planned and implemented. It's essential that the designated person has the delegated powers to make decisions on how to proceed with engagement. Otherwise, it just won't work. So let's go on to look at developing a formal process for customer engagement that everyone can follow. A lot of organisations I go to out there don't have formal customer engagement processes in place. So, for those of you out there without any customer engagement process in place within your own organisation, now is a good time to develop one. Don't worry, it doesn't have to be complicated. Now, some of you might have what you consider to be engagement via normal sales activity, but ask yourself, Is this proactive? Is it aimed at really targeting people within your customer's organisation? If it's not, then this process needs reviewing. So, what we're talking about here is a highly specific and highly proactive process that you in your own organisation need to take, so that you are in the driving seat and not somebody else. Let's have a look at some of the principles for developing a good customer engagement process. The first one relates to involving your colleagues in developing the process in the first place, identify people in your own organisation who could have an input to the process and get them to come forward with some ideas. If they are part of the development process, they're more likely to follow it. What is it you want to achieve from the customer engagement process? You'll be surprised that when you sit down to talk about these things, that some of your colleagues will come up with some really good ideas. Next, have a process for scanning the horizon early to identify new opportunities. Now, I've got to tell you that your BD colleagues won't necessarily like this. They get quite fractious when you start talking about new opportunities and looking for early opportunities over the horizon. But you know, that really is what it's all about. We're not talking about just waiting in a reactive sense to something coming over the horizon. What we are looking at, is looking at something that's really proactive. Having a strategy for identifying new opportunities and then putting together detailed engagement plans for each of them. Have a decision making process within the overall process for a point at which you decide to pursue something. And that will then kickstart more detailed engagement planning. So, I would suggest to aim at keeping a list of about six opportunities going at once and make detailed engagement plans for each of them. Get everybody to think about those six opportunities and contribute to ways in which you can further engage with the customer to find out more information about them. If you do that and you keep those going, these activities will kick start much more detailed engagement planning further on down the line. Next, develop a process where you can document everything. Now, some in your organisation will want to use a piece of software for this... a customer relation management piece of software, a CRM software programme, but you know that isn't actually essential. The point is, you want some system of where you can create a record of what contact you have had with a potential customer, and what the outcomes were so that you can then potentially shape other contact later on. Scraps of detail individually won't seem important at all, but collectively, when they're all reviewed together by the person dealing with customer engagement, it all adds up to something really quite powerful. This is how you start to build up the more emotional aspects of a customer and their organisation. Next, you need to develop some form of engagement plan template around areas, such as a contact matrix of a customer's organisation. You need to know what the customer's organisation is all about. What the decision making process is. Who are the influencers? Who are the people that you can engage with, to make a difference further on down the line? Now, details of individuals and where and how these fit into the decision making and influencing activity are quite important. And you do need a record of those. Show details of what you want to find out by whom and by when. Include in this sort of plan a process that allocates people to tasks and have a process for monitoring progress. One of the most successful ways I've seen people doing this is they have six or seven opportunities like this, they have a planning matrix, a contact matrix for each of those opportunities, and they get people to engage and find out information and so on and so forth. They record it, and then what they do is they have a weekly meeting just to see where and how things are going. Those of you with the CRM programme in place, of course, you'll think all this paper based stuff is all a bit old hat. But you know, the principles are exactly the same. I guess one other thing I haven't mentioned in this particular part of the episode so far, is that don't forget, of course, is sometimes people can fall sick, they can lead the company and so on and so forth. And the great thing about recording everything in this way, either on a CRM programme or indeed your own paper based system, relating to customer engagement means that if somebody has to pick up this short notice, they can look at the records and see exactly where we are. Now within the process also, you need to have a distinct area where you can identify things that are important to the customers. You know, we talked about these being called hot buttons earlier on. And sometimes you also need to, once you've got these hot buttons, need to sit down and think about the competitors. You need to do a competitor analysis. So, treat this part of the engagement process very seriously. And consider using colleagues as part of your competitor analysis to assume the role of a competitor and use them to sort of wargame possible competitor actions within the opportunity. And I would recommend putting in place a process to complete tools, such as the bidders' comparison matrix or any equivalent out there that you can find. We'll be talking about bidders' comparison matrices and other tools in other podcasts coming later in the series. But some of you will already have had access to booklets like the APMP guides or Shipley Proposal Guides. I put a couple of links in the factsheet for you to follow up. But anyway, we'll be looking at those later. Last of all, I think it's very important to keep a customer engagement Process under review. And you must always seek to improve it. So don't be frightened if people turn around and say, Well, this isn't all working properly. You're not going to get it right first time. And indeed, actually, sometimes with these opportunities you need to modify your approach and the way you do things,. This will be particularly so when you're in things like the private sector versus the public sector. In the public sector, of course, there is a difference about how you approach things and you have to be very careful that you follow detailed procurement rules. So those were the first five general principles behind the business of using early customer eng agement to create winning proposals. Now in the next episode, part two of this, we're going to be looking at innovative ways that we can use the BD team, allocating funds, recording information, using innovative ways of keeping your organisation in front of potential customers, knowing what value can offer, and using planning time to get internal colleagues on the side. I'm Jack Wills. And thank you very much for listening. Don't forget to subscribe, if you don't want to miss future episodes of this podcast. Remember, there are some notes attached to this podcast, as well as a fact sheet that you can download. You can always get back to me via www.willsconsultants co.uk. Or you can leave any comments in the usual way. You can also reach me on LinkedIn at any time and I'd be happy to get back to you. Thanks again for listening and I do hope you'll join me for the next episode of creating winning bids and proposals!