Winning bids and proposals
Winning bids and proposals
Early customer engagement to create winning bids and proposals - Part 2
The second of two episodes, dealing with some hints and tips to help you get early 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, my name is Jack Wills. And welcome to another episode of creating winning bids and proposals, where you can pick up hints and tips from my close to 40 years experience of writing bids and proposals so that you can use them in your own proposals and win more business. So, this is part two of the two parter relating to using early customer engagement to creating winning proposals. And in the first part, we looked at five principles to get you going on this subject, ranging from the fact that early customer engagement has a positive and informative impact on the development of a proposal through to the basis that you should never rely on the fact that the customer knows who you are, and what you're capable of delivering, and not leaving customer engagement until the ITT or the RFQ is delivered. And believe me, so many out there do that. And then we looked at two last principles about planning customer engagement early and identifying someone to take responsibility for doing that. And the last one was developing that formal process for customer engagement within your own organisation. So though those were the first five principles. Don't forget, as always, there is a fact sheet that you can download. And the fact sheet, of course covers part one and part two of the podcast. So if you've listened to part one, and you haven't downloaded the fact sheet you can do so you can do that via the podcast service. Or if you can't do it there, go to www. willsconsultants.co.uk. and you can download it from there. And now we're going to build on another five. So, without further ado, let's go on to the next area. And that is, use the BD team ruthlessly early on for intelligence gathering. Now, of all the principles that we've been talking about in relation to early customer engagement, I have to say, when you broach this with the business development team, they might not like you getting involved in some of their activities. But, the bottom line is, the business development team, the BD team, does have the best access to the customer in the organisation. Or let's put it this way, they should have the best access to the customer if they're doing their job properly! What I'm suggesting is feeding the customer engagement planning process into all of the business development activity, so that this can inform the engagement plan outputs. In other words, once you've decided how you want to engage with the customer, share it with the BD team and get them on side so that you can feed that intelligence gathering that you want to do into the BD activity generally. Because they've got the best access with the customer, they're the best placed individuals to get this information for you. My belief is that when BD teams go about their business, normally, they should be in a position to record every scrap of information from every contact made into some form of CRM, or some form of documentation process ...doesn't have to be terribly complicated, remember, it can be really quite straightforward in terms of notes. But whatever, whenever somebody has access to the customer, every scrap of information that comes back should be recorded somewhere. And I believe that the BD team is the best placed team to do that. I would also make a point here that don't write off casual contacts that some people in other parts of your organisation might have with the customer. Don't forget, sometimes you're fine, someone will just phone up the company completely out of the blue, and they'll talk to someone who might not necessarily be in the BD team. But, if everybody knows what the capture plan is what the customer engagement plan is, and everyone's well briefed, they can use these opportunities to the best advantage and gain vital scraps of information about individuals and stakeholders within the customer organisation. So, using anyone who has contact with the customer ruthlessly is a really good way to start the whole process of early customer engagement. But, I do say that the starting point should be the BD team and put up with all their protests. Some will see this is an infringement on the way they do day to day business. But, believe me, if you can get them on side, they are the people who will be able to feed you some of this vital information. So, use them ruthlessly in your early engagement with your customers. Number two on our list today is, allocate or be prepared to use funds to develop early engagement. Engaging with customers early will always involve allocation of resources, of course. Now, this won't only include time, but also money. And most organisations will allocate a budget for an opportunity. Convention and anecdotal evidence suggests that up to 80% of that budget will be expended on pre proposal development, customer engagement, ie, talking to engaging with finding out about the customer, before the RFP or the ITT comes out. Hence, this activity doesn't come for free. You'd be surprised, when I talk to people out there about doing early customer engagement, they say, well, it won't cost us anything because, of course, we're only using people in the organisation who are on the salary anyway. Well, okay. Those of you who are more informed that they will know that that isn't true, there are overheads associated with everything we do in an organisation. And this stuff does not come for free. But, it does engender the notion of engaging 'heavy and early' and then 'bidding light', There's a phrase that we use, you'll hear it 'engage heavy, and early, and then bid light'. What that means is spend a lot of time spend a lot of your resources engaging early on in the process with the customer, getting to know the customer, getting to know how the customer ticks. And then when it comes around to putting your proposal document together, you are then effectively bidding 'light'. You know what you're doing, you are spending less time on the actual proposal development because you know more about the customer. So, this suggests that if you spend a greater proportion of time in the process of customer engagement prior to the release of an ITT or an RFP, then the proposal development becomes easier to produce. It's a lot more focused in content, and, therefore, is much more likely to succeed. And let's face it, that's what we're trying to achieve. The next thing to consider is use innovative and interesting ways of keeping your organisation in front of potential customers. Now, I'm often asked, 'How do I keep our organisation in front of potential customers?' In fact, this is one area where you can bring some innovation and originality into your thinking. Now, this podcast and the fact sheet that goes with it can't give you the complete solution to this whole area. But, it may give you some ideas of how you could think 'outside the box' to come up with some innovative ways of achieving engagement. Always remember that any positive engagement with your potential customers, will reap dividends when you are responding to an ITT or an RFP. Some ideas for you to consider are, first of all, traditional white papers. If you're trying to position your organisation as a quote leader in the field, unquote. Then consider writing some papers, or as we call them in the trade white papers, to let your potential customers know about some aspects of your solution. For example, you might have a technical solution or something that you've been researching into some new solution to a known problem in your sector. By producing a series of white papers on the subject, you can let potential customers know that you're 'on the case' so to speak, that you know what the issues are, and that you're taking a lead. This can give you instant credibility with a potential customer and help you develop conduits for further contact with them. Particularly, if you're thinking and working with an independent third party, like an academic institution. In effect, you're positioning yourself as a'leader' or an 'influencer' in the field, an organisation that's worthy of doing business with, potentially. Keep the papers simple, and consider using the STAR method. The S.T.A.R; the situation, task, action, result method of producing them. We'll be looking at some of the areas of producing case studies using the STAR and white papers using the STAR situation later on in the series. Next, have a look at doing things like podcasts and vlogs. Well, obviously, you're listening to a podcast here at the moment. But, this media might be something different that you're used to, but podcasting and video logging, or video blogging; vlogging, as it's often called, is a good way to be different. The white paper production principles can be used in podcasts and vlogs, of course. So, you can actually put together some podcasts and vlogs and put these in front of your customer. How you get it in front of your customers is a whole different issue. But we can talk about that later on. But, the basic thing is, think outside the box and see if you can get some clear methods going. Podcasts are brilliant for 'commute to work' type situations, where a listener will pick up on the topic. That technical solution you've been developing or a discussion with some key figures in the field. Vlogs, a video version of the same sort of thing, can also add credibility, and can also be incredibly valuable as a source of keeping you literally visible to a potential customer. You can make this even more powerful, if you create a series where key contacts subscribe to listen or watch the next in the series. Blogs, of course, are quite a traditional way of doing things, via your website. A web blog, a blog as there more normally known, can be used in a very similar way to the techniques already talked about. But, creating a pithy series of interesting material that you know potential customers might be interested in, will give you credibility and again, open routes for engagement. Blogs are particularly useful in situations where customers already know about you and return to your website to see what you're up to. And additionally, using your website is really useful, where you want to cross refer customers to other techniques such as podcasts, blogs, and downloadable white papers. Of course, public relations should never be forgotten. Never forget the power of a good news story. If your organisation has won an award or taken a lead in some aspect of your sector, or has done something that had a good impact on the environment, or the social fabric of an area, get a story into the press or on social media outlets. PR outcomes can have the additional benefit of being subsequently used as evidence in your proposal development later on in the process. Of course, social media is with us now and a social media strategy is very useful. Using social media posts, particularly on platforms like LinkedIn, are a really excellent way of keeping a presence across your own sector. Additionally, posts are a great way to advertise some of the other techniques mentioned here already. If you have a podcast series, or some aspect of your operation, or potential offerings, advertise it on social media. That said, social media use needs a comprehensive strategy and someone needs to be responsible for managing it. It can't be a secondary activity. Always plan social media postings with other engagement activity that we've already talked about. Events are another way of keeping yourself in front of your customer. When time permits, and of course, the situation changes from that which we find ourselves in at the moment, events can be really useful for allowing your customer to visit you at things like open days, workshops, industry positioning events, and so on. These are really an excellent way of raising your organisation's profile, particularly if you have a narrative that you want to put across to a potential customer. These are especially useful where a customer has engaged with you to seek your views on a subject. An event of some description might be used to galvanise thinking about a sector issue for example.Take care, however, not to turn an event into a hospitality junket. Rightly, potential public sector customers will will not attend these, and such events will backfire on you having the opposite effect of proactive engagement. Next, know what value you can offer a potential customer, so that this can be promoted and tested often. During the engagement activity, it's important to highlight any value that you can offer a potential customer. Become acutely aware of what you have offered or have achieved in the past by rigorously reviewing previous proposals and resulting contracts, to see what value you have given in the past. I would suggest you work up some statistics, case studies, outcome data to show evidence of previous successes and try and extract real value that you gave the customer. Then attempt to extrapolate this value across to the current opportunity. Once you've done this, it will be possible to work up some formal value propositions. These can be both written and graphical. And you can test them, subtly of course, via your BD team with the customer and anyone else who has contact with the customer in formal situations. You'll be able to introduce value propositions into presentations and into conversations, to see how effective they are, and what impact they have. Now, we're going to be dealing with value propositions in a later podcast. And I'm aware that some of you might not know what value propositions are. But don't worry about that for now. It's this whole business of seeing what value you have given to your customer in the past. And we will be dealing with this in a later podcast. Once you know that a value proposition works, you will be able to use it in the future proposal. Revisit these regularly, to ensure that they remain effective for the new opportunity. Use the whole planning process and the planning time to get internal colleagues on side. Now, you should never underestimate the friction that you might get from internal colleagues, when you're developing a customer engagement process. Particularly early on in a potential opportunity. This is particularly so, where there is a formal BD team in place, and then another party is appointed to develop the engagement strategy... causes all sorts of problems, believe me. But, it's something that can be overcome. The point to get across here is that nobody is attempting to undermine anybody in the process, certainly not the BD activity. Rather, customer engagement strategy, if it's done strategically and collectively will significantly enhance the whole process. Additionally, such engagement will always inform any subsequent response to an ITT/RFP accurately and efficiently. This will always place your organisation in a better position to win. And that's something we all want. One last tip here is that whoever develops customer engagement, encourage them to give regular updates to management teams, bid teams and key personnel throughout the engagement. Getting everybody on board with the strategy will really enhance the planning, improve specific inputs to the strategy and generate tangible and advantageous outcomes. And that's what we're all striving to achieve. One last word on early customer engagement. I think the main thing that comes out of all of this is, don't waste your time if your organisation hasn't engaged with a customer prior to being asked to respond to an RFP or an ITT. If you do, you're probably fail and fail badly. Some form of prior customer engagement early in the process, must be the norm, if you want to create winning proposals. There are some excellent hints and tips on customer engagement processes and principles in the Shipley Capture Guide, and I've put some links in the factsheet for that. And also the book Writing business Bids and Proposals for Dummies. There's also a link in the fact sheet for that too. So, there we have 10 tips to help you with this whole business or early customer engagement. It really really really is very important to get this sort of thing right. Remember what I said right at the beginning in part one. So many organisations do not engage with their customers before the ITT or the RFP comes out. And it really is a complete disaster zone, if you don't do it. Don't put up with any resistance internally from people who might turn around and say, this is not a good use of your time. Get a process in place as soon as you can, and start to develop these real engagement policies, where you are strategically looking at ways of positively engaging with your customer early on. You will not be disappointed if you do this. 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.