The bid consultancy approach

When we are engaged to improve our clients’ bid management processes, we look at five fundamental areas of your bid management activity:

1. Your Opportunity Inflow which looks at how you acquire bid and tendering opportunities and then how the Go/No Go decision process is applied. This is where we establish the quality of opportunities you receive and how many of them you are likely to win.

2. How a Win Strategy is discussed, agreed upon and then managed. We will look at your bid kick-off meetings, your project planning and we follow the communication pathways that link all stakeholders in the bid. We will analyse your use of Win Themes and how they are evidenced and applied.

3. Next is an analysis of the skill sets of all stakeholders who hold bid production and content creation accountability, the way in which the needs of the customer are assessed and articulated and how the Bid Value Matrix^© is constructed. A Bid Value Matrix is the key component of your bid and will win it or lose it for you.

4. Your Review Process for each bid or tender you produce. The open and honest way in which you are prepared to rigorously challenge your own bid before it leaves your control is often the difference between a winning bid and a losing bid. We recommend a review which is an objective reality check from an unbiased, customer-based viewpoint. When we look at failed bids, we are often unsurprised to see issues that could have been corrected before the document was submitted.

5. Your Bid Tools are the next thing we look at. This means reviewing your:

• Bid/tender library and content
• Bid/tender project management template
• Bid/tender calendar
• Data capture log and KPI suite
• Software you might be using
• Your bid/tender training programme.

Naturally, there is a great deal to look at and we always recommend our clients take a modular approach. We do not try to fix things that are not broken nor do we take a prescriptive approach. We establish where you want to be and then empower you to get there.

Finally, a well managed business is always mindful of cost. Therefore, we tailor our consulting programme to meet with your individual budget and needs. This is why our modular approach works so well - you have absolute control over the cost of each of our interventions and only proceed when you are satisfied that the objectives have been achieved. However, you will likely recoup our fees many times over if you win just one bid or tender you wouldn't have previously.