A company’s most precious proposal resources are their technical or subject matter staff. Their morale and attitude toward the company is critical to contact performance and producing winning proposals. Don’t waste this resource by writing losing proposals.
Sales people want to bid everything. Executives new to the federal market want to bid more than they should. Experienced Proposal Managers want to write only winners based on customer relationships. The Bid/No decision is critical to success. Poor Bid/No Bid decisions will drain your company of its expensive, precious proposal resources and you will end up in a downward, losing spiral. Losing proposals produce staff burnout; you can only ask them to miss their child’s soccer game only so many times. Not to mention the loss of billable hours.
The Earlier the Better
Many proposal experts portray the bid/no bid decision as being made at a point in time just before or concurrent with issuance of the RFP.
In practice, the decision is usually made much earlier in the sales process, often is the first several weeks of opportunity identification. At the latest, make the decision within three days of RFP publication. postponing the decision puts everyone in limbo and wastes valuable resources.
The more aggressive your front end sales efforts are the more likely that the bid/ no bid decision will become obvious early in the process.
Most managers and senior sales people develop a feel for win probability as intelligence is gathered. The questionnaire serves as a consistent way of documenting sales intelligence. In other words, they apply their experience, instincts, and “street smarts” as they go along and make tentative bidding decisions early in the process.
In fact, the decision should probably be “no bid” if you haven’t made it by time the RFP is issued.
The intelligence shown in the Sales Intelligence Questionnaire and associated Selling Points is the key.
Sales intelligence and selling points are developed for customer relationships and they will be weak if the customer relationship is weak.
Bid/No Bid Guidelines
No bid if:
- Customer relationships are nonexistent or weak.
- There is an incumbent and you do not know if the customer wants them back or not.
- You know the customer prefers another company.
- You do not have a solution to the customer’s problem, not the one in the RFP but the real one.
- You have any doubts about your chances of success.
Lean toward a no bid if:
- You customer relationships are solid but you know they are talking with others and you are not sure what they think of your company or the competition?
- You do not know who wrote the RFP and who is on the evaluation committee. These are strong signs for a no bid.
- You are unsure of or fear a competitor.
- You think the sales staff may not be as tight with the customer as they say.
- You have any doubts about your chances of success.
- You know that others have been selling aggressively and there are players that are larger than your company.
- Too much outside recruiting is required.
- It is a stretch financially or strategically, stretching yourself in any way should point to a no bid.
Bid if:
- Our customer relationships are strong.
- You know the customers hot buttons and we have the solution they want.
- There is an incumbent contractor, you know the end user does not want them back, and you have a relationship with the customer.
- You can significantly lessen their fears (avert their risks).
- You think that the customer wants your company.
- You think the customer is open to selecting your company.
- You have enough support to swing the evaluation with an excellent proposal.
Summary
Often too much is made of the bid/no bid decision. The single most important questions are: do we know the customer, their problem, and have we sold them that we have the needed solution. No bid if you cannot answer affirmatively. Don’t fool yourself; ask:
- Do we know the real story? (Remember, there is always a story.)
- Are they telling you what you want to hear?
- Who may be lurking; usually one or more vendors are pre-selling along with you.
An article by Jay Herther in the Spring/Summer 2006 Issue of the Journal of the Association of Proposal Management Professionals says it all (APMP.org). The Summary from Jay’s article follows:
“If you use the concepts and tools in this article, you can avoid a dreaded customer debriefing quote, “sure, I’ll tell you why you lost, if you tell me why you bid!”
To summarize some of the key bid/no principles in this article:
- Avoid blind bids! Have you positioned to win and addressed the customer’s hopes, fears, and biases? Beveridge, J.M., and Edward J. Velton. Positioning to Win – Planning & Executing the Superior Proposal. Radnor, PA: Hilton Book Company 1982.
- Bidding losers wastes resources and demoralizes the team.
- By definition, you can’t focus on everything! Focus your energy and critical resources on qualified and winnable opportunities.”
Other powerful advise from the Herther article:
“Instead of getting enticed into bidding a real long shot, the organization is better served by positioning to win the next opportunity. Go meet with the next customer. Go influence the spec ahead of the RFP release. Go put together a demo to show the customer/evaluators. Get prepared for the next one. Start a blitz of future visits to customers who will be releasing an RFP. Get ahead of the next opportunity.”
