Chapter 5 of 20
Now you have identified that tender management involves many improvement projects (Chapter 4), the next step is to organise each project. You will require inputs from people with a wide variety of skills. Some will be on your staff. Some you will need to hire.
The first task is to let it be known to every person involved in any way with tendering that things are about to change. Insist that no-one claims they have already “got it right”. The enemy (which is faults) is lurking everywhere and must be flushed out.
The faults we are looking for stem mostly from poor tools and a lack of skill. They lead to waste, confusion, dissatisfaction, delays, weakness and lost opportunities. And end with lost bids. Let’s look at the skills needed for an improvement programme that will lead to a Best Practice tender bid.
You will need someone who knows how to do research. This person will check your data on your past customers, prospective customers and on your main competitors. He or she will also check what’s in your SWOT analysis.
Someone must know about professional advertising. This person will need to check your display ads in directories, magazines and newspapers. Your letterhead advertises and will influence your customer. So with your vehicles, your website and your catalogue of sales leaflets. Up to 40 times more effective than magazine ads are well written technical sales articles published in magazines. You need someone who knows a lot about such things and how they can be improved.
Someone must check plans
You will need someone to check all stages of your planning process. An essential plan is how you work out whether or not to try for a particular contract. What criteria do you use to rank opportunities in order of importance? Plan badly and you will chase the wrong contracts.
Strategy in tendering is best done by a team. Several heads are better than one. The person charged with improving strategy will need some good tools. Weak tools will lead to mistakes and finding, too late, that you “got it wrong”.
Strategy goes right back to your business plan and your marketing plan. These plans set out your clever moves to deploy your resources in the face of competitors to meet your goals. Someone must know how to check these plans.
The project of improving presentations needs to be managed. Who have you got who can spot ways to organise a better audience and leave them with a better impression?
Tender bids are likely to have a strong technical input. Many bids are lost because the technology was seen to be inferior. The project of better explaining the technology of designing, producing, installing and commissioning requires special skills. Someone must check how well your accountant injects new ideas which make your bids appeal strongly from a financial viewpoint.
Sales and marketing skills are needed not only to improve the way your company presents itself in tenders. Someone must be sensitive also to the customer’s marketing and, if at all possible, devise better ways to show that your offer will enhance the customer’s sales.
Office people need organising to handle their own improvement project. They must look for better ways to draw together data from many sources in a timely fashion. Problems must not occur as they lead to faults. Things must not run late.
You need writing skills
Someone skilled in writing must check the written inputs from all the people who produce them. Poor writing will leave the customer confused and unimpressed.
These days Best Practice tenders contain many charts and diagrams to explain clearly the key parts of the selling message. Gone are the days when only words will do. You need someone to improve the design and production of these “infographics”.
When all the written and infographic sections of your bids come together they need to be edited to a modern consistent style. I’ve seen many a bid that looks like a dog’s breakfast. Someone skilled in editing must get to work.
Your bids may well be vetted by the customer’s CEO. Thus someone should have the tools to enhance your bids from a corporate viewpoint. One of these could be the corporate image plan through which your company works to cultivate the ideal image to appeal to your prime customers. Someone should check how your CEO could improve the culture of passion, energy and enthusiasm needed for your team to achieve Best Practice.
Some bids fall over in the printing department where copies are compiled, collated, put into their covers and despatched. Someone must check for ways to get better quality faster.
The first complete draft of every bid needs to be checked by someone with the right skills and tools to spot problems quickly wherever they occur. The final document also needs checking. It’s your last chance to get it right. Some firms use an outside specialist at this critical stage.
Check other firms
New ideas of value come up every day in the business of tendering. You must somehow keep abreast of what is going on in other firms if you want to be among the best. An outside specialist in tendering can propose worthwhile improvements based on experience from working with many leading companies. This amounts to benchmarking.
The people you organise to manage the improvement projects must work as a team. They must avoid demarcation between departments. As they carry out their investigations and find ways to add value, your company will be well on the road to lasting success.
(c) Tecads
Chapter reprinted from Tom’s book, “Winning More Profitable Tenders” – published 2007.
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