rubaqaqish - Articles by Ruba Qaqish

Factors to Consider When Creating a Bid/No Bid Strategy

Tue, 25 Jan 2022 15:18:01 -0600

Saskatchewan companies have improved both the quality of their bid submissions and the way they evaluate requests for proposal (RFPs) over the past 10 years. Businesses in our province are now starting to recognize the importance of having a proposal management process in place. Entrepreneurs are adjusting their systems and ensuring that they and their staff are prepared and have the skills to evaluate and respond to RFPs.

Since preparing a proposal is time-consuming and involves many resources, it is wise to be certain that your company has a good chance of winning before you spend the time and energy.

The best way to be sure is to have a “bid/no bid” strategy that takes into consideration short- and long-term factors, such as your relationship with the client, your company’s ability to deliver, the anticipated risks and profitability, and the project’s alignment with your company’s overall direction and goals.

Here are some of the main questions companies have to ask themselves to come to a decision on whether to bid.

Is the opportunity real?

The first move is to find out if the client is really looking for a solution or ‌supplier. A very good indicator is the existence of an incumbent – and whether the incumbent is doing a good job. The client may just be ensuring they are getting the best value from the incumbent, or they may actually be looking for a replacement. Finding out who the incumbent is clarifies the situation. Another indicator that the opportunity is real is the availability of funding. If it’s not stated in the RFP, it is worth asking what the budget is.

Can we solve the client’s problem?

If you know that your service, solution, or product does not align well with what the client is looking for, and the competition’s does, think twice before going ahead. For example, if the client’s goal is to scale up, and your product meets the client’s current needs but does not offer expansion, it’s probably not a good idea to pursue the opportunity.

Can we deliver on time, within budget, and maintain quality?

After exploring the requirements, conduct a self-assessment and answer these questions honestly:

· Have we completed a similar project of the same size on time and within budget?

· Can we deliver the project successfully?

· Do we have the resources? Do we need to hire more staff?

· Do we need new skills or new equipment?

· Should we team up with another company to meet the requirements? What type of partnership would work? Subcontracting?

· Will having a partner strengthen our position or highlight the gap in our capability? Does the RFP allow teaming up?

What are the anticipated risks? Can we mitigate them?

Risks might include a dependence on material supply from an unstable market or the effect the new project might have on the quality of your service to other clients. It might be a forecast client merger or the capabilities of the tools your company is using. Look into all possible risks and discuss a rough plan for dealing with them.

Are we going to make a profit?

Ask your team to come up with rough estimates of the cost and the price range you can offer – including a profit margin – and benchmark that against the marketplace. If the price range does not seem to be in the winning zone, maybe it’s smart to look for other, more profitable opportunities.

Does the opportunity align with our direction and goals?

If the opportunity is for a service or product that your company is working on growing, then the submission is likely a perfect opportunity to show the client, and your competitors, that your business is now strongly offering this service or ‌product, even if it means minimal profit on this project.

Or, the opportunity might be in a new market that you want to enter, so the decision to bid or not becomes a strategic one, with risks and profitability having minimal influence on the decision.

Do we have enough time and resources to prepare a strong proposal?

The window to prepare and submit a proposal is usually short. Consider the availability of the resources needed to prepare the proposal within the submission timeframe when making the bid decision. Make sure your subject matter experts are available to provide thoughtful input and your proposal team has enough time to put together a responsive proposal.

Companies use different tools to weigh these factors and reach a decision. These tools range from a simple checklist of questions or a decision flowchart, to a scorecard that assigns weights to each question and computes a global score that is compared against a threshold acceptable for bidding. Some companies use e-tools to help with the calculations.

Whom to involve in the bid/no bid decision

It is important to involve both your business development team and your delivery team in the evaluation and the decision. You need the marketing team, with their knowledge of the market and the competition; the sales team, who have the relationship with and insight on the client; subject matter experts with knowledge of the product or solution; project managers, with their knowledge of timelines and availability of resources; the legal department, if it is a new market or if the terms and conditions are complex; and sometimes HR, if additional resources are needed. Consensus is key to successful operations and team work, especially if the bid decision is a strategic one.

If you decide the proposal is a go, all teams involved in preparing the response will have good knowledge of the submission, so the bid/no bid exercise is not a waste of time. And if it is a no go, then they are freed up to concentrate on other opportunities that your company has greater chances of winning.

The bid/no bid evaluation is not a one-time exercise!

Best practices call for bid/no bid evaluation for every opportunity, big or small. Best practices also advise continuously conducting the bid/no bid evaluation throughout the proposal preparation process, not just when the RFP is received.

Revisit your decision if you receive significant changes to the RFP requirements, when you review the designed solution against client requirements, when management arrives at the final pricing, and when the compiled submission undergoes final review. Deciding not to submit a response can be better than the consequences of submitting one that doesn’t meet the RFP’s requirements.

It is also insightful to review bid/no bid decisions and look for trends. The review can be annual or bi-annual depending on the number of opportunities you consider each year. The review will provide answers to questions like these:

· Are we making the right bidding decisions?

· Is there a specific service, product, or market that we are not evaluating properly?

· Are we considering the right factors in the evaluation of a specific market or solution?

· Are we giving the factors the right weight in the overall score?

· Do we need to update our threshold score?

Once you identify the trends, you can adjust the bid/no bid process and update the tool you use. You might even come up with a different tool for each product line or market.

Companies that include a bid/no bid strategy in their proposal management process – meaning they do the exercise for every opportunity – end up winning more. So stop chasing losing opportunities and focus your efforts on those that have bigger chances of winning.

First published by Banda Marketing Inc. in March 2019. Used with permission from Banda Marketing Inc.

7 Tips to Ensure Your Proposal Makes the Short List

Tue, 25 Jan 2022 15:18:01 -0600

The reality is that proposals don’t get read, at least not from beginning to end. What actually happens most of the time is that your proposal is skimmed and scored. To win, aim to help the evaluators award you as many points as possible.

What better to help you do that than advice from evaluators themselves? The tips below on what helps evaluators score your proposal and award you the job came from government departments and from businesses in different industries, from procurement of equipment, to IT services, to consulting services.

1. Read the instructions and follow them to the letter – it shows your respect for the process

Evaluators like compliant proposals that fully meet the requirements and specifications of the RFP. When you follow the instructions, you show your respect for the client and for process.

Make sure your document is well constructed and flows logically. If the RFP asks for a specific format, follow it exactly. Do not change the order of elements and do not rewrite the requirements.

Evaluators see bidders who properly scope and understand the work lose contracts because they don’t follow the RFP criteria. The winners understand the work and follow the RFP.

And yes, evaluators use the search function to find keywords from the RFP that will help them with the scoring. Using as many keywords from the RFP as possible will help the evaluators find the content they are looking for.

2. Never submit an incomplete proposal

You are wasting your time if your response is incomplete. Missing information, incomplete responses, and silence on a requirement means the proposal is noncompliant.

Prepare your content plan early. If you do not have enough time to gather the required documentation or prepare the required sections, it may be better not to bid. Redirect your efforts and resources toward another submission for which you can prepare a complete response.

3. Make information easy to find

It is especially important that mandatory requirements and items weighted in the evaluation criteria be easy to find. Hidden information makes the evaluator’s job difficult. Why not make their job easier?

This might seem obvious, but hard-to-find information is a common pitfall. Make sure your table of contents has correct page numbers, your sections and sub-sections are numbered, and your charts and graphics are labelled and have meaningful captions.

Research has found that it takes customers just seven minutes to decide whether your proposal is a “keep” or a “discard.” During this short time, they register your document’s initial visual appeal and skim it for key content. Make the best of this time by ensuring your submission is pleasing to the eye and easy to skim and follow, and that it’s very easy to find the required content.

4. Be concise, but ensure you provide enough details for the evaluators to score

Avoid boasting, flattery, fluff, and jargon. Evaluators do not want to read through irrelevant information (like your company history or services you provide that are irrelevant to the proposal). Evaluators do like concise proposals that link your solution and pricing to their goals. They like proposals that show how each activity in your services or each feature of your product will help them solve their problem.

Evaluators are put off by waffling and too much talk about how “excellent” you are. They make awards to companies with track records that submit proposals that are concise, simple, informative, and easy to understand.

Evaluators can tell when proposal writers have put more effort into the formatting than into the information in the proposal. Bidders that win do not promise the sky for the lowest price, but instead provide a realistic plan.

5. Ask questions – it shows your appetite for details

Some bidders do not attempt to ask questions and therefore make incorrect assumptions.

Avoid asking for information that is already supplied in the RFP (check before you ask!), but make sure you get the information you need to prepare a strong proposal.

If something is not clear, ask for clarification. If you want to ask for an extension, ask as early as possible and always provide a reasonable explanation for the extra time you need. Put yourself in your customer’s shoes. How would you feel if they changed the deadline at the last minute without giving a good reason?

6. Make your assumptions clear

Evaluators do not like vague assumptions. If your offered product, solution, or price is based on certain assumptions, make sure to clearly state what they are in your technical solution and in your price section. This enables the evaluators to compare your proposal with other proposals (both technically and financially).

If you do not include your assumptions, the evaluators will not know there is a difference between your solution and that of the competition and they will assume that lack of distinction extends to your price. If your price is higher because you are assuming a certain product quality, for example, and you make that clear, the evaluators will examine the competitor’s proposal for that quality. They might ask the competitor to confirm that is included in their price or they may come back to you asking for a price for a different quality standard. What’s important is that you prevent the evaluators from wrongly assuming all offers are the same and encourage them to investigate before making their decision.

7. Substantiate your claims for the outcome of your proposal

Evaluators like proven claims. It is not enough to state you can do the job or deliver the service or that your product will solve the problem. Always include evidence of your capability, capacity, and experience. Evidence includes your previous projects, the experience of your staff, reference letters, testimonials, and awards.

Although most RFPs include a “previous experience,” “references,” or “case studies” section, mention evidence to support your claim every time you state the benefits of your offering: in the cover letter, in the executive summary, while explaining your methodology, and in your technical specifications. This way, you ensure that everyone looking at your proposal sees this evidence, not only those evaluating your “similar experience” section.

Customers are not looking for proposals. They are looking for products and services that solve their problems and satisfy their needs. Evaluating your proposal is the means to that end. Evaluators will not be satisfied if your proposal does not show, clearly and simply, that you meet the requirements or does not offer evidence that buying from you will make their endeavour successful. If you can’t do that, they will not consider your proposal, even if you are the most qualified bidder.

First published by Banda Marketing Inc. in June 2020. Used with permission from Banda Marketing Inc.

The Importance of Knowledge Management in Developing Winning Proposals

Tue, 25 Jan 2022 13:54:00 -0600

How to create a culture of knowledge sharing and the keys to successful adoption.

The goal of knowledge management is to help individuals and organizations improve performance and create value. In the world of proposals it is capturing, standardizing, cataloging, and reapplying proposal content and customer-related knowledge to apply it to the next opportunity.

Knowledge management is often mistakenly thought of as information and data management, but it is different. Generally speaking, knowledge management means getting the best knowledge to the right person at the right time. In business development it is the culture of creating, classifying, sharing, and improving the knowledge a company needs to win business.

This knowledge becomes crucial when you are preparing proposals or negotiation arguments, whether the proposal is unsolicited after a conversation with a client or a response to a request for proposal (RFP). You need to get the information you require before the deadline (i.e., quickly) and you want that information to be accurate and current.

The goal of knowledge management is to help individuals and organizations improve performance and create value. In the world of proposals it can be summarized as capturing, standardizing, cataloging, and reapplying proposal content, best practices, customer-related knowledge, deal-crafting expertise, and lessons learned – efficiently, easily, and appropriately – so that the information can be applied to the next opportunity.

What are the challenges?

Business culture is competitive by nature, both internally and externally, and does not welcome knowledge sharing, let alone knowledge management. So how can a company create a business culture that embraces knowledge management? We first need to look at the main roadblocks that may prevent that from happening:

It can be difficult to determining which pieces of information are knowledge assets that are worth retaining and sharing from the massive volume of information your company has available.
Subject matter experts (SMEs) recognize that their knowledge and skills determine their value to their company. When they share their knowledge, they fear they dilute their value.
Knowledge may be stored in previous proposals, brochures, project reports, and company processes. Finding information is not easy. So everyone ends up protecting the information they have. They store it in individual libraries that are easy for them to navigate and, of course, are accessible only to them.
SMEs are not aware that other team members need the knowledge they have, and those who need it don’t know that the SMEs have it.
Team members don’t know how to share the information they have because there is no process in place designed for that function that clearly and meaningfully defines the standards for, and flow of, knowledge.
Business development teams prefer to receive and learn information in snippets, getting results as they do from a search engine. The closer the presentation of information is to a search engine model, the better it will be received.

Achieving a knowledge management culture

Now that we have identified the challenges, here’s what your company can do to achieve successful knowledge management:

Encourage knowledge sharing, and reward employees who adopt the idea. SMEs will be willing to share their knowledge if you communicate to them the huge value that doing so has for the success of the company. Guarantee them that sharing will not jeopardize their position or value. Start with the influencers and early adopters and the others will follow.
Create a simple process for knowledge sharing, and start simply, perhaps with two or three RFPs that you know have great content. Divide that information into separate knowledge pieces and put them in categories that are easy to find. Update these pieces of information so they are general and not specific to a certain client.
Make sure your knowledge pieces are valuable assets that will improve efficiency and effectiveness.
Store everything in one place and one place only. You do not want to send people to multiple places to look for information – that will frustrate them and they will stop both sharing and using the stored information.
Regardless of the tool you use to share information (content/‌document management systems, workflow systems, planning software, customer relationship management software, etc.), make the structure simple to use, with as few clicks as possible, and communicate the structure clearly.
Agree on a tagging/naming system for information pieces so people can find what they need easily. Indexing and powerful searching are key. You can have a glossary of terms to help with file tagging.
Communicate the process, the tools, and the rewards and keep doing that until it becomes part of your company’s culture.

The key to a successful process: Continuous updates

A knowledge management process will not provide its expected value if it does not provide the most current knowledge. Product and service life cycles are becoming shorter; what you were promoting last year is not what you are providing today. Don’t approach your customers with last year’s information while your competition is providing their latest innovations. In RFP responses, the content of your proposal is what your company is being judged on and it’s what determines whether you make the short list. Your proposal content can have a significant influence on whether you win.

Quarterly (or at least annual) review cycles are a great way of keeping knowledge current. Scheduled reviews ensure content is continuously revisited and updated and stale information is moved out of the way. This keeps the knowledge clear, concise, and easy to find and ensures that only the most current is shared internally and with customers. Be clear about who is responsible for updating what. A divide-and-conquer approach can be very helpful and will make the update process easier and more pleasant for everyone.

Winning while reducing costs

By enabling the capture and reuse of knowledge, knowledge management processes eliminate work duplication, reduce search time and, if information is kept current and ready for repurposing, improve quality. knowledge management processes eliminate work duplication, reduce search time and, if information is kept current and ready for repurposing, improve quality.

Every RFP you respond to has an upfront cost. Ultimately, the goal is to minimize this cost. Asking SMEs to respond to the same questions over and over again or making the proposal team spend time digging through previous RFPs for an answer they’ve used before means you’re losing valuable time and as a result, increasing your costs. Having a knowledge management process will help minimize the cost of responding.

Knowledge management is for everyone

Proposal teams do not operate in isolation. They are part of the bigger business development cycle and their proposal success depends on the knowledge they receive from the other business development teams (sales and marketing) and project teams (the best referral source of repeat business).

While a knowledge management process can start with the proposal team, it can easily extend to other teams. Each team can have access to its own knowledge system and be responsible for keeping it current. This will ensure a company-wide system with a managed overlap of knowledge so everyone can get to the information they need when they need it.

Conclusion

Top management commitment and sponsorship is key for the success of knowledge management adoption. Success will stem from the process and incentives that management communicates to foster a knowledge sharing environment. Emphasize that information sharing makes a better team and a better company and gives you an edge over the competition, leading to winning more business. Reducing cost and improving quality and efficiency are significant by-products.

Start small with a low-cost initiative and promote knowledge repurposing. IT can help deliver and simplify knowledge management, but technology alone will not get people to share what they know. Changing the company culture will.

First published by Banda Marketing Inc. in The Business Advisor magazine in December 2019 edition. Used with permission from Banda Marketing Inc.

Editing Your Proposal: How good is good enough?

Tue, 25 Jan 2022 13:54:00 -0600

Reviewing is one of the most important activities in preparing proposals. The Association of Proposal Management Professionals recommends that you allow 25–50% of your proposal preparation time for reviewing it. Companies with mature proposal preparation efforts allocate over 50% of preparation time to reviews.

But how much should you review? The simple answer is, as much as you can. You should be comfortable saying the proposal is good enough to send to the customer. “Good enough” is relative, of course, and changes from one person to the other. For some, good enough means “perfect” and for others correcting spelling and grammar mistakes is good enough. But proposals are unique documents that need a special type of attention when it comes to reviewing.

A proposal is your sales argument in writing. Similar to any sales argument, the main two goals for a proposal are to

Persuade the reader – the executive reviewing your proposal or the evaluator scoring it – that you are the best company to go with because the chances of their project succeeding and their goals being met are very high if they choose you.
Motivate the reader to make a decision by showing them that by hiring your company they will be able to improve the status quo and make gains. You need to demonstrate that sticking to the status quo or selecting another company will not yield the results they will achieve if they select your company.

Levels of review

You can go through multiple levels of review when editing your proposal. Some are easy and quick to do and others need in-depth reading and updates. Below we explain these levels in order of the ease with which you can accomplish them:

Level 1: Fix spelling, punctuation, and grammar errors and check cross-referencing. Do this at the end, after all other changes have been made.

Level 2: Review all the facts, the content, and the arguments to ensure they are accurate and do not include any errors.

Level 3: Organize your proposal in a clear, logical, and evaluator-friendly way. For example, have the headers, sections, and subsections numbered; make sure they appear in the table of contents; and ensure the table of contents shows the correct page numbers. Ask yourself whether the reader will find what they are looking for when skimming your document.

Level 4: Ensure your writing is client-focused. The proposal is about helping the client and not about your company. Check that you have provided evidence for any claims that you can do the job or provide the services the customer needs.

Level 5: Check that the sections are concise and easy to read and that they clearly state what you want to say. Remove any content that is not related to the proposed services or the product you are selling. There should be no jargon, ambiguities, or possible misrepresentations.

Level 6: Tailor the content to the audience reading it. Consider their background, level of experience, level of involvement, knowledge of the industry, and values, and ensure you have fully met their needs.

Level 7: Make your writing style crisp, interesting, and compelling. Your writing should encourage people to read more and learn more, like reading a novel they can’t put down.

So how good is good enough?

For your proposal to be persuasive and motivate the buyers to make a decision, you should aim at reaching level 6. Level 7 is difficult to achieve without experienced writers, but someone preparing numerous proposals and reviewing them consistently can reach level 6 over time. That will put your proposals in the top 1–2% of the proposals the customer receives.

Remember that the evaluators are human and they have different goals. Your proposal may pass through the hands of executives, who are very busy and want to know the bottom line; the evaluators, who want to ensure you complied with the RFP requirements; and the technical evaluators, who want to know the details of your product or service and how your offering will affect their daily operations.

Everyone looking at your proposal reads your cover letter and executive summary, so you should really pay attention to those and make sure they are well written to resonate with these three audiences. You should include only enough information for the executives to understand your offering and know what and how much they are going to gain from hiring you (e.g., increased revenue, lower cost, reduced risk, increased efficiency), while giving the evaluators what they need to be sure you’ve followed the RFP instructions and providing an overview of what you offer that directs the technical evaluators to the sections where they can find the details they need.

Don’t edit immediately after writing

Always leave your writing to “cool” before you start editing. You need to develop enough detachment from your writing to be able to edit it. You know what you want to say, so when you read your words right after writing them you don’t read what is actually written on the paper.

48 hours is a good cooling off period. If time is short, leave it for at least 24 hours. And if you do not have enough time or can’t completely detach from your writing, have someone else review your proposal. It is very common for sales staff to review proposals written by service delivery staff and vice versa.

Conclusion

To prepare a proposal that motivates a buying decision, tailor the submission to the audience reading it. The majority of the tailoring happens after you’ve compiled your proposal and finalized your sections. Make sure you allocate enough time for thorough reviews. Scheduling these reviews in advance helps ensure they are part of your standard proposal activities so they are not missed or ignored.

First published by Banda Marketing Inc. in The Business Advisor magazine September 2020 edition. Used with permission from Banda Marketing Inc.

Preparing Winning Proposals: The Art of Being Ready

Tue, 25 Jan 2022 13:54:00 -0600

We all strive to acquire new business, which most of the time means putting a proposal together. Preparing proposals is a costly and time-consuming task. The job may be a little more daunting or complex if the proposal is for a big project, it’s in response to a formal request for proposal (RFP) or request for quotation (RFQ), or if the timeline for submission is short.

How can you change your team’s reaction to a new tender, bid, or RFP from “Oh no – another proposal!” to “Yes, let’s do this!”? How can you make sure your team prepares effective proposals that meet the customer’s requirements? How do you ensure the effort is efficient and you are allocating your precious resources to the right opportunity? It all comes down to being ready, to being prepared.

Address these five questions to be “proposal ready”:

1. How do proposals fit in my business development cycle?

We often think of a proposal as the document that presents our services and capabilities. We consider proposal development as an administrative task that can be done from the side of our desks. But a proposal is your sales pitch in writing. It is an important document that moves a project from being an opportunity to being your project. Allocate time to the proposal process.

2. What should I do before starting to write?

When we receive an RFP, we are always tempted to start writing. Preparing a winning proposal involves some pre-writing activities and decisions that start with asking questions like these: Is the opportunity real? Can we do it? Can we win it? Will we make a profit? Exploring these questions will help you make important decisions before starting to write.

3. How can I prepare proposals efficiently?

Having a proposal process is the foundation of achieving efficiency in preparing proposals. A process is only efficient if it is encouraged and followed by all those involved in preparing the submission. Your proposal process will ensure you have the right people involved at the right time, that your efforts are streamlined, and that the quality of your proposal is maintained.

4. How can I adapt to shorter timelines while maintaining quality?

With a proposal process in place your proposal team will understand the main steps in the process and how to tailor them to all opportunities, big and small, with long or short turnarounds.

5. How can I create a powerful and compelling proposal?

The quality of your proposal is one of several factors in your customer’s decision-making process. When the customer evaluates the documents they receive, they narrow their options to identify the most likely winner. A great proposal can put you at the front of the pack. A poor proposal will lose you the deal and potentially damage your reputation. Make sure your proposal is clear, concise, easy to read, easy to evaluate, and persuasive.

We need to start thinking differently about the role of proposals, how to approach and manage the proposal effort, the roles of those involved, and how to prepare a compliant and responsive submission more efficiently. Everyone involved should make that shift in thinking, whether they’re a new or experienced member of the team, contributing content to proposals or reviewing others’ work, or leading the proposal effort.

First published by Banda Marketing Inc. in the Saskatchewan Construction Association "We Build" magazine Summer 2020 edition. Used with permission from Banda Marketing Inc.

Completing the Cycle: Preparing a strong proposal

Tue, 25 Jan 2022 13:54:00 -0600

Proposal development and management is a crucial step of the business development lifecycle that can become uncomplicated and efficient with proper planning.

Imagine receiving a request for proposal (RFP) late Friday afternoon. Although your company has been courting this customer for a few years, this project is a surprise. You will have to be the one pulling together this proposal – key people who understand the nature of the work are busy with other jobs. The deadline is only two weeks away and for several areas of the proposal, you are unsure how your company would tackle the work. You’ll need input from your production manager. You head out onto the shop floor and the process of preparing your proposal begins.

You submit the proposal on time, but a month later receive an email saying your firm was not selected. You were disqualified for not meeting the safety requirements.

What? Your company has decades of experience and has won awards for its safety record. Did the junior employee who pulled the documentation together make a mistake? Did you miss answering a question on the RFP?

Situations like this are common but avoidable. After significant marketing and sales efforts to ensure you are on the bid list, give the proposal process the attention it deserves. A two-week rush does not allow you to put your best foot forward in any submission to clients aimed at acquiring work, whether generic proposals, custom-solution sole-source proposals, qualification submissions, or responses to competitive-bid RFPs. The key is to focus on what you can control. A little preparation has a big influence on your chances of winning the work.

Saskatchewan’s procurement landscape

The way companies buy from each other in Saskatchewan is changing. We still take pride in doing business on a handshake, but governments and publicly traded companies have adopted formal procurement standards requiring detail, clarity, and information that suppliers never used to provide. This approach is filtering down and mid-size companies are also changing how they buy from smaller vendors. The trend is permanent; all companies must adapt.

Ruba Qaqish, a proposal management consultant with Banda Marketing Group in Saskatoon, describes what is unfolding. “The City of Saskatoon, the City of Regina, and the province are streamlining procurement and in some cases centralizing the function. They are listening to industry’s requests for standardization of processes and templates, and are including important considerations like focusing on best value over price.”

Saskatchewan’s entrepreneurial community is quickly adapting to this new reality. “Companies are asking the right questions,” Qaqish explains. “How can we get a proposal out the door more efficiently? How can we make sure we give the client the information they need? When you focus on questions, you are more likely to win the work.”

The uncomplicated approach

Preparation is the key to making a proposal submission easy and effective. Don’t reinvent the wheel – there are proven ways of ensuring you are organized and ready to respond.

Proposal management is an area of expertise in which people coordinate the preparation of proposals, quotes, or other information to potential customers. Qaqish explains the essential benefits proposal management can provide: “Your average time spent per proposal will go down, and your win rate will likely go up.”

Address the following key areas when approaching proposal management.

1) Know your client

Understand your client’s general needs, such as their key initiatives and how they will use your service or product. Identify the priorities of key people involved in planning for, procuring, and using what you sell.

Seeking out information on upcoming work before it needs to be purchased will help you prepare your proposal. In some cases the potential client may ask you for information to help them determine what they require. This involvement doesn’t mean you will get the work, but it influences the client’s process and what they prefer to buy.

2) Know your competitors

Most people think you need to have the lowest price to win a bid. Sometimes you do, but price is almost never the only factor. To understand how your customer perceives the value you offer, you need to know your competitive position, which is how your product’s strengths and weaknesses – including price – relate to competitors’ value. It’s how the potential client perceives you compared with your competitors.

If you know the project budget, it’s relatively easy to follow your regular pricing process and set a price below or at that budget, though you still won’t know how your price compares to the competition’s. The question gets complicated when the client does not disclose the budget.

“Most entrepreneurs are unsure how to collect pricing information,” Qaqish explains. “One tactic is to gather the information published about similar bids and who won them. In public procurement, transparency is critical and clients often issue evaluation results, including scores for each category, prices, and how award decisions were reached. Consider this information when determining your price. Make gathering these details part of your process when closing a proposal, win or lose.”

3) Be ready to respond

Knowing your potential clients and competitors will ensure you have much of the information you need when you prepare a submission. Taking care of a few other core areas that are actually fairly easy to deal with in advance of the RFP being issued will ensure you can work efficiently and effectively to prepare the submission.

“Deciding whether to bid on an opportunity is a crucial step,” says Qaqish. “Is it the right fit for you? Can you deliver what they’re asking for? There are ways to be organized in advance so you can answer those questions. It comes down to the “bid/no-bid” strategy, which entails answering questions and having information at your fingertips.”

If you choose to submit a bid, having a repository of the information you need is crucial to make the process efficient and to focus your time on preparing answers to questions rather than running around trying to find someone who remembers details about similar projects you’ve completed in the past. “Content libraries contain information such as details on past projects, staff who worked on those projects, and testimonials. There are ways to ensure content libraries are relevant to the types of projects you intend to take on, are easily searchable, and are useful to the proposal submission process,” Qaqish explains.

It is also crucial to know in advance who will be on the team that prepares a submission. You need marketing and sales people, people who know the product or service you will be providing, plus people who will write and review the document before submission.

A crucial step toward winning the job

Marketing, personal sales, and proposal management are all crucial phases of the business development cycle. Managing your proposal process calmly and effectively improves your win rate because it means you provide the potential client with relevant, more complete information tailored to what they need to hear.

An organized approach to proposal management has other benefits. Insight on win rates helps you understand where you are competitive and with which clients. And it allows senior staff to focus on managing the business rather than getting bogged down preparing proposals and allows you to present your company’s brand in a consistent, focused manner.

First published by Banda Marketing Inc. in the Business Advisor magazine June 2020 edition. Used with permission from Banda Marketing Inc..