Issue 14 - Good Practice v Best Practice

What does good practice or best practice mean to you? This was the question I posed to the BQ panel of global experts and guest writers for this issue. It’s a question I have grappled with for many years and yet, having read the 19 brilliant contributions that make up BQ14, I’m left with more unanswered questions than the one I started with.

When you think of best practice, do you think of a tried and tested process? Is it a set of standards everyone in your business or profession adheres to? Is it a system, a set of guidelines, or maybe the application of specific skills? Perhaps it is an external benchmark such as the Shipley Guide or the APMP Body of Knowledge? Is best practice something you observe, aspire to, or envy in your competition? Our authors raise (and answer) these questions, and many more.

If I can encourage you to read any BQ edition from cover to cover, this is the one.

Jon Darby makes a strong case for why the British Standard being funded and developed by APMP UK will positively change the bidding landscape. The standard may eventually be adopted globally – will this become your ultimate standard and best practice?

Rick Harris talks passionately in his article about the importance of research in the process of developing standards and best practice.

Nigel Dennis’s brilliant article introduces ‘Maximum Possible Product’ as one form of best practice and emphasises how the right behaviours must be front and centre of any approach.

Holger Garden talks about the essential ingredients for creating an ‘impact’ with your proposal writing, something our BQ procurement specialist Beth Wallace confirms is often the differentiator when selecting the winning bid. Beth’s own article explains that best practice can be as simple as saying no, and why she respects organisations more for not wasting her time.

Even international dictionaries don’t agree on an official definition of best practice. Rita Mascia introduces her concept of ‘next practice’ – turning the status quo on its head.

One common theme running through this edition is the level of constraint people feel standards and best practice impose on them. Some feel almost suffocated by them and believe they are the nemesis of creative thinking. Pippa Birch’s fantastic article talks about the challenges of adopting ‘accepted’ best practice in smaller companies with limited resources and how you can be successful by actively escaping its shackles.

Many successful salespeople I’ve worked with don’t follow a specific standard, process, or set of guidelines. The best I’ve worked with often struggle to update their pipeline on Salesforce. So is best practice about adapting to our clients’ needs and ultimately solving their problems? Will having a set of best practices and standards in bidding endear us to our sales colleagues (our most important customer in my opinion) or ultimately just create more of a ‘them’ and ‘us’ culture? Joe Riley’s article highlights the importance of ‘strategic capture’ as part of the bidding process.

Best practice typically requires everyone involved to perform at a 100% – any weak link or overworked person will dilute the outcome. Carl Dickson superbly points out how ‘proposal friction’ will result if the team doesn’t share the same goals or priorities regardless of process or standards. This is echoed by Chris Kaelin who emphasises the importance of assigned roles within every team.

Perhaps your organisation (and maybe even you) only ever follows ‘good practice’? Why expend extra effort when good is good enough? Jon Williams talks about the evolution of our profession, how we have reached ‘Bids 2.0’, but also about how our journey is far from done.

The secondary theme of this issue is “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly”. I ask every new client for an example of ‘The Good’ – a proposal they are really proud of and which showcases their approach to winning business. Then I ask for an example of ‘The ‘Bad’ – a proposal that was so poor it should never have left the building. Finally I ask for an example of ‘The Ugly’ – proposals which, in my experience, make up the largest share of an organisation’s responses. They are frequently the last-minute ones where something, anything, has to be submitted to the client. I know all of you will have experience of working on good, bad, and ugly deals, as related in articles by Alison Zalecki, Nora Navin and Mike Reader.

With finite bid team resources, it’s impossible to apply best practice to every deal. How do you decide which deals receive the best practice approach, versus those where perhaps ‘good practice’ is good enough? Hence, when do you roll the dice? The ‘when’ could easily be substituted with ‘how’ or ‘if’, and of course there is a big question about ‘who’ has responsibility for rolling them. Andy Haigh and Anna Maysey-Wells address these questions in their articles.

Standards and best practice feel like an obsession across our profession right now. The exponential growth of our profession in the past five years is testament to the strategic importance companies now place on bid and proposal management. Ceri Mescall rightly points out that each one of us has a part to play in evolving our profession. Tony Birch – one of the world’s leading authorities on best practice and standards in bidding – offers 20 brilliant approaches you can put into practice today.

However, what we think about good or best practice should always be secondary to what the recipients of our proposals think of our work. Mike Parkinson explains how client biases and preconceptions about us can be successfully overcome.

For me, best practice in bidding is often as simple as following a common sense approach. It is always implied that best practice standards will lead to improved performance, but where is the independent research?

Ultimately, everyone has their own beliefs about what best practice is or should be – as demonstrated in this issue of BQ. Which articles align with your beliefs? Which articles make you question what you thought you knew about best practice? Please do let me know your thoughts.