A senior manager called me, baffled at losing a bid she expected to win. The solution was excellent, the price competitive, the track record unmatched. “There must have been some jiggery-pokery,” she said.
When we debriefed, the same problems emerged. The bid was built in a silo. Sales intelligence never reached the document. SME content was brilliant but unscorable. Senior management rewrote the executive summary at the last minute. Stakeholder management is where most winnable contracts are lost.
Everyone Has a Different Agenda – Our Job Is to Work With Them
The most persistent myth in bidding is that all stakeholders want the same thing. They do not. Sales wants the win. SMEs want to be the expert. Senior management wants the contract with minimum disruption. Legal wants protection. The client’s evaluators just want to find what they need, score it, and go home. Treat them all the same way and you will spend the bid fighting people who should be on your side.
Sales: Stop Waiting to Be Invited
Bid professionals are invariably brought in too late. Stop waiting and go find the opportunity. Offer to facilitate the early capture session – not just attend it but run it. You will get early sight of the client’s real issues, the competitive landscape and the win strategy.
Subject Matter Experts: The People Who Know the Most and Try to Write the Least
SMEs are brilliant and essential but they disappear the moment you need them to write in plain English. Brief them on the scoring criteria, not just the question. Give them a heading structure before they start. Set the deadline two days ahead of your actual one. Your job is to translate between their expertise and the evaluator’s marking sheet. Own it. The bid that is easiest to win is the one you influenced before the responses were written.
Senior Management: Planned Involvement Beats Reactive Intervention
Senior management can be your greatest asset or a serious liability – and sometimes both. Get sign-off on the win strategy at kick-off. Brief them concisely at each key stage. When a late change is proposed, present the consequences calmly, with evidence. Most will back down unless they think you are just being territorial.
The Client’s Evaluators: Make It Easy to Give You Top Marks
When the ITT is published, direct relationship building closes. Evaluators will score what they can easily find and move on. Use their language. Use their questions as your headings. Answer elements in the order they were asked. Do not open with your company name or “We” – the moment you do, you have moved from solving their problem to selling your solution.
The Final Word
The difference between winning and a very good second place is rarely the quality of the solution. It is almost always the quality of the stakeholder relationships surrounding it. Build them before you need them. Because the moment you stop treating stakeholder management as a discipline, someone who is doing it properly will take your contract.
Andy Haigh
Andy is an expert in bidding and tendering, specialising in competitive formal bids into EU Public Sector organisations. He is an authority on EU procurement legislation and can bring all these capabilities together to initiate and drive major complex bids through to a successful completion.
