Issue 1 - Hope is not a strategy

I’m fascinated by space and especially space travel. What could be out there? What is out there? Where does it all start and end because surely it must? Or must it? As I send my brain into some kind of cosmic meltdown contemplating these mind-bending questions, one thing I never lose hope of is that one day I might be able to travel into space.

Sure, I could sell my house and buy a ticket on Virgin Galactic. But that’s just not going to happen. Maybe in my lifetime some cheaper option will surface? The point is, although I’d love to go into space, I have no real strategy for getting there. But do I lose hope that it might happen? No way -because it might just happen one day. It’s what I would call a ‘definitely-maybe’ scenario. Enough ambiguity and uncertainty to give me hope. And if anyone tells me otherwise, I give them a cursory glance that says why can’t hope be a strategy?

That to me is why ‘hope’ can often be such a double-edged sword. As a seasoned bid professional, I regularly tell my team and clients alike that hope should never be a strategy. I’d go as far as to say it’s non-negotiable in our office. Yet hope is such a fundamental aspect of our daily lives that it seems natural to let it influence our thinking in all aspects of our work and home life. The contradictions it presents are sometimes so intertwined that it can be difficult to distinguish what is possible from what is purely aspirational.

Nobody likes the guy who pops all the balloons at a party so in an attempt to get some balanced opinion on this subject matter I canvassed the views of several Bid Solutions Industry Expert panel members. What I received back, and the basis for this article, was some fascinating insight, opinion, and tales from Simon Wellstead, Jon Williams, Andy Haigh and Peter Bryans. Did we all agree? Yes and no! It certainly opened my mind to different possibilities around hope as a strategy.

In the corporate world, it can often be hard to stem the flow of hope once an RFP arrives. I can recall one manager in a previous life who liked to openly accuse anyone who questioned the possibility of us winning as being a ‘glass half full’ kind of person – and everyone was fearful of being tarnished with that brush. The truth is that this type of sales leadership often results in a lot of wasted effort and resource.

Twice in the past 12 months I have been sorely tempted to break my golden rule of never bidding for business when an RFP has landed on our desk without prior warning. Business development must start somewhere, right?

On both occasions it was as if the tender was written for us. Right in our sweet spot. It wouldn’t have been difficult or time consuming for us to complete responses. Surely either was worth a punt? We were providing services to their competitors and knew their markets incredibly well. We knew we were very competitive on price and offered great service. But that one burning question we couldn’t answer…why us? Why had they sent the RFP to us? Why would they spend money with a business they had never spoken to before, let alone worked with?

Not wanting to break my golden rule, and without being able to define a clear win strategy for either RFP, I did the sensible thing. I wrote to both of the respective procurement professionals and stated that whilst we welcomed being on their RFP distribution list, we couldn’t submit a response because we would need to fully understand their needs, challenges and issues much better. I wouldn’t want to insult them with a simple marketing document that talked about our own capability and attempted to match it to the RFP.

Letters sent, I waited. And waited. Nothing came back. Not even an acknowledgement of my letter despite following up several times.

Some would argue that’s because we didn’t follow the RFP instructions, so it was our fault. I would argue it was the correct decision not just for us but also for the client – our chances of winning would have been based purely on hope and a guessing game as to what the client’s real drivers were.

Of course, many would argue that in public sector bidding this is the best starting point you ever get. Andy Haigh however (our Public Sector Expert), argues very differently in his thoughts below. But first, Simon Wellstead explains why hide and seek should never be a game played in the corporate boardroom…