Sitting in my office on the threshold of a sunny bank holiday weekend, I’m contemplating why the process of producing a great bid is often fraught with stakeholder adversity.The ‘dominant logic’ is:
- SMEs fail to see the criticality and don’t reciprocate our effort;
- Senior management don’t view us as revenue generating (consider yourself prioritised accordingly); and
- Client procurement teams are hellbent on being perpetual chaos goblins, wholly inconsiderate of bidders’ needs.
We’re expected to do ‘whatever it takes’ to win, and we rely on our stakeholders to get us there, but the expectation on others sometimes doesn’t feel the same. We’re left feeling short-changed and hard-done-by. Here are some practical ways we can start to move forward:
- Capacity is only part of the problem, but sound managerial practices can help. Make bid/no bid decisions based on the capacity of SMEs and senior leaders, rather than just the bid team. Set expectations for senior leaders, giving them appropriate time to review responses even if it means drip-feeding individual questions. As someone who’s diary typically leaves an hour for ‘work’ a day, I appreciate this method far more than having a 200-page bid to read over the weekend. Caveat: there’ll aways be leaders who swoop in at the last minute and offer insight that’s as useful as an ashtray on a motorcycle (puking face).
- Even the most sophisticated planning tools will fail if you don’t have SME support. Implement a ‘no blank page policy’, appreciating that many SMEs won’t know where to start when it comes to providing content. Either write the response and ask your SME to review or, better still, go and meet them in person. Be a journalist for the day. Ask the probing questions; record the conversation so you can fully engage. What do you do, what’s the benefit to the client, what are the challenges and how do you overcome them, what are you adding that the client technically isn’t paying for, and what have your past outcomes been are all great questions. Come with biscuits; build a relationship. And when you facilitate rather than demand, great things start to happen.
- Put the person back into procurement. Procurement teams, particularly in the public sector, are under pressure. They’re operating in typically dysfunctional environments and feel the same deadline strains as you. Yes they release tenders on 15th December with a 10th January return, and yes they’ll extend that deadline the day before submission. It’s often not their choice though.
It’s worth putting the effort in, because winning is very difficult when stakeholder relationships are dysfunctional. Competitive advantage is perhaps not always in the products or services that we sell, but in the way that we move forward as a team.
Alana McCarthy
Alana is Head of Bids and Marketing for a tier one construction company. She has 20 years’ experience in public sector bidding within the construction, facilities management, and transactional banking industries. With a passion for lifelong learning, Alana recently completed a Level 7 Apprenticeship in Senior Leadership and has embarked on a MSc with a focus on the bidding function to drive research into our profession.
