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Graham Ablett

Expertise:

Proposal Management & IT Industry Expert

Relevant Skills:

CPP APMP

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Graham Ablett is a Consulting Director at Strategic Proposals, where he helps clients to win specific opportunities as well as implementing effective and efficient proposal processes. He is a former board member of APMP in the UK, holding APMP Professional status, and is an APMP Approved Trainer.

Graham presents regularly to industry conferences worldwide – most recently, chairing a major panel session on international bidding. Has had numerous articles published on proposals, including one in the International Federation of Purchasing and Supply Management’s IFPSMezine

His achievements include:

  • Over £1bn of revenue won for clients during his career.
  • Interim head of bids for a professional services company since 2014 – doubling win rate and halving bid costs.
  • Led a proposal improvement programme for an availability services company, including raising the new business win rate from 10% to 47%.
  • Tripling the win rate for an enterprise IT company through support on specific bid opportunities.
  • Formerly Head of Opportunity Management at Dell, where he managed a large bid centre team, and was responsible for the entire proposal process and for running major deals – including winning a position on all Lots of the OGC Buying Solution’s Catalyst contract, worth over £500m per annum to the company.
  • Represented England and GB at fencing, culminating in winning a Gold Medal in the 1998 Commonwealth fencing championships.

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Bidding Quarterly and Win in 60 Seconds Videos

  1. Top 10 Characteristics of a Winning Proposal

Recent Questions

Bid Team Motivation and Engagement in Times of Change

We’ve had a lot of change in our bid team over the past months – people leaving and joining at all levels. From your experience, do you have any useful strategies for keeping existing and valued team members motivated and engaged in this situation?

Answered by Graham Ablett Disclaimer

Bid Statistics

Hello Graham,

I’ve recently joined a new organisation as their first Bid Manager, one of my task is to bring some structure to the proposals process and governance. To facilitate this, I’m looking to find some statistics to evidence the following, showing the reduction in success when poor bid / no bid decisions are made:

Success rates when responding to tenders where no previous contact has been made. In our case it is usually Local Authorities.

Success rates where responses are drafted in less time than was allocated by the tender, i.e. coming late to the game.

Thanks

David

 

Answered by Graham Ablett Disclaimer
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