I was at an IT partners award evening at Paris (in a place overlooking the stunning Place Vendome) on wednesday. Several partnerships in the IT industry were awarded. There were some small companies partnering with big companies and some others between small ones. There were no big with big, which was probably only a coincidence. Though no one mentioned how they won customers together, the bid manager in me could imagine the trials and tribulations the partnerships must have gone through during the bidding. One must remember, of course, that these were the success stories paraded on the awards night. There must have been plenty of failures for every success story.
Paris, Bidding and Partnerships
How the sheep are led to Presales
A fresh young MBA stepped into an IT Company for his first day at work, and was immediately assigned by HR to the presales team.
How did this happen?
In the morning, when he first went to meet HR they told him triumphantly
Do you mean I can become the CEO in two years?
Wait a minute...what really happens to me after two years? Do I get into general management since I would have learnt sales and delivery and project management?
No, kid, you are mistaken, you need to first check out the world around you and see what fits you and what you like so that your career does not fizzle out like a wet firecracker!
Here the MBA feels like he is playing Inky, Pinky, Ponky in hell and so he dares to ask one more question -
Sure, you can get into project management but to manage projects, you would need to first of all learn our business, isnt it? How can you manage something you dont know?
Hey dude (now HR has become his pal almost), what are you saying? Selling IT is not like selling hot dogs. You need to know what the customer wants to buy, you need to know what our delivery guys can make and most importantly, you need to know how to package what what we make to make it look like what the customer wants to buy...
here the MBA sighs in resignation and mutters
and the HR guy closes the conversation with
'Welcome to the IT industry kid, now you can clearly see why we have put you in presales'...
How did this happen?
In the morning, when he first went to meet HR they told him triumphantly
'just like we told you in your campus interview, you will go straight to the cutting edge of our business, where delivery-meets-sales-meets-project-management and within two years, before you even know it, you would have become as rounded as an untampered cricket ball with all the skills that you need to manage our business successfully.'
Do you mean I can become the CEO in two years?
Not really...you can manage 'something' in two years, end to end you know...
you mean, like a small business?
Not exactly...but something along those lines...
Wait a minute...what really happens to me after two years? Do I get into general management since I would have learnt sales and delivery and project management?
Eh...not exactly, after two years you would enter one of the serious careers in IT, i.e. delivery, sales or project management.
Ah, so for two years, I am only checking things out to see what would work for me...what a waste of time...why dont I just join delivery for example, I would get a two year head start in delivery that way...
No, kid, you are mistaken, you need to first check out the world around you and see what fits you and what you like so that your career does not fizzle out like a wet firecracker!
Alright, so you are telling me I should spend two years to decide what I want to do? Is that what presales is all about? A place to cool my heels waiting for the real thing?
Not really, you will check out all the three careers we can offer you so that you can decide which one is the least...sorry most suitable for you...
what if I like delivery after two years, will I able to get into delivery and work on software development projects...
Actually why would you want to do that...delivery and and all is for engineers, I thought MBAs would want to do better things...aren't you...ambitious?
Oh, okay, then suppose I want to get into project management, that would be acceptable wont it be?
Sure, you can get into project management but to manage projects, you would need to first of all learn our business, isnt it? How can you manage something you dont know?
Okay, so I would get into sales then? I would get to go onsite and sell to customers in fancy locations like Constantinople and Vladivastok and yes even in my favourite location from Godfather... 'Palermo in Sicily'!!!
Of course not (you silly!)...how can you sell without knowing what you are selling?
But I know how to sell, like how I sold myself into this job. I can sell anything, I even sold my old stamp album for 33 rupees to my neighbour in meerut when I was all of 10 years!
Hey dude (now HR has become his pal almost), what are you saying? Selling IT is not like selling hot dogs. You need to know what the customer wants to buy, you need to know what our delivery guys can make and most importantly, you need to know how to package what what we make to make it look like what the customer wants to buy...
here the MBA sighs in resignation and mutters
'Oh my god...they never taught me this in Business School'
and the HR guy closes the conversation with
'Welcome to the IT industry kid, now you can clearly see why we have put you in presales'...
Proposal 2.0 - PPT beats WORD hands down!...for now
It is quite safe to say that most clients dont read proposal documents end to end. At least, they dont read all proposals end to end. They do read some parts of the proposals, without which they surely cant decide on whom to award the bid. Why dont they read all parts of the proposal? The most significant reason is surely the size (100s of pages) and then the complexity and drabness of the format (WORD document).
An average person can probably comprehend 200 words per minute (much less for non-native speakers like the French or the Japanese) and an average A4 size page has maybe 1000 words. How long would it take for a person to read an average vendor proposal of 100 pages? 500 minutes or 8 hours!!!! Now, the client has to read 5-10 proposals! He now has to find an average 7 x 8 = 56 hours to read all these proposals!!!! Of course, you will argue that different people at the client end read only the sections relevant for them but the problem is still not insignificant.
Wait a minute. But we get called to defense meetings often only two days after proposal submission!!! How is that possible? Surely the client didnt have time to go through our proposal completely? Maybe he didnt read the good parts of my proposal which is why I didnt make it this time....surely, it is a reading lottery out there and we thought we were in a logical world...
What do we as bid managers do? One small change you can make is this - whenever the client does not explicitly ask for a WORD document proposal, try making a Powerpoint presentation.
A PPT of 50 slides can easily represent all the important stuff we have in a 100 page proposal.
A PPT of 50 slides can be gone through in 1-2 hours maximum.
A PPT of 50 slides saves effort for us in that we dont need to make a defense presentation separately.
A PPT makes us think concisely.
A PPT prevents us from filling pages with meaningless words.
On a PPT, mistakes can be easily caught so review becomes easy for us.
A PPT automatically demands more visual elements, so we make our proposal better automatically....
and lastly, in this Copenhagen season, you can even preen in your greenness with all those trees you have saved!
So, next time, if the client does not specify a format, go forth boldly and make your proposal in PPT!!!! If you want to be doubly sure, ask them in the Q & A and believe me, most clients would be relieved to be given PPT proposals.
Is this the future then?. Of course not...this would at best fly for the next couple of years.
In 2011, yes just two winters more, I believe we will be submitting video proposals where we will show the client what we can do. WEtube will provide private areas where a client can get his vendors to post their proposals. Then the client will leave video feedback and the vendors can enter into a video dialogue...
remember, you read it first here on 'Bid Runner'!
An average person can probably comprehend 200 words per minute (much less for non-native speakers like the French or the Japanese) and an average A4 size page has maybe 1000 words. How long would it take for a person to read an average vendor proposal of 100 pages? 500 minutes or 8 hours!!!! Now, the client has to read 5-10 proposals! He now has to find an average 7 x 8 = 56 hours to read all these proposals!!!! Of course, you will argue that different people at the client end read only the sections relevant for them but the problem is still not insignificant.
Wait a minute. But we get called to defense meetings often only two days after proposal submission!!! How is that possible? Surely the client didnt have time to go through our proposal completely? Maybe he didnt read the good parts of my proposal which is why I didnt make it this time....surely, it is a reading lottery out there and we thought we were in a logical world...
What do we as bid managers do? One small change you can make is this - whenever the client does not explicitly ask for a WORD document proposal, try making a Powerpoint presentation.
A PPT of 50 slides can easily represent all the important stuff we have in a 100 page proposal.
A PPT of 50 slides can be gone through in 1-2 hours maximum.
A PPT of 50 slides saves effort for us in that we dont need to make a defense presentation separately.
A PPT makes us think concisely.
A PPT prevents us from filling pages with meaningless words.
On a PPT, mistakes can be easily caught so review becomes easy for us.
A PPT automatically demands more visual elements, so we make our proposal better automatically....
and lastly, in this Copenhagen season, you can even preen in your greenness with all those trees you have saved!
So, next time, if the client does not specify a format, go forth boldly and make your proposal in PPT!!!! If you want to be doubly sure, ask them in the Q & A and believe me, most clients would be relieved to be given PPT proposals.
Is this the future then?. Of course not...this would at best fly for the next couple of years.
In 2011, yes just two winters more, I believe we will be submitting video proposals where we will show the client what we can do. WEtube will provide private areas where a client can get his vendors to post their proposals. Then the client will leave video feedback and the vendors can enter into a video dialogue...
remember, you read it first here on 'Bid Runner'!
Who's listening?
I agree with Bronwyn Fryer over at HBR Blogs who writes that listening is becoming an endangered skill. However, I am not a big fan of the four processes he recommends we must follow (i.e. think ahead, weigh the evidence, review periodically and listen between the lines - all while the other person keeps talking) which also I find distracting from truly listening and connecting to someone - the kind of total listening experience that is required to a) understand and b) connect with another person or persons especially those who have a problem or need that our product or solution or service must address.
Indeed, nothing else, I mean nothing else, is more important to a bid manager than listening well.
Indeed, nothing else, I mean nothing else, is more important to a bid manager than listening well.
Evergreen Deals!
HCL today signed what has been called by them (or is it the media) an Evergreen deal with an insurance company. A deal which runs for ever? Not exactly, but for a very very long time of 30 years. Further, it seems like they will be paid based on a business metric (number of policies).
What do I think of it? Interesting, certainly. Creative, obviously. Trend-setting? Maybe. The future of outsourcing deals? Unlikely, since most clients these days hesitate to sign even 5 year deals leave alone 7 or more years. So, it would be interesting to see how this one pans out.
What do I think of it? Interesting, certainly. Creative, obviously. Trend-setting? Maybe. The future of outsourcing deals? Unlikely, since most clients these days hesitate to sign even 5 year deals leave alone 7 or more years. So, it would be interesting to see how this one pans out.
Meeting Tug of War
I am talking about meetings with the client in particular, here. If you have eight people from your company and five from the client, that is actually a conference and no longer a meeting.
Why do most of us mostly have more people than needed for most meetings?
Is it because everyone is needed in that meeting to represent their unique specialities?
Or is it because we cant find that one person who can integrate it all and present our company perspective?
Or is it because we all feel we must contribute something to everything that passes us by and say 'amen!' to all that we encounter?
Is it that we feel so insecure about our capabilities that we take courage from company and feel comfortable in a crowd?
Or is it that we involve lots of people so no one is accountable and everyone can survive a failure?
Why do most of us mostly have more people than needed for most meetings?
Is it because everyone is needed in that meeting to represent their unique specialities?
Or is it because we cant find that one person who can integrate it all and present our company perspective?
Or is it because we all feel we must contribute something to everything that passes us by and say 'amen!' to all that we encounter?
Is it that we feel so insecure about our capabilities that we take courage from company and feel comfortable in a crowd?
Or is it that we involve lots of people so no one is accountable and everyone can survive a failure?
Changing My Blog Template
I am struggling to update my Blog Template so please bear with the strange appearance of my blog. I will figure this HTML thing out in a day or two.
What is India's India?
Some five years ago in a Delhi Hotel, a senior french executive asked me the question 'What is India's India?'
I blinked, of course, not knowing where he was going.
He explained 'I mean, where would India outsource its work since your growing costs seem to be unsustainable..would you go to China, Philippines, or Africa perhaps?'
Having not thought about such a topic in advance, I mumbled something about how India was still competitive compared to USA and Western Europe and how we would not have such an issue for another 10 years.
There was a better answer and that lay in small-town and rural India. Here costs were (and would likely continue to be) as little as 20% of what it is in big city India (Bangalore, Chennai, and so on). Of course, Indian outsourcers would slowly but certainly tap into this vast and almost untapped resource pool when the need arose. There would be no need for Indian companies to go to China or Philippines for cost reasons. India could vertically integrate itself across the services value chain and not have to look elsewhere for cost reasons (I stress cost reasons, because there are other good reasons to deliver services out of China or Egypt for example).
This recent story from the New York times shows one such initiative and the fundamental changes it is bringing to people's lives in small Indian villages.
This recent story from the New York times shows one such initiative and the fundamental changes it is bringing to people's lives in small Indian villages.
The Individual RFP
In 2019 or 2020, we will see the first of the RFPs issued by individuals for truly small things.
Of course, already rich and middle class people probably bid out construction of their houses or interior decoration or wedding arrangements. In future, they might even bid out small purchases like Hair Cuts ( Hi there, I am going to be downtown between 3 and 5 this afternoon, who can give me a hair cut and wash for less than 10 bucks?) or small services (Hi, how much would you charge for helping me move this fridge from Wal Mart to my home in 20 minutes).
Once technology becomes all-pervasive (doesnt it feel like it already is), everyone would be on C-2-P Portals (Consumer to Provider) which connects individual consumers to mostly individual providers. Request for bids will be published, bids received and orders issued in a matter of hours if not minutes.
TPAs - Midlife Crisis?
Third Party Advisers (TPAs) have surely seen better days. The leader TPI launched TPI Momentum a year ago to also start working for sellers of outsourced service providers breaking their long tradition of advising only buyers of outsourced services. This Irish TPA says outsourcing is the silver bullet you have been waiting for but dont do it without their help. TPAs have also faced some criticism from insiders and outsiders about potential conflicts of interest.
Does the world need TPAs? I would say YES emphatically. Outsourcing advisers often bring a world of order and discipline and process and objectivity to a deal. Without them, some clients would really struggle with their outsourcing initiatives.
Can TPAs do a better job? Absolutely. My guess is that for every good TPA out there, there are three mediocre ones. Many of them are leading their clients down the garden path to failure.
Can a client rely only on the TPAs to get it right? No. The client needs to hear the vendor views in equal measure. The real interesting practical ideas (which are implemented) often come from the vendors. While the TPAs have seen many deals and can bring best practices, the vendors have actually executed the post-deal projects and know what happened well after the TPA took their money and kissed goodbye; we all know experience counts more than knowledge.
Are TPAs needed on every deal? Of course not. Use them for complex stuff. Dont use them if you just want their templates. Any good vendor can give you those and you can pick and choose what you like.
Like all management consultants out there, TPAs are feeling the pinch from the struggling world economy. They are often dispensed with, sometimes with disastrous outcomes. Some other clients have smartly saved money that would have gone to TPAs and retained some of their own people instead.
I think TPAs will bounce back since outsourcing is here to stay. However, I think there will likely be a shakeout which will see some average firms disappear. Some of them will transform themselves and create for themselves a more accountable (for outcomes rather than deals) role.
Does the world need TPAs? I would say YES emphatically. Outsourcing advisers often bring a world of order and discipline and process and objectivity to a deal. Without them, some clients would really struggle with their outsourcing initiatives.
Can TPAs do a better job? Absolutely. My guess is that for every good TPA out there, there are three mediocre ones. Many of them are leading their clients down the garden path to failure.
Can a client rely only on the TPAs to get it right? No. The client needs to hear the vendor views in equal measure. The real interesting practical ideas (which are implemented) often come from the vendors. While the TPAs have seen many deals and can bring best practices, the vendors have actually executed the post-deal projects and know what happened well after the TPA took their money and kissed goodbye; we all know experience counts more than knowledge.
Are TPAs needed on every deal? Of course not. Use them for complex stuff. Dont use them if you just want their templates. Any good vendor can give you those and you can pick and choose what you like.
Like all management consultants out there, TPAs are feeling the pinch from the struggling world economy. They are often dispensed with, sometimes with disastrous outcomes. Some other clients have smartly saved money that would have gone to TPAs and retained some of their own people instead.
I think TPAs will bounce back since outsourcing is here to stay. However, I think there will likely be a shakeout which will see some average firms disappear. Some of them will transform themselves and create for themselves a more accountable (for outcomes rather than deals) role.
The Lessons from Magna
The canadian company Magna failed to win Opel from GM (after having failed to buy a stake in Chrysler couple of years ago) and now say they wont pursue Automakers anymore and would instead focus on their core auto parts business.
Should they have won? Investors in Magna dont think so. They feel Magna is better off without Opel since Magna would have had issues keeping some of its parts business customers who would have seen it as a competitor.
Should they have bid for it in the first place? I, for one, think so. Unless you bid for some opportunities, you don't learn. What can one learn from occasionally (this is the operative word) bidding for unwinnable, unconnected or unwanted opportunities?
- What are potential new business opportunties worth pursuing in future?
- What is the new marketplace looking like?
- How do we solve unfamiliar complex problems when we must solve them?
- How is our company perceived in the market?
- How quickly can we change our company's DNA?
- Do we have the leadership skills to lead us into the future?
- What is the return (positive and negative) on risk taken?
I am not saying Magna bid for Opel for these reasons. They must have had their own set of good reasons.
What I am saying is that sometimes, it makes sense to bid on opportunities which dont seem winnable, desirable or relevant.
Conversation
Customer: Why do you provide no case studies in your proposal? Have you not done this type of work before.
Vendor: Since you did not explicitly ask for it, we did not provide it.
Customer: Can you provide it now.
Vendor: Well...actually...what kind of case studies would you like to see.
Customer: Relevant case studies.
Vendor: Do you need it immediately?
Customer: I guess...
Vendor: We cant disclose some confidential information.
Customer: Remove them.
Vendor: We need to check with our clients.
Customer: About what.
Vendor: Whether we can send their case studies to you.
Customer: Alright. I get the point.
Vendor: Thanks for your understanding.
Customer: All the best for the next RFP.
Bid Management Lingo
RFP - the most commonly heard word around Bid Management circles. Stands for Request for Proposal. Some people mistakenly (minor sin compared to what else goes on!) also refer to their response as the 'RFP' as in :- 'We submitted the RFP yesterday'. As you know, you don’t submit an RFP, you submit an RFP Response or better still, you submit a Proposal in response to a customer's Request for Proposal.
Proposal - You have to unlearn what you thought a proposal is, when you first came to Bid Management - this proposal won't require a ring or flowers! A proposal is an offer from a vendor to a customer. Sometimes this has commercial details and pricing information and sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it does not contain many details because the vendor does not know what the customer wants and rarely, because the customer has not yet said what he wants. So, when you see that a proposal is missing several major sections like a Price and even a precise Solution for a requirement, you could modestly and correctly call it an Approach Note.
Approach Note - Is a proposal without the filling! It is then up to the customer to visualize the missing elements!
What a proposal DOES contain - Most proposals contain a cover page made in psychedelic colours, followed by several pages about the company peppered with internal terms and acronyms, made up of imprecise data, all in unchecked grammar, then the all important solution hidden on the fortyseventh page laced with lots of jargon, then the assumptions list which copies verbatim many of the requirements from the rfp, finally the climactic commercials section with pages-long fine print, not to forget the annexures which are embedded in the word document like leeches, and finally the absence of section numbers and page numbers giving the customer an infinite blue ocean kind of feeling...will the customer read on or curse their luck...
What a proposal MUST contain - A brief introduction about your company (one short para, no more), an Executive Summary, a recap of your understanding of what the customer wants or needs - not cut-and-pasted from the rfp but your articulation of what you think they want based on customer stated facts and your interpreted requirements, then the solution, the assumptions, the commercials and annexures listed in a table. The annexures go as separate documents.
Executive Summary - It needs to be simple and without jargon. It should not make bombastic and evidently untrue statements like 'we have the most outstanding and respected enterprise consulting practice in the world', it should make the customer want to read on, and it should truly summarize the rest of the proposal. A simple structure of an executive summary could be,
• Who You Are (a brief para about the company),
• What you think the customer wants (a summary of what you have understood to be the customer need),
• What is the solution you are proposing (a brief description of the solution including details like the timeline to implement the solution and the cost - only where RFP rules allow the cost to be mentioned in the main proposal),
• What is different about your solution, and then finally,
• Why your company for THIS project
Often, your solution highlights are mixed up with your credentials as a company and this is no good. First, explain why your solution is great (Solution Differentiators) and then explain why they should select your company to deliver the solution(Company Differentiators). So, sell the solution first and then the company.
So, basically, the executive summary should only have 5 sections,
1. Who you are
2. What the customer wants
3. What you are proposing
2. What the customer wants
3. What you are proposing
4. Why your solution is great and
5. Why your company is the right one.
5. Why your company is the right one.
Most people tend to cut and paste items 1, 4, and 5 and sometimes even item 3 from old proposals, with little modification. The key is to make these sections relevant for the specific opportunity in question.
For example,
• If the customer requirement is a global roll-out of an application in obscure places like Timbuktu, then what you must highlight in the Company overview is your global presence.
• If the solution will be built on a product like SAP, then item 5 above should contain something about Your company's relationship with SAP. The key is to not do this vaguely, but precisely. So, instead of saying 'We have a great relationship with SAP and we are strong partners who can leverage each other's strengths' it is better to say 'Our company's relationship with SAP will be utilized to validate the Blueprint for this project with SAP, the product vendor'. Of course, saying it is one thing; you need to be able to deliver what you said in the proposal once you get the order. So, say only what you will do, do your homework at the proposal stage so you will be able to make this commitment with conviction. So, if you want to use the above SAP commitment example, you should check with SAP first if they will validate the Blueprint you will make for your customer and you should ensure that you provide for it in your plan and estimates.
• If the solution will be built on a product like SAP, then item 5 above should contain something about Your company's relationship with SAP. The key is to not do this vaguely, but precisely. So, instead of saying 'We have a great relationship with SAP and we are strong partners who can leverage each other's strengths' it is better to say 'Our company's relationship with SAP will be utilized to validate the Blueprint for this project with SAP, the product vendor'. Of course, saying it is one thing; you need to be able to deliver what you said in the proposal once you get the order. So, say only what you will do, do your homework at the proposal stage so you will be able to make this commitment with conviction. So, if you want to use the above SAP commitment example, you should check with SAP first if they will validate the Blueprint you will make for your customer and you should ensure that you provide for it in your plan and estimates.
So much about the holy executive summary.
Watching Glenngarry Glenn Ross Again
Even if you are not in sales, you have to watch this classic. I watched it again after a gap of a year and this time, I was watching it as a salesperson. Beyond the exceptional acting (I haven't watched any movie with better ensemble acting) and the incredible (but heavily expletive-laden) dialogue, this movie does have some lessons for salespeople.
The importance of getting rid of your inhibitions, like making unpleasant calls to rude prospects, is one. The importance of persistence and patience is another. The need to focus on deal outcomes (though the line from the movie Always Be Closing is a bit extreme) is yet another. Even the Al Pacino character's slow and steady psycho-philosophical approach to selling is educative in how we can get closer to the sale by an empathetic approach and by putting the customer issues first before ours.
Of course, there is lots of bad sales practices in the movie we dont want to follow like stealing leads, like squeezing every drop of blood from your sales team and of course, and most importantly selling an undesirable product that your customer would soon regret buying.
Having said all that, I would recommend you first watch it for the acting, then for the dialogue and only then for the ideas.
Presales 101 - How to respond to an RFI
When you are responding to questions in an RFI, ask yourself even more questions (it works a bit like vaccines - if you get my drift :-) ) like the ones below:
1) Does my response address every part of the Customer Question or am I responding to only the beginning of the question? Or only the end?
BTW, Did I check my eyesight recently?
2) Is the response understandable? Does each sentence in the response make sense to a sane person like me?
How about if my 12 year old nephew were to read it?
3) Are all acronyms expanded in the response? Even very obvious ones like ISO? -
Don't say "the customer didnt expand RFI when he sent it to me so why should I expand PMO?"
4) Are there any boilerplate or motherhood statements (‘We put our customers before everything else’. ‘We have profound understanding of your business’ ‘We are eagerly waiting for this deal’ etc.) that I need to obliterate?
Don't plead with the customer, especially around Christmas time!
5) Does the response mention at least one of the following?
- A previous experience or Customer Story (with or without customer name)
- A specific plan of something we will do for the client
- A metric or result or outcome
- A specific approach
...anything at all that hides my hard cut and paste efforts?
6) Does it stick to some reasonable length or does it go on like a Tolstoy novel? - A response too short means we are not using the opportunity to differentiate ourselves. A response too long won't be read.
When in doubt, chop-chop-chop!!!
7) Have I included a one line summary message at the bottom of each response - Customers like it sweet and short, so give it to them in one sentence after you have polluted the environment for half a page.
8) Does it differentiate us in any way? Can we mention an award, a unique methodology, a tool we use, an endorsement from someone, a unique metric, or at least a unique message? At a minimum does it sound honest and sincere?
You see, it is just like proposing to someone...everyone can't emulate Shakespeare and write sonnets, but vomiting the truth should be easy?
They Buy the Package
I was talking to a German friend this weekend and he was telling me how the (German) small to mid companies decide on vendors for IT projects. He said they dont buy the solution or the proposal but rather the 'Whole Package'. I probed him a bit and he said, 'They want to see who is proposing, where he comes from, what he has done before, how he behaves and many other things before the make a decision. That is what I call the Whole Package'.
I was not convinced and asked 'Doesn't every customer decide this way? What is special about these smaller companies?'
He said the difference is in their perception of risk as they consider and understand the Whole Package. The smaller companies cannot afford to take that risk which a big company could take with eyes closed.
Then it entered my slow brain. These small guys look at the Whole Package to gauge their risk. If they see any yellow lights (leave alone red) in the horizon they brake and look elsewhere. The big companies, on the other hand do look at elements of the package but not in the same wholistic sensitive way and certainly not as a precise indicator of risk. They can and do take a risky decision.
I thought about this during my thirty minute train ride back home this saturday. It seemed obvious and not.
I was not convinced and asked 'Doesn't every customer decide this way? What is special about these smaller companies?'
He said the difference is in their perception of risk as they consider and understand the Whole Package. The smaller companies cannot afford to take that risk which a big company could take with eyes closed.
Then it entered my slow brain. These small guys look at the Whole Package to gauge their risk. If they see any yellow lights (leave alone red) in the horizon they brake and look elsewhere. The big companies, on the other hand do look at elements of the package but not in the same wholistic sensitive way and certainly not as a precise indicator of risk. They can and do take a risky decision.
I thought about this during my thirty minute train ride back home this saturday. It seemed obvious and not.
Credibility - That elusive thing
One of my friends, a lawyer with a mid size law firm, told me a story of a bid they made and eventually won with a large bank. After the bid, when he was talking to an insider about why they won, the reason given was,
You guys admitted you could not do several things we wanted done. All others said they could do everything. Your statement matched your firm profile and size. Your story was believable. We felt your story had credibility. We decided to work with you and help you bridge your gaps in capability.You can win deals (and deliver successfully) if you can retain your credibility. Dream big certainly, but be careful not to trample on your credibility!
Win Post Mortems are better than Loss Post Mortems
You win some and and you lose some is the old saying set to music by mushy singers like Bryan Adams. In modern life, however, no one seems to takes things so philosophically. Especially the losses.
And why should we? Why should we ignore lost deals, lost projects and lost success?
Look closer and you will find that reality is in fact the cliché - we do win some deals and we do lose some others. And, mostly we don't know why.
Why we lose deals seems to be every sales manager's pet source of worry, at least for a few days or weeks after a loss. He claims to worry about the loss and why it happened and what to do to prevent a repeat. He resolves to improve the win rate so that he can eliminate losses - as if deal losses were a disease like Polio that could be systematically eradicated from most of the globe. Alas, most of these sales and presales managers dont know how to do this.
They break their heads for a week, sometimes for a month after a big loss and claim to do post mortems and lessons learnt analyses and Kaizens and try every trick including Yoga and psychoanalysis. They claim to want to implement the best practices and eliminate the bad practices in all future deals. Of course, six months down the line, not much changes and yet another big loss comes calling!
Familiar Story?
Why? It is not because these sales managers don't want to improve their win rates. It is not because they don't have the right data. It is not because they dont have the time to worry about losses. It is not because they are not serious in their intent to know the truth about lost deals. It is not that they do faulty analysis of the data they do have. It is not that they don't implement those improvements their analysis of lost deals tells them to do.
It is something more basic. Losses can't tell us nearly as much as wins. What is a lost deal after all? A deal not won. So, rather than worry about why they lost this deal or that deal, the question sales managers must ask themselves and their clients and their sales force is this:
'What was needed to win that deal we just lost? How did the winner manage to eat my cheese?'.
It's not the same as taking apart your lost deal which is totally focused on your bid and your mistakes. You were only one of the losers. Every loser would have made different mistakes. One would have put in a bad solution. Another would have had no clue about client requirements. Yet another would have overestimated costs. A fourth one surely under-priced his solution putting the project and client at serious risk.
The real answer is in the winning bid which most of the time has solved the key problems seen in all the other losing bids.
Obviously, you can't always find out how the winner won a deal when you have been on the losing team. And if you analyze just your bid and even if you (rarely) do a great job of it, a lost bid analysis can only teach you so much. But there are ways of finding out. Often clients are willing to share why someone else won.
One way to get around this is to systematically analyze your own won bids.
Get your winning team to contribute to buidling a repository of practices that led to each deal win, immediately after the win if not during the bid. Now, it is not enough for everyone to identify the best practices. Knowledge needs context. Best practices need a setting. The deal story has to be written inter-weaving the context with the best practices, like a Grisham thriller with heart-stopping action at every juncture.
I have been part of deal winning teams, and of course I have also been part of deal losing teams. The hardest question to answer for me has been 'Why did you win this deal' - much more difficult than 'why did you lose that other deal'. If someone asks me 'Who won that deal for you' I would probably be happy to blush and say thank you. If someone asks me 'Why did you lose that deal', I will have a ready list of people to blame. But how about ' How did you win that deal'?
I am not talking about the reasons we tell the press or the reasons we broadcast to our company executives but the real reasons which helped the client decide to do the deal with us.
So, when I have been asked this question, I dont have a simple answer. I tell a long story. In the story are lots of characters, from the client's side, from our side, from competitors, consultants and advisors and so on. There is relentless action - customer lobbing the ball over our heads, our team scampering and returning with a drop shot, competitors inching ahead only to be overtaken by us later, near death experiences, and ecstatic events making up the deal story.
The best practices come flooding, those wonderful insights which dawned eurekaesque on you as you cooled your heals between meetings in some seedy Extended Stay suite in small town America missing your family 3000 miles away and dreaming of the win that seemed ever elusive. So, when you tell yourself the story, when you tell other people the story, you begin to see those best practices, those critical innovations, those tipping points which enabled your win.
During this, something else amazing dawns on you. You realize how many different ways the client was playing along with you, was actually helping you win the deal, in the end almost longing for your win, almost as much as you.
A deal win is less a collection of events and practices than the collective experience lived together with the client. You win the deal with the client. The client wins the winning bidder that is you. What is born in the deal is not a contract but comfort and confidence in each other for a win-win outcome.
It's not unlike when you want to select a painter to paint your house. After all the stories, work samples, reference checks and price negotiations, it comes right down to which painter's face you like, who you feel is least likely to let you down. In the end it is down to feelings, hunches and risks for the client. Painting your house can go awfully wrong in spite of everything. And you know it well as you select the painter. I have alluded to this aspect in another post recently.
So, why do we win some and lose some. I think we win those deals where we are one team first internally within our company, then we become one team with the client, sincerely and purposefully. Then, together, we, the client and us, decide to tell the world, `well, guess what, we just decided to do a deal yesterday!!!`
Now, how much of that deal can you find out about, talking to the losers?
And why should we? Why should we ignore lost deals, lost projects and lost success?
Look closer and you will find that reality is in fact the cliché - we do win some deals and we do lose some others. And, mostly we don't know why.
Why we lose deals seems to be every sales manager's pet source of worry, at least for a few days or weeks after a loss. He claims to worry about the loss and why it happened and what to do to prevent a repeat. He resolves to improve the win rate so that he can eliminate losses - as if deal losses were a disease like Polio that could be systematically eradicated from most of the globe. Alas, most of these sales and presales managers dont know how to do this.
They break their heads for a week, sometimes for a month after a big loss and claim to do post mortems and lessons learnt analyses and Kaizens and try every trick including Yoga and psychoanalysis. They claim to want to implement the best practices and eliminate the bad practices in all future deals. Of course, six months down the line, not much changes and yet another big loss comes calling!
Familiar Story?
Why? It is not because these sales managers don't want to improve their win rates. It is not because they don't have the right data. It is not because they dont have the time to worry about losses. It is not because they are not serious in their intent to know the truth about lost deals. It is not that they do faulty analysis of the data they do have. It is not that they don't implement those improvements their analysis of lost deals tells them to do.
It is something more basic. Losses can't tell us nearly as much as wins. What is a lost deal after all? A deal not won. So, rather than worry about why they lost this deal or that deal, the question sales managers must ask themselves and their clients and their sales force is this:
'What was needed to win that deal we just lost? How did the winner manage to eat my cheese?'.
It's not the same as taking apart your lost deal which is totally focused on your bid and your mistakes. You were only one of the losers. Every loser would have made different mistakes. One would have put in a bad solution. Another would have had no clue about client requirements. Yet another would have overestimated costs. A fourth one surely under-priced his solution putting the project and client at serious risk.
The real answer is in the winning bid which most of the time has solved the key problems seen in all the other losing bids.
Obviously, you can't always find out how the winner won a deal when you have been on the losing team. And if you analyze just your bid and even if you (rarely) do a great job of it, a lost bid analysis can only teach you so much. But there are ways of finding out. Often clients are willing to share why someone else won.
One way to get around this is to systematically analyze your own won bids.
Get your winning team to contribute to buidling a repository of practices that led to each deal win, immediately after the win if not during the bid. Now, it is not enough for everyone to identify the best practices. Knowledge needs context. Best practices need a setting. The deal story has to be written inter-weaving the context with the best practices, like a Grisham thriller with heart-stopping action at every juncture.
The best part is, as you write the story and you re-live the story yourself, those subtle, nuanced best practices and smart ideas emerge from their hiding places and take a bow.
I have been part of deal winning teams, and of course I have also been part of deal losing teams. The hardest question to answer for me has been 'Why did you win this deal' - much more difficult than 'why did you lose that other deal'. If someone asks me 'Who won that deal for you' I would probably be happy to blush and say thank you. If someone asks me 'Why did you lose that deal', I will have a ready list of people to blame. But how about ' How did you win that deal'?
I am not talking about the reasons we tell the press or the reasons we broadcast to our company executives but the real reasons which helped the client decide to do the deal with us.
So, when I have been asked this question, I dont have a simple answer. I tell a long story. In the story are lots of characters, from the client's side, from our side, from competitors, consultants and advisors and so on. There is relentless action - customer lobbing the ball over our heads, our team scampering and returning with a drop shot, competitors inching ahead only to be overtaken by us later, near death experiences, and ecstatic events making up the deal story.
The best practices come flooding, those wonderful insights which dawned eurekaesque on you as you cooled your heals between meetings in some seedy Extended Stay suite in small town America missing your family 3000 miles away and dreaming of the win that seemed ever elusive. So, when you tell yourself the story, when you tell other people the story, you begin to see those best practices, those critical innovations, those tipping points which enabled your win.
During this, something else amazing dawns on you. You realize how many different ways the client was playing along with you, was actually helping you win the deal, in the end almost longing for your win, almost as much as you.
A deal win is less a collection of events and practices than the collective experience lived together with the client. You win the deal with the client. The client wins the winning bidder that is you. What is born in the deal is not a contract but comfort and confidence in each other for a win-win outcome.
It's not unlike when you want to select a painter to paint your house. After all the stories, work samples, reference checks and price negotiations, it comes right down to which painter's face you like, who you feel is least likely to let you down. In the end it is down to feelings, hunches and risks for the client. Painting your house can go awfully wrong in spite of everything. And you know it well as you select the painter. I have alluded to this aspect in another post recently.
So, why do we win some and lose some. I think we win those deals where we are one team first internally within our company, then we become one team with the client, sincerely and purposefully. Then, together, we, the client and us, decide to tell the world, `well, guess what, we just decided to do a deal yesterday!!!`
Now, how much of that deal can you find out about, talking to the losers?
My presentation at APMP Dach Conference
I got an opportunity to present to about 100 proposal and bid management professionals at the APMP DACH conference in Munich last week on the topic Innovation and Bid Success. You can see the presentation slides here (though on my screen they looked blurred).
I was only reasonably satisfied with my presentation. The following were the issues with my presentation:
- The ideas were randomly strewn together. There was no story or flow from one slide to the next except in some cases.
- There were too many ideas on most slides. You cant expect to make more than 3 or 4 points per slide and still be understood.
- I was often saying things which were unrelated or off-tangent to what was on the slide. This does not always work, especially when the audience is not native English speaking and is searching hard to find your words on the slide
- I could have simplified some of the slides by converting text into pictures.
- I could have added some more background slides explaining my definition of bid management and so on.
Having said that, I enjoyed the experience and the interactions that followed.
I think I have definite ideas on improving my presentation and if I get another opportunity to present on the same topic, I am sure to do better.
The two faces of Bid Management
Organizing Roles are Bid Manager, Proposal Manager and the like. Thinking roles are Transition Expert, Solution Architect, Solution Integrator and such. The thinking role can also be called Solution Lead. The Solution Lead is constantly bothered with making the solution / offer to the client stand out. When I say solution, my definition is broad and covers every aspect of the solution (business requirements coverage, technology, delivery model, positioning, commercial model and so on). So, the design of everything that the client will base his decision on, is the Solution Lead's baby.
The Organizing role is Project Management to the core. Managing the bid as a project and making sure the plans and deliverables are moving forward is this person's job. The organizing role calls for managing all the deliverables that will eventually go to the client. Put differently, the Organizing role makes sure the proposal and the bid and questions on the RFP and so on are all getting delivered on time.
There appears to be a grey area in between...the solution lead is dependent on the organizing lead for getting his ideas on the deliverables. Similarly, the organizing lead is dependent on the solution lead for the structure / storyline of what needs to go to the client.
This interdependence is a fact of life and where this is managed well, bids succeed and where it is not, the results are painfully obvious. So, for effective working, the solution lead and organizing lead should be completely aligned and working closely with each other.
Should there be a hierarchical relationship between the two? YES. One of them - Solution Lead or Organizing Lead - should be named the Bid Manager.
Who should that be? On small deals where the Solution Lead is purely in an advisory role, the Bid Manager can be the Organizing Lead. On larger critical bids, the solution lead must be the Bid Manager. Of course, one or the other should have a dotted reporting to the bid manager, in all cases. This ensures that the decision maker is clear and the roles are transparent. This also ensures that while the Solution Lead is mainly thinking about the solution, since the Organizing Lead has a dotted reporting to the Bid Manager (Solution Lead), sufficient oversight responsibility and control is given to the Solution Lead and there exists clear accountability.
In all cases, the Bid Manager gets to pick his team and everyone reports to him for the duration of the bid.
Can Logic Win Deals?
It has been famously said (and by others like this and this) that we are more a rationalizing people than a rational people.
What it means is that we believe in something first before we build the reasons for believing in that something (here is how the dictionary defines them). If we were rational people, it would be the opposite. We would first see something, then we would form beliefs based on what we have seen. Now, if we are rationalizing people, we will first believe and then, go to the extreme of even keeping out information that contradicts our belief and seeking out evidence that supports our belief.
What does it mean to those of us trying to win deals - the possibility that the client decision could be a rationalizing one rather than a rational one!
Maybe one has to get their mindshare first and the facts can follow. One has to capture their imagination first, then the plans can follow. One has to woo them away by stories first, and the numbers can come slowly. If this were true, it has profound implications in my view. Logic, preparation, data and reasoning, thoroughness of the proposal, etc. can help rationalize a deal already won with passion or prior relationship or some other softer aspect, but these hard factors alone have NO CHANCE of winning the deal.
This is not as surprising as it appears. Imagine you are the client and you are contracting with someone who will build a house for you. More than any hard numbers or quotations or whatever it is, you will most likely go with the guy who wont cheat you, who appears sane and reasonable. You dont have to go through a threadbare analysis of his proposal to know you like him. You dont have to have a logical scoring mechanism before you know who you want. Most probably, if you are scoring the proposals after you have unknowingly made up your mind on these soft factors (appearance of trust for example), then you are going to score his proposal higher - thus rationalizing your decision.
So, since it appears quite intuitive and maybe people are really rationalizing beings rather than rational beings, how are we taking this aspect into account in our deals and pursuits? I can personally testify to these soft aspects like passion winning deals - having been part of some such experiences.
Maybe that is why I always have such a hard time giving an honest response to the question ' Why did you win such and such deal - what was different about your approach and our solution'.
Can I let the cat out - isnt everyone expecting us to have had solid differentiators?
If only I could start with things like 'we showed better team spirit...' or 'we really moved the customer from the first meeting' and so on and then, maybe, I will be getting closer to the truth.
Wanted: Detacious Bid Manager
These people really seem to know what kind of Bid Manager they want to hire...
I especially love the Key Attributes they describe, especially TENACITY and DETAIL HANDLING. I think they are spot on.
A Bid Manager has to be tenacious and cannot give up on any ideas or threads or messages or what have you so easily and he has to persist until the deal is brought home and the doors are locked. Yes, a bid manager has to be TENACIOUS.
Details, details! I would not call it DETAIL HANDLING as these people have. I would call it DETAIL ORIENTED or DETAIL DRIVEN or something like that...let me explain.
- The bid manager needs to be able to read the input documents in threadbare DETAIL.
- He needs to understand the customer needs, wants and expectations in great DETAIL.
- He needs to be able to give DETAILED directions and expectations to the bid team since there is little time or room for rework in a bid
- He needs to be able to review everything that comes from the team in DETAIL
- He needs to be able to patiently review, understand, redline and negotiate long contracts and bid documents in threadbare DETAIL
- He needs to be able to identify the good winning ideas from the average by getting into the DETAILS of the solutions and ideas from the team...
TENACIOUS and DETAILED. How does DETACIOUS sound?
How to Ask and Neil Postman - First Post
I discovered Neil Postman only recently, thanks to Vagabond Scholar and I was amazed by what he had to say in that brief excerpt about how to ask the right questions the right way.
Here is one gem:
Here is one gem:
The type of words used in a question will determine the type of the words used in the answer
Asking the right questions in a bid is critical. Especially those questions we ask of the Client or Customer. If we ask vaguely, they would answer vaguely.
If you simply ask 'Are there any interfaces' or 'Is there documentation available' or 'Is round the clock support required' or something like that, you will get a YES/NO answer.
(Almost) never ask a question which can be answered with a YES / NO. That is Bid Management 101.
(Almost) never ask a question which can be answered with a YES / NO. That is Bid Management 101.
Now, if you were to ask, 'Provide more details of the interfaces' you will get a standard document or write up that the client readily has, which might or might not have the information you need to make a good proposal with few guesses.
If you do better and ask 'Provide the following information on each interface' and then you specify what you need, a few things happen:
If you do better and ask 'Provide the following information on each interface' and then you specify what you need, a few things happen:
a) The client sees you think before you ask, that you are specific, and that you are detail oriented.
b) You make the client think about those 4 or 5 elements of information you need e.g. you have perhaps asked for the number of programs using that particular interface and the client realizes he does not know the answer to that important question. Your question may trigger thoughts which could lead to refinement of project scope and clarity of requirements and so on. Of course, you also earn the client's respect for making them think.
c) The client provides the precise information you really need to put together the proposal.
d) You often get both the generic write up (which the client would have sent in response to a vague question) and the specific information you asked for so there is more to base your proposal on.
Now, you could do one better by asking the question this way:
'Please provide the following information on each of the interfaces. The information is needed for us to submit a complete proposal for the reasons identified against each item'.
Then you lay out what you need and why you need it.
Let us say the RFP is huge and there is a lot of information out there in different documents including some information on those interfaces which you are so keen to pin down. Then, I would go one further and ask,
'In the RFP (provide document and section and page references for each instance), the following interfaces are listed. For each interface, the following information is already provided in the RFP (refer again in detail). Please provide:
a) A list of any other interfaces which may exist
b) For each interface, the following additional information.'
Against each piece of information you need above, you mention why you need it - as before.
Now, the client also sees you have read the RFP thoroughly, taken stock of what is already included, found what is really missing and relevant for making the proposal and then are asking the questions.
You just moved a bit ahead of your competitors.
I shall post more of Postman's insights and how they are applicable to Bid Management in the coming weeks.
I shall post more of Postman's insights and how they are applicable to Bid Management in the coming weeks.
Where are those RFPs?
Time for a rant post.
When I moved from Bid Management to Sales, one of the first things I realized is that those good, winnable, set-piece RFPs are not so easy to come by. Wait a minute, if I can do well in a certain type of RFP and give the customer a good proposal - that's got to be a win-win right? The market should be able to help make such things happen, i.e. bring the sellers and buyers together on those RFPs.
Well, reality is a bit different.
Well, reality is a bit different.
Often, the right vendors dont get the right RFPs. Especially in the private sector. The government RFPs are open to at least all who qualify. There are some qualification criteria and these are often meetable and so you will more than likely get an RFP that you want from a government agency than achieve the same from a private company. Of course, winning the bid is something else.
Why is this so? Because, in private enterprises, other factors come into play. There is no machine choosing all those blessed RFP recipients based on a set of rigid criteria. Here a human being or several of them are making judgements on whom to invite to a bid. Of course, the idea is that the human discretion applied reduces time wastage and helps lead to the correct vendor soon. The flip side is that the right vendor may not even be in the radar of the buyers because, often, they are unknown to them.
Why do corporations allow this apparently subjective process to live on? Because, it would appear, the comfort of a manager making the vendor selection is much more important than the vendor selection itself. In that sense, in the private sector, the decision maker is empowered. The underlying rationale is that vendor selection is only one tenth of the way in getting the project done. The remaining nine tenths depends on that chemistry between the buyer and the provider. So, while the government may end up selecting the right vendor, their project itself may not succeed, whereas the corporation typically gets its project done well with or without the best vendor.
Would you outsource Bid Management
I noticed a company in Netherlands offering Bid Management services to interested clients. Then I found one in Ireland, one in Australia and this one in the USA calls themselves Competition Managers.
No company I worked for has outsourced bid management but I have only worked for three till now.
So would I outsource Bid Management?
I had blogged earlier about the three different dimensions of bid managment, i.e. the strategic, the operational, and the creative. Maybe we can try to answer this question along these dimensions.
The Strategic Aspects of Bid Management: I would probably never want to outsource anyy of this. This will involve sharing company IP, your positioning within the bid, pricing information and decisions, organizational politics and most importantly, lots of sensitive information about your client and your relationship with the client. I can't imagine outsourcing and having to share any of this with my vendor - except perhaps to evaluate specific strategic ideas in a bid, for example to help forge a partnership with another vendor or to employ an expert consultant to do some specialized research or something like that.
The Operational Aspects of Bid Management: Here there is surely a lot more potential for outsourcing. For some operational activities, it might even be desirable to outsource, especially when the Bid Manager has to handle both the strategic and operational aspects which can be difficult. Here, the challenge to outsourcing, however, comes mainly because operational managment of a bid often requires an insider's networking ability and connects within the organization.
The creative Aspects of Bid Management: Here is where you have high potential for outsourcing, especially for everything that you submit as part of the bid such as proposals and presentations and collaterals and so on. An expert can surely fine tune the message and present it in the best way. Of course, the limitation here is clearly that the creative side of Bid Management also involves some critical oral presentations and so on, which you cant outsource. You have to defend your proposal with your client, no one else can do it for you.
So, outsourcing is possible in Bid Management, but...
Usain Bolt and Bid Management
Usain Bolt did it again last week in Berlin, smashing another world record and winning another gold. The guardian wrote,
Bolt got off the blocks quickly and opened up an easy, early lead. He had time, towards the end of the race, to appear to check the stadium clock before he crossed the finish line.
Why did he win? Of course, he ran fast and of course he trained hard, but to me, he won so handsomely because he got off to this rockety start.
Bid Managment is something like a race, and the start is the most important time in the race. In a bid, it is what you do with those first few days that makes or breaks a bid. After that, it is often difficult to catch up especially when you have solid competition. Of course, I mean those first few days in each stage of the bid i.e. after the RFP arrives, again after the client invites you for the defense meeting, then when the contract negotiation date is set, and so on.
If you use those first few days well, then your bid will be off to a running start. That is the crucial period when you can influence which way your bid will go. Let me illustrate with an example:
You get the RFP on a tuesday and you despatch it promptly to one part of your organization which you think can help you make a good bid. You don't consult anyone since it seems like a straightforward requirement. You also dont consider any alternate groups who could support you. You of course dont schedule an immediate quick review of the opportunity with your boss whom you hate (you conveniently forget that his one strength is that he actually knows who does what best in your company).
You just go with your hunch and send the RFP off to your contact. You wait for 24 hours and then give your buddy a call. He tells you he is yet to look at it since he is working on another proposal which would be done in just a couple of days more - by thursday! He asks you what the RFP is all about. You say it is something right up his alley! He asks how much time do we have. You say 3 weeks. Then he says, great...I will look at it the day after and surely come back to you before monday. You feel satisfied having spoken to the right guy and happy that he will start work at least on day 4 after the RFP has arrived. You also dont bother to read the RFP in too much detail since you feel so comfy and confident in your friend who has yet to read the RFP!
Now, sometimes there is a happy ending to this story. Mostly, there isn't. Murphy's law makes your contact hard to reach on monday and I dont have to tell you the rest of the story...
Anyhow, by monday lunch time, you are just one day away from the RFP deadline for questions, you are dealing with a nasty new group which is asking why you delayed getting the RFP to them, an angry boss who is screaming murder...and most importantly, you realize you have probably already lessened your chance of winning the deal...
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