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... 

Maybe Usain Bolt would have done this differently. 

How to Pitch

Brian Sommer has this interesting post on his blog about how to pitch to an analyst or TPA. I believe his advice applies equally to pitching to a customer. 

With a customer, I would probably go further to say, we must speak much less with a customer (even about our great solutions and capabilities) than with an analyst. Let them speak about their problems, let them speak about their needs and only when all the facts are on the table, only when you are sure you have some kind of a solution for their problem, pitch the solution. 

Touch and Feel

Six different fighter jets from six different vendors will be flown by Indian Air Force (IAF) pilots in the process of evaluating an RFP. I wish the RFPs I get to work in were half as hair raising and exciting. 

Anyway, why does the IAF want to go through all this trouble? Because touch and feel is different from reading about something. This is the case not only in the case of fighter jets, but even in the case of an inane proposal for a web site development. The customer would love to touch and feel something beyond MS office documents. 

How do we give them that? You could build a prototype if you can afford to. You could demo them your software and let them play around with it. You could let them meet your project team - hey, even that is a kind of touch and feel. You could give them a sense of touch and feel by an elaborate walkthrough (not presentation) of your project plan. You could help them visualize remote delivery, for example. You could show them videos of your product in use....your tool running...whatever. 

Never underestimate the power of the touch and feel in responding to a bid. Having said that, invariably, only one or two vendors in any bid make the effort to tap touch and feel. Except when, like the IAF, the customer asks for the touch and feel experience.  

Though people buy shoes and even cars online, most buyers still like to touch and feel what they are buying. It is our job as bid managers to never ignore this and to always find creative ways to give the customer a Touch and Feel of whatever it is you are selling. 

eBay to Bid Management - A Conversation

I want to be a bid manager

Why do you want to be a bid manager?

I like to bid for things...

Such as?

Things,  you know...

Like?

like on eBay...

hmm...so you like eBay or you like bidding?

I like both...

why do you think you like both?

Because I am hanging around in eBay looking at things...and not only that...I also bid frequently. So, I guess I like both.

Fair enough. Lets talk about the bidding part.

What about it?

All.

Okay.

First of all, do you like placing bids or placing bids and winning.

I dont know man...I bid a lot, sometimes I win.

Does it bother you when you dont win.

Not really...there is lots more junk to bid on...

hmm...so, you just like bidding win or lose...

I guess.

You dont much care whether you win or lose.

Mostly...I agree.

When you do win, you do feel better...but only slightly.

Yup.

So, lets now talk about those few times you do win a bid.

What about them?

Do you know why you win those few times?

It varies.

Go on...

Sometimes I bid right...

Aha...bid right! How do you know you bid right?

Because I won!

So, you think you bid right just because you won?

Yes, how else could I have won?

You could have won because no one else wanted to bid... 

...

You could have won because you bid too high...

...

You could have won because you got lucky...

Come on, maan...dont say I was just stupid and lucky...

Or both.

Fair enough...it is your opinion...

It seems like a logical conclusion to me. 

Alright...what do you say, can I become a bid manager or not?

Of course you can...

Really? great...how do I do it...where do I start?

First...

Go on...

Forget all you think you know about bidding...

Why?

Because it wont help...and it will hurt!

Why so?

It would likely make you a disastrous bid manager.

That doesnt sound right...you said I could be a bid manager.

I did.

So...

I meant...that...anyone can be a bid manager.

Then why are you now saying I would make a disastrous bid manager.

You didnt let me finish...I said that would happen...IF you apply your ebay bidding experience to it....

okay...

Because...

Why did you stop?

Because, a bid manager bids to win.

...

Always.

Always?

 Almost.Unless he is bidding so he can win something bigger.

 Like a strategic bid?

Yes...you do know some big words dont you?

Was I right...?

Of course...a bid manager may bid for strategic reasons.

What else...

He bids with a plan.

What is that?

He thinks about bidding before actually bidding.

Why cant he just bid...

Because he is not bidding for fun.

So sad...no fun, eh?

I didnt say that...bid management is fun.

Then, what did you say?

I said, he bids because someone pays him to win business.

Okay...

And he does not bet on luck.

Everyone needs luck, maan.

Maybe...

Then?

He does not bet on it...

Why not...

Because he wont keep his job for long.

Why not...

Do you remember what I just told you...

Yes...someone pays him to win...

Good...you are smart, arent you?

(Blush)...

APMP - Association of Proposal Management Professionals

The Leading organization for proposal management is the APMP.  

They used to have lots of good free content, but now it seems like most of that is members only. 

There is still the great page with tips for MS Office Users and there is also the page with nice podcasts 

The APMP forum, however, sucks and you likely wont notice any new posts unless you visited it two haircuts ago!

Proposals and Passion

Defending a proposal in front of the client is exhilarating, though it took me a while to experience it first hand. Doing back office pre-sales and proposal support for years, I could never experience the sheer high of seeing my proposal flower beautifully in a defense meeting. Of course, sometimes, these meetings end up in crash landings and disasters. I keep wondering what makes some proposal defense meetings work and why sometimes these meetings fail miserably.

Proposal defense is as much about the hard facts being presented as the passion with which the presentation has been prepared and presented. It is thus not very different from a theatre or musical performance. We then need to think of how to maximize this passion. Passion cannot easily be faked. Passion comes from being intimate with a subject, in this case the proposal. You cannot get intimate with a proposal without having first spent quality time together with the proposal.

The bid manager alone cannot get intimate with the proposal and hope to demonstrate this passion for the proposal to the client. Each member of the proposal team has to show his/her intimacy with the proposal, in their own separate distinct ways. This is why it is not such a great idea to have a Senior Executive, who has no clue about the contours of a proposal, attending a proposal defense meeting. Everyone in a proposal defense team has to have spent quality time together with the proposal getting to know her nuances. This sort of immersion in a proposal's content, debating its various merits and demerits, understanding each other's feelings for the proposal and the solution being proposed, challenging and sometimes getting truly confrontational in picking holes in the proposal - all contribute to forming this passionate view of your proposal, your solution.

Once this penance of intimacy with the proposal for a substantial period of time has been fulfilled, the client will surely see it on the proposal defense day effortlessly. Words will flow beautifully, ideas will string together symphonically and then the proposal will truly come alive...and the client could begin liking the proposal naturally and you for creating it...The customer will want to be on your side, and the rest is easy.

Neutral Navigators

Sharon Drew Morgan has a post in her blog with this fascinating passage:

``...it’s quite possible to have an understanding of the decision making process – the route that buyers must make through their unique decision criteria – and recalibrate our jobs to be not only solution providers, but neutral navigators – Buying Facilitators if you will – much like a buddy to a sight-impaired friend who knows where they want to go but doesn’t know the exact route to get there.``

I have often tried to be this neutral navigator to clients. There was a European client who rightly decided to save a pile of TPA (Third Party Advisors - see here for what a TPA does and one TPA´s recent perspective on their changing role ) consulting money by attempting to do an outsourcing deal with internal staff. They formed a project team and gave them sufficient operational freedom to do what it took to get the project done. The only problem was, the project team did not know how to do it. So, they took their time, met with vendors who gave them bits and pieces of information and over time, put together a solution they could bid out.

As bid manager for one of the vendors in the fray, I recognized a great opportunity to be the ´neutral navigator´ or ´buddy´ to the project team. While I still had to manage my bid and my deliverables, I realized I could play a strategic role for our company by advising the client as a truly neutral party. I would help them with templates and checklists and processes and frank advice (even things which would place our company on a weaker wicket competitively) on a variety of topics without selling them anything, activities which would appear to be strictly not in my role as bid as a bid manager. Over time, the client´s project team began to trust me and would take my opinion seriously before deciding something in the project.

Following that phase, the client bid the solution out to 4 vendors including us. What I noticed, when for example I was defending our proposal, was the amount of credibility I seemed to carry. I could coast through some of the uncomfortable moments (gaps in our ability to deliver, our readiness to deliver and son on) because of the trust the client seemed to place in me. We won almost half of the business eventually bid out.

When I look back, it was not the proposal or the bid documents or the pricing that made the crucial difference in that bid, it was that short period playing neutral advisor to the client...

In the beginning,

it is appropriate to talk about my beginning. I have been doing Proposal and Bid Management (there is a difference between those two, more about which later) for more than ten years now. Most of these bids were in the Outsourcing and IT Services business. Most of the projects or jobs we were bidding for were with large multinational corporations, including the Fortune 500. These clients were all over the world though mainly headquartered in the USA, Europe, and Japan. The competivive and single source Bids I have participated in ranged in value from US $50000 to US $ 200 Million. The Bids ranged from Outsourcing and Offshoring of IT and Engineering Services to Engineering Design of mechanical parts to development of custom IT solutions to solve business problems and needs.

To me, Bid Management has several dimensions. First, Bid Management provides the thought leadership for the bid (which is strategic, which has decision making authority, which requires deep and experiential knowledge of the subject matter). Second, it means managing the bid operationally (often called proposal management since the bid invariably consists of a significant proposalling phase, about which you can learn at the premier organization for proposal managers, APMP ) and third, managing the creative aspects of it (writing or deciding the key winning messages and the executive summary, signing off on the bid documents, presenting the bid to the client and so on). - Of course, I must state that every organization treats these roles differently and they are often attached to different organization roles, such as for example business development or sales or solution architecting or presales. Also, every organization has a different terminology and nomenclature which will hopefully achieve some level of standardization over time. -

I have played these different roles separately at times and often together in the same bid. So, in my blog you will find aspects dealing with each of these 3 dimensions of Bid Management

The Strategic
The Operational
The Creative

Why do I want to blog about Bid Management?

I am writing this so I can clarify and crystallize my opinion and improve my knowledge. I am also hoping that presales, proposal and bid management and sales professionals (especially rookees trying to find their feet in these professions) will find something of interest here, including hopefully, the ability to electronically interact with similarly hazardously occupied souls.

I am also writing this because I believe bid managers play a crucial yet little understood role in business (and dare I say, Society) and I would like to lay my little brick in building up the recognition of this profession and its practitioners.

And mainly because, Bid Management has given me immense intellectual satisfaction and thrill - I want to tell my stories - and maybe you will tell me yours.