Evolving Bid Centres – Sausage Factories to Situational Supremacy

In this article, I use the term ‘Sausage Factory’ to mean an unappealing process to generate something familiar. In other words, following a mundane process without allowing any original thinking to permeate the process…

What is a Bid/Proposal Preparation Process?

“Developing a clear, comprehensive picture of what the client is seeking is the single most important part of your whole proposal preparation process - if you get the requirement wrong, you’ll get the solution wrong.” – McCann

It is the Bid Manager – supported by a virtual team – that manages the crafting and delivery of the provider’s proposal to the client, for review/adjudication.

In reality, a professional Bid Manager is a resource capable of playing many of the roles required during the bid process e.g. Capture Manager, Proposal Manager, Bid Support, Bid Assurance, QA, Reviewer etc. but actually focuses on:

• Relevant Bid Strategy & Capture Plan [Developed from the Account Plan]
• Bid Control Plan [Crafting and Management thereof]
• Resonating Win Themes / Golden Thread [Developed across the Submission Content]
• Validating that the solution supports the Client’s Business Strategy/Imperatives
• Relevant reviews/sign-offs
• Professional packaging
• Timeous submission
• Focuses on the crafting of client-resonating content.

Major takeaway point: A Bid Manager should never act alone… they manage the <virtual> Bid Team.

To enable the Bid Manager to perform his duties, at maximum effectiveness, requires the support of a professional Bid/Proposal Centre – professionally equipped with technology and relevant skilled resources. In many instances, it’s a sad fact that, in some instances, the Bid Manager plus all of the technology and resources ends up as a single person with a Laptop and Printer.

Thus, a starting point for an organisation, is to review its Bid Maturity and Positioning by testing against key impact areas:

A vision and planned migration are then capable of being defined with clarity and milestones. Typical topics/points/steps would be as follows:

• Assessment of the complete Sales Ecosystem (People, Process, Systems, Content) and gap assessment of professional Sales Enablement (effectiveness) – all contained in a ‘Report of Findings and Recommendations’
• Implementation of the agreed recommendations resulting from the report: Streamlined Sales Ecosystem – relevant to the particular parties (e.g. Account Managers, Sales Leadership, 3rd parties etc.)
• Creation of an enviable Centre of Excellence for Sales Service/Support (Bid Office/Centre and Sales Operations)
• Relevancy of activities/content along the Seller-Buyer journey (including meaningful Dashboards – focus on deals and not just a number)
• Robust alignment to the published business strategies and plans
• Review and streamlining for relevancy of Sales Methodologies and Processes – with inclusion across the complete sales ecosystem
• Development plan/s (NOT the outdated/forgettable standard sales training) for resources across the Sales Ecosystem with a heavy focus on opportunity win progression/support
• Crafting of meaningful Job Descriptions aligned to sensible performance metrics
• Positioning for roll-out of the Sales Services’ Centre of Excellence across the complete organisation's Regional Offices/OpCos.

Once the review has been undertaken it is then necessary to define the vision <this will be different for all organisations> of what their Bid Centre should look like, in terms of both technology, processes and resourcing. Again, reference should be made to the current maturity assessment to enable validation of the vision against the gap analysis.

If the Bid Centre functions like a ‘Sausage Machine’ then it’s a quick slippery slope to losing critical/strategic deals and the company being perceived as a cliché corporation.

Let’s now ponder Situational Awareness (SA)

“Although the term situational awareness usually pertains to the military and first responder space, it also plays a crucial role in the efficiency of public and private organizations such as large-scale businesses, government agencies, transportation and logistics, and many other industries.

For business leaders, situational awareness has come to mean having real-time visibility into operations in order to understand and control the business on a day-to-day basis. This allows entire teams to understand how their actions and decisions can impact the present and future well-being of an organization.” - Don Sharp, CEO, Coolfire Solutions.

What does Situational Awareness mean for a Bid/Proposal centre?

The Alpha Bid/Proposal Centre ensures that they are fully:

1. aligned with a professional sales ecosystem (actually sales and marketing ecosystem) and all of the revenue enablement elements and processes
2. are fully aligned with the clients’ needs and the meaningful discourse along the seller-buyer journey.

This results in the professional enablement of positive and meaningful business readiness <holistically both internal and external to the organisation> to drive a positive revenue growth trajectory.

Concluding: An Alpha Bid/Proposal Centre, when focusing on a single client <along with the virtual Bid Team>, has a holistic view of all aspects that impact moving a sales opportunity forward with completeness and accuracy. With all of the correct revenue enablement elements in place, the organisation will achieve bid/proposal centre supremacy.