Creating winning proposals can bring huge benefits to your business.
Tapping into a client that spends billions each year, offers a great way to scale up or grow your business.
I’m often asked by small businesses how to get started, so I’ve outlined below some of the key steps you can take straight away and points to consider to get you started.
Enjoy!
Getting Ready
- Creating a shortlist – How will the adverts for new work found and reviewed
- Allocating in your team – Who will be responsible for each of the stages, do they have enough time to complete them alongside their day job
- Creating a Bid Library – Who will track down, collate and keep updated a library of content
- Gathering Proof Points / Case Studies – Who will gather and create case studies that show case the company
- Pricing Strategy – How will each opportunity be priced, what data is currently held to calculate costs
- Policy and Procedures – What are already in place and being used and are any more needed, are they in a shareable format
Finding the Right Opportunities
- How often do you need to be looking for them and what process is in place to make quick but informed decisions as to whether it’s right for the business and you have the capacity and content to bid for it
- Using a paid for service – Is it time to invest in a paid for service, where daily or weekly alerts are emailed to you to review (not essential at all, but can save lots of time!)
- Market research in your current sector – Who are the competitors, what are their Unique Selling Points
- Moving into a new sector – Is there a natural fit for the business to move into a new sector, what would be needed to be successful
- Networking – Sometimes opportunities are made by “Direct Award” meaning they won’t even be advertised – is your business in the right place to be considered for these
Bid Management
- Once a suitable opportunity is found who will review the documents and project manage the submission
- Compliance matrix – A vital tool in managing tenders, this should be created early on and used by everyone
- SWOT Analysis – What does the business need to set them apart from the competitors
- Technical Review – What is being asked, how can it be answered well using proof points to illustrate key capabilities and experience
- Writing content – Each question is unique to that client, generic content should always be tailored to the specific bid
- Practicalities of project management and submission – Do not underestimate the importance of leaving enough time for review, proof reading, formatting and uploading
Next Steps
- Mobilisation – Refer to the submission when mobilising a contract, it outlines what has been committed to
- Budget creation – Likewise use the submission to create the budget for the contract, otherwise you could end up paying over the odds for added extras
- Always analyse each submission for lessons learnt, use feedback to improve the next one and to improve the business
- Competitor Analysis – In some instances the feedback can give you valuable insight into competitors pricing and technical strategy, use it to your advantage
Interested?
Get in contact today and discover how I can help your company to boost business.
