Tool Box
Issue No. 15 - February/March 2004
Decision ...now what?
Getting the Most Benefit from your Proposals and Bids
by Adrian de Brenni
You, and your competitors, have spent a great deal of time and effort to respond to a request for tender. It’s a major project and your customer has just announced a selection. What do you do now?
Business development is not a finite game. Neither are business relationships. Let’s make five things clear.
The first is that you invest in preparing and submitting a proposal or bid to meet your objectives, and in most cases your prime objective will be to have your bid accepted (there can be various other reasons why proposals and bids are prepared).
The second is that what you do after the decision of which bid is selected will determine what value you ultimately get out of your investment. This applies whether your bid is selected or not.
The third is that knowing that you can achieve some value, regardless of which way the decision goes, must not reduce your efforts or hunger to get your bid accepted. It cannot be used as a justification for half—hearted efforts or a way of explaining a result of not being selected.
The fourth is that if you have done all you could have done, all that was in your control, and your bid is not accepted then you need to look forward. What can you do now – what must you do now. You (personally) have not ‘lost’. You will be disappointed and you will need to move on. You can’t always ‘win’ because you will only be allowed to offer what is a reasonable proposition for your organisation.
The fifth is that if your bid is accepted, there is a lot to do to ensure that you actually get the benefits you sought. If you think you have ‘won’ then you will have injected a position of finality in your thinking that can affect your returns.
If there is no finite game you cannot always declare winners and losers.
You aren’t selected
What do you do when your offer hasn’t been accepted? You’ve invested a great deal to get this far. Hang in there and extract a...
