I recently attended an APS Fellows event led by Robert Racine of Wipro entitled The Impact of Digital Technologies on future B2B, which I found incredibly well researched and very informative. Robert said many things that resonated with me, but the most profound was that ‘the only competitive advantage (left) is to learn faster than the…
I was watching MOTD this morning, and marveled at Burnley beating Liverpool 2 nil. At face value, Liverpool lost because Burnley scored more goals. But looking at the stats, Burnley had only 19% of the possession, the lowest ever percentage for a winning team in the Premier League. Burnley won because they had a plan…
In sales, we call this the bid process. It should be straightforward, but many in the profession recognise this is often the weakest link in the selling chain. Why? This is your opportunity to tell us… The Association of Professional Sales is launching a very short, anonymous survey and we would like your input. Click…
In the 15 years that we’ve enabled organisations to benchmark their bid capability, this subject (standard style and content) has pretty much always come out bottom of the list of things that need fixing. The question we ask people to answer is simple… How consistent is the ‘house style’ and standard content (capability statements and…
It is essential that any organisation, and its various components, plan ahead, and the function of bidding is no different. Planning ahead enables the bid function (or any function for that matter) to ensure it has the appropriate skills and resources available as and when needed, so that they are optimised, and deliver the best…
In an ideal world, we would be offered the training needed for most jobs we are asked to do, and working on bids should be no different. However, this is very often not the case. Perhaps because it is assumed that the primary skill needed is writing, and that we’re all taught that at school,…
The lack of clearly defined leadership of a bid is one of the major reasons bids are lost. Lack of leadership leads to lack of direction, and lack of support for people working on bids (some of whom are doing it in addition to their day jobs). Best-in-class bidding organisations attribute much of their success…
Best-in-class bid capability cannot be achieved without excellent processes. Sadly, I see numerous organisations who lack any process whatsoever, or have the process neatly hidden away in long-forgotten book shelves or servers. I have also seen many organisations who mistake process (intended to bring structure) with internal governance, which often results in corporate ‘treacle’ that focus…
The value an organisation places on bidding is the primary indicator as to their current capability. Sadly, I see bidding, and the people who work on bids as their primary function being criminally undervalued and unappreciated. A thankless task you might say! Best-in-class bidding organisations value bidding as business-critical within the overall business strategy, giving…
I’m an avid reader of sales related blogs, and there are some very good ones out there. They talk about many things; influencing, demand generation, selling value, process (buyer and seller), differentiation, and so on. All good stuff, and also very important, however… Isn’t it all about evidence? All these blogs got me thinking, and…