The Top 5 Mistake Bidders Make: No 2. Sell yourself – and prove it

In this third part of my blog series ‘Top 5 Mistakes Bidders Make’ I am looking at importance of creating your key messages and providing your buyer with evidence. 

It’s important to remember that bidding is just another step in Sales process.   For many reasons companies actually forget that bidding is an opportunity to sell what’s good about their company, they are too busy just trying to get the job done.  They forget their strengths, and more importantly even when they remember to put them in, they don’t provide any evidence. For example just telling your client you provide a quality service is meaningless.  Backing it up with evidence of externally accredited standards such as ISO, as well as client recommendations delivers a much stronger message.

When I work with companies to assist them with bids the first thing we do is hold a brainstorming session with as many of the team that can be spared.  Ideally this should include site, technical, commercial, and admin representatives as well as any business development staff.  The first step of this brainstorm is to detail what is good about your organisation – what should we be selling in the bid, where do you meet the clients’ requirements?  These are your key messages and should be developed as the theme throughout your bid documents.

The next step is to determine what evidence we have in place or what we require to put in the bid regarding our key messages.  The idea being, that between us we can come up with numerous examples of excellent practice to demonstrate to the buyer.  The team are then on hand to provide the evidence needed, or go out and find it.  Too often the bid process is under the ownership of just one or two individuals – but this should a team effort.  In my experience when everyone has contributed to a bid it has more chance of success.

What makes good evidence?  Anything that is third party accreditation is the strongest – externally accredited standards achieved, awards won, chartered memberships are all invaluable.  Qualitative evidence such as client commendations help to give credence to specific claims against achievement in identifiable projects.  Measures such as KPIs, time and cost targets are also excellent as they are a quantifiable demonstration of success.  Then you need to include your visual evidence – the photos, logos, charts, tables – anything to make your bid look pretty whilst also adding value!

So - as a team decide what it is that you need to sell about your company – your excellent service, your innovation, your people – and then demonstrate it in the form of hard evidence.