Why honesty is the best policy in a proposal

When writing a proposal, it can be tempting to ignore the areas where you know you’re going to come up short. What if you have less experience than competitors, or a less than stellar track record with a customer you are desperate to retain? Unfortunately, glossing over the issue isn't going to work.

A study by John Paul MacDuffie of Pennsylvania University, published in the Journal of International Business Studies in 2011, identified three types of trust in business relationships:

1.     Contractual trust;

2.     Trust in competence, and

3.     Goodwill.

Competitive tendering is built on the idea of “contractual trust”. In other words, as a buyer, I trust you if you meet my minimum standards; are prepared to sign a contract that binds you to these standards; and where I have legal redress if you don’t perform.

The other types of trust – competence and goodwill – are harder to establish, because they are based on how you operate on the job. While presenting past performance data does go some way towards establishing trust in your competence, it’s harder to foster goodwill in a proposal, particularly if you have no prior track record with the customer.

But there is a way to do it.

Recently the business media was all hot and bothered about a 22 year old intern from San Diego called Matthew Ross, who the Wall Street investment banking fraternity were falling all over themselves to hire. What was so special about Ross, who was just as inexperienced as the thousands of other American undergraduates that apply for internships? Here is how he sold himself:

"I won't waste your time inflating my credentials, throwing around exaggerated job titles, or feeding you a line of crap about how my past experiences and skill set align perfectly for an investment banking partnership.

The truth is, I have no unbelievably special skills...but I do have a near perfect GPA (grade point average) and will work hard for you. I have no qualms about fetching coffee, shining shoes or picking up laundry, and will work for next to nothing."

A proposal is a lot like a job application. Any time your proposal is not congruent with who you are and what you can do, it’s like an instant red flag that will send the buyer searching for other holes. There's a good chance you will spook them and never know why they suddenly went cold on you.

I know incumbents who have lost business simply because they haven't owned up to problems that are obvious to everyone.

Likewise, I have seen long shots win by being up-front and honest about their shortcomings, and by demonstrating a willingness to work and learn (just like Matthew Ross did).

Selling is a kind of energy exchange; it is always about people and what they believe about you.

Customers will expect you to have the right skills, products and services, but they place a higher value on attitude than you might think.

That’s because nothing is ever perfect. When things go wrong in the job, or the relationship - as they inevitably will - they want to know you're the kind of person they can work with to find a solution. 

This is tip no. 2 in my most popular e-book, 10 Easy Ways To Write A Better Proposal Today.

Why it’s good to be an underdog

If you want to win, you must be dominant, all-powerful and able to effortlessly crush your opponent, right? Well, not always. It turns out that there's a very special place in our hearts for winners who don't have those qualities, and who struggle valiantly against the odds. 

"The dam is broken.....the 62-year drought is over….". So declared the television commentator two minutes before the siren sounded on the 2016 Grand Final last Saturday, when the Western Bulldogs kicked the final goal that gave them an unbeatable lead over match favourites, the Sydney Swans. 

Dogs by name, and underdogs by nature, the Western Bulldogs hadn't won a premiership since 1954. They had already pulled of a coup just by making it to the Grand Final.

Though widely considered unlikely to win, the Bulldogs fought their way to a 22-point victory.

With it came the cheers and tears of thousands of people – including many, like me, who aren't even football fans. Why were we so affected by their win?

Some of the most famous movies of all time tell the real-life stories of underdogs who triumphed over adversity, including Rocky (inspired by the story of Chuck Wepner), 8 Mile, Erin Brockovich and my personal favourite, Eddie the Eagle. We see our own hopes and dreams reflected in their epic struggles.

Seeing others at a disadvantage also tends to ignite our sense of fairness and justice. This means that supporting the underdog is one way that we can confront and reduce inequality.

In fact, even suggesting that a team or person is the underdog makes us more likely to support them. In study published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, researchers asked 71 participants to imagine that two teams — one ranked higher than the other — were going to compete in an Olympic swimming event. In all scenarios, the participants said they would prefer to see the lower-ranked team prevail over the higher-ranked one, even if that higher-ranked team had been the underdog in a previous scenario.

We also relate better to underdogs, seeing them as more “real”, or more authentic. In another study, psychology professor Joseph Vandello from the University of Florida asked students to watch a basketball game in which they were told that one team was the favorite. After watching the footage, the viewers characterised the underdog team as having less “intelligence” and “talent,” but more “hustle” and “heart”. Again, this pattern was consistent even when the scenario was flipped so that the other team was framed as the underdog. The viewers simply liked the people who were losing more than they liked the winners.

What does this mean for you and your team?

If you’re already the underdogs, take heart.

In his book David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits and the Art of Battling Giants, Malcolm Gladwell says that bigger is only better up to a point.

Gladwell identifies 7 characteristics of the "winning little guy", including an honourable reputation; doing everything in in person; determination; empathy; teamwork; and being both passionate and likeable.

To me, this also provides an excellent summary of the qualities of every winning bid team I have ever worked with, no matter how large or small.

But if you’re not the underdogs, take this as a warning.  

If your team already feels like they are the sure-fire winners, and they are in any way arrogant or entitled about this, you may have a problem on your hands.

Just like a Grand Final, one thing is for sure in a competitive pitch - it isn't over until it's over.

The culture you want for your pitch team is one where the prevailing conversation is about what we can do for the customer, not what's in it for us.

So how can you get your team to think and behave like underdogs, and harness the extra energy and empathy that comes along with it? Here are five values and behaviours to encourage. 

1. Ask more questions. Underdogs assume less, read the briefing thoroughly, and carefully flag any issues and concerns.
2. Speak with humility. Underdogs don't assume they already know everything, and they treat the opportunity (and the customer) with respect.
3. Work harder. Underdogs are in early, stay late, and put in the hard yards when they need to. They don’t leave the work to someone else. 
4. Work as a team. Underdogs don't blame each other when things get difficult, and adversity will bring them even closer together, rather than pulling them apart.
5. Express thanks and gratitude. Underdogs are excited just to be on the journey, and aren't solely focused on the destination or the win.

Is your customer a promoter or a preventer?

We buy things for two main reasons; either to enhance our lives, or to protect what is already important to us. Psychologists have found that in practice, most of us place greater value on one outcome over the other. When you know whether your customer sees things things primarily through the  “promotion” lens (how they will end up better off) or the “prevention” lens (how they can hang onto what they already have), you can frame what you do so they are more likely to buy it.

Customers who have a promotion bias will find different kinds of arguments and evidence persuasive in a sales pitch, when compared to customers who have a prevention bias. As a result, subtle changes in language can have a profound effect on your ability to get through to them.

Here’s a summary of these two personality-driven perception lenses, as explained by psychologist and author Heidi Grant Halvorson, and to which I’ve added a sales perspective.

In her book No One Understands You And What To Do About It, Halvorson says that neither one of these is better than the other; they’re just different ways of thinking and communicating.

Which of these best describes you? Which best describes your customer?

According to Halvorson, customers with a promotion lens are looking for reasons to say yes, whereas those with a prevention lens are searching for reasons to say no.

Therefore, if you’re working with a customer with a prevention bias, reframe an opportunity for gain as an opportunity for avoiding loss. For example, you might think of the technology upgrade you’re pitching as a chance to get in front of the market, but a prevention-biased customer will respond better if you phrase it as a way to “not fall behind”.

Miscommunication is frustrating, and it’s also a deal-killer. This model of perception bias offers a surprisingly simple fix for this problem, and shows how talking your customer’s internal language will help you to sell more, influence more and get to “yes” more often.

The problem with Unique Selling Propositions

For a long time, the world of marketing was very taken with the idea of unique selling propositions. The idea was to find the thing that's unique about you, compared to other people in your market, and position yourself on that.

The term unique selling proposition (USP) was first proposed in the 1940s as a theory to explain why certain advertising campaigns were successful in convincing consumers to switch brands.

An example is M&M’s classic 1954 slogan “Melts in your mouth, not in your hand".

Like a lot of consumer marketing concepts, the Unique Selling Proposition doesn’t translate well into a business-to-business environment. There are four primary reasons for this:

1. Unique Selling Propositions encourage us to look externally for validation, by comparing ourselves with competitors as the main yardstick of our own value. This is isn’t very helpful, and it also has negative psychological effects.
2. A Unique Selling Proposition is often very superficial; really just an attention-grabbing slogan, like “melts in your mouth, not in your hand”. This is fine if you’re selling a $2 packet of chocolates, but doesn’t work so well when you’re selling a $2m IT system or $200m construction program.
3. Business development in business-to-business markets is way more complex than simply “selling”. The purpose of business development is to create value that customers can buy, and selling is just the transactional bit that follows on from that. 
4. Finally, just because something is unique, doesn’t make it valuable. The world is full of unique things that no one bought, like Jell-O for salads, toaster bacon, and blue French fries. (All real products that tested well with consumers, but tanked horribly when they made it into retail stores.)

Last week, I looked at how the sales environment is changing due to the effects of market disruption.

In this new sales environment, you can forget about unique selling propositions. What you need to find is your commercial value proposition; the connection between what you know and can do, and what makes commercial sense for your customers to buy.

Robyn Haydon is a business development consultant specialising in business that is won through competitive bids and tenders. Her clients have won and retained hundreds of millions of dollars worth of business with many of Australia’s largest corporate and government buyers. Is it time to pimp your proposals? Stop wasting time and money on proposals that go nowhere. The Pimp My Proposals program will give you the feedback, content and structure you need to build compelling proposals that win business. Learn what you’re doing wrong, and how to fix it. Email info@robynhaydon.com or call 03 9557 4585 to find out more.

Three reasons why incumbents are more at risk than they think

I have a confession to make – I’m tragically addicted to politics. Elections are my kind of competition. Some people live for the AFL Grand Final. Others obsess over Eurovision or MasterChef. Me, I’m an election groupie.

Every three years, when the Federal election rolls around, I stalk proudly through the gaggle of political party volunteers at the local polling booth – accepting one or two how-to-vote leaflets and loudly refusing others – to place my very important vote.

As soon as the vote count starts, I settle in with snacks for a nice long stretch of channel surfing, shouting at the commentators and throwing things at the TV when the count doesn’t go my way. I love the process, but what I’m really hanging out for is the end result, and the leaders’ concession and victory speeches. 

This year, I stayed up for a very long time. Maybe you did too. And wasn’t it frustrating? We didn’t get a victory speech that night, or even the next morning. We were left hanging for a week before we knew the likely outcome of the election – the government returned to office by the narrowest of margins.

We were told the election would be close, but not so close that it would eventually come down to week’s worth of postal votes.

What happened?

Incumbents are more vulnerable than they think. This is true whether you’re a political party or a contractor selling commercial goods and services.

Here are three things that every incumbent can learn from the very close result of the Australian Federal election – a result that could easily have gone another way.

1. Incumbents are always vulnerable to a protest vote. The customer, in this case the electorate, had already seen what this government could do and many of them weren’t happy about it. With only a single term under their belts, we also still remember the alternative, and it seems we weren't happy with them either, resulting in a large rise in votes for Independents and for the Greens. By Monday, with 80% of the vote counted, nearly a quarter of Australians had given their votes to an independent or minor party, with the Coalition registering a primary vote of only 42.1 percent - its fourth lowest result for the past 60 years.
2.  An incumbent’s team listens only to the good news, and blocks out everything else. In this election, it has been suggested that the Coalition was so enamoured of its own internal polling – which optimistically predicted that the party would be returned to government by a large margin - that it even convinced the majority of the media this was a foregone conclusion. The result was much closer than the Coalition’s polling anticipated, and the fallout and recriminations have been difficult for its leadership to handle.

1. An incumbent's program of work and track record are visible and open to scrutiny. Like it or not, this makes it very easy for an opponent to find the patterns, holes and gaps and to mount an effective attack, as Labor did with the Medicare, or “Mediscare”, campaign.

What can we learn from these results?

• The time to start campaigning again to win an election is the day you form a government.
• The time to start campaigning to retain a customer is the day you sign the contract.

Incumbents ignore this, and believe their own hype, at their peril.

Robyn Haydon is a business development consultant specialising in business that is won through competitive bids and tenders. Her clients have won and retained hundreds of millions of dollars worth of business with many of Australia’s largest corporate and government buyers. Is it time to pimp your proposals? Stop wasting time and money on proposals that go nowhere. The Pimp My Proposals program will give you the feedback, content and structure you need to build compelling proposals that win business. Learn what you’re doing wrong, and how to fix it. Email info@robynhaydon.com or call 03 9557 4585 to find out more.

We are what we buy

“Who am I?”

It’s a big question, and one that has occupied psychologists and sociologists for hundreds of years.

A more useful question, when it comes to buying and selling, is “How do I see myself, and who do I want to be?”

We all have an identity that we want to show to the world, and we confirm that identity through our actions. Therefore, what we buy, and who we buy it from, both affect the way we see ourselves.

Let’s look at a few examples.

• If you’d like to be seen as a good person, someone with integrity, you might be on the lookout for ways to “do the right thing” – probably without even realising it. As a result, you might find that you end up buying ethical, environmentally or “green” products and services over alternative options.
• If you’d like to be known as a generous person, someone who gives to others, you might find yourself sponsoring a child in a developing country, or contributing to (and sharing) online fundraising campaigns.
• If you’d like to be seen as a frugal person, who is good with money, you might enjoy sniffing out a bargain and sharing these good deals with your admiring friends and family.
• Or if you want to be seen as a productive person, who gets things done, you might like trying out and talking about gadgets that help you to do more in a day and to make the most of your time.

We all buy things, and we all play roles while we’re doing it.

In going about your day-to-day purchases, you probably don't give a lot of thought or attention to this.

However, identity shapes all of our buying decisions – both good and bad. How does your identity affect what and how you buy?

This is an extract from my new book Value: how to talk about what you do so people want to buy it. To order your copy, go to http://www.robynhaydon.com/buy/

Value: how to talk about what you do so people want to buy it

Today I am proud to announce the release of my new book, Value – How To Talk About What You Do So People Want To Buy It.

It’s the final book in my Winning Business series, which also includes The Shredder Test, a step-by-step guide to writing winning proposals, and Winning Again, which reveals how to retain your most important contracts and customers.

For almost two decades, I’ve been helping suppliers to win multi-million-dollar contracts in complex services industries.

Through this, I’ve learned a lot about how business and government customers buy, including why they say “no” to offers that seem to make perfect, logical sense.

This book focuses on value creation, which is the key to successful new business pursuits.

A recent study on sales execution trends by Qvidian found that only 63% of salespeople actually make their targets, with pursuits ending in “no decision” the major reason for the shortfall. While four in 10 salespeople thought that an inability to effectively communicate value might be behind their lack of success, only half of these people also chose this as a skill they needed to work on.

Understanding your true value is the key to unlocking more of what you want–  more customers, higher margins, and more rewarding work.

It is my hope that Value will help you to look at what you do in an entirely new way: from the perspective of how it creates commercial value for customers. Reading Value is like being a fly on the wall of your prospect’s office, while they talk about a problem you have the perfect solution for. It could just make the difference between sealing the deal,  or losing, as so many do, to “no decision”.

If you have ever missed out on an opportunity that you really deserved to win, ever struggled to explain what you offer to people who just don’t seem to understand, or if you’ve ever seen prospective customers stubbornly go down a path that you know is not right for them – then this is the book for you.

You can buy your copy here. I hope you enjoy Value as much as I’ve enjoyed writing it for you.

Robyn Haydon is a business development consultant specialising in business that is won through competitive bids and tenders. Her clients have won and retained hundreds of millions of dollars worth of business with many of Australia’s largest corporate and government buyers. Is it time to pimp your proposals? Stop wasting time and money on proposals that go nowhere. The Pimp My Proposals program will give you the feedback, content and structure you need to build compelling proposals that win business. Learn what you’re doing wrong, and how to fix it. Email info@robynhaydon.com or call 03 9557 4585 to find out more.

Can you really bid less but win more?

“Sales is a numbers game”. This saying comes from a time when relationship selling was king, deals were done on a handshake, and the more people you got in front of, the luckier you became.

However, it is harmful advice when it comes to competitive tenders.

Submitting competitive tenders is like feeding coins into a slot machine; your chances of winning don’t get any better as your supply of coins goes down.

In fact, the opposite is true.

The more tenders you invest time and effort in, but don’t win, the more discouraged you're likely to get. Buyers don’t give you good feedback – or any feedback. All you’re really doing is depleting your most important currency, the energy, enthusiasm and engagement of your team, for absolutely zero return.

People will try to tell you you’re not winning because you “didn’t write the tender”, meaning the buyer didn’t go to market based on the specifications you gave them. This is baloney too. Buyers are smarter than that; they won’t deliberately favour one vendor. And I've known plenty of people who have won competitive tenders without any prior relationship with the buyer.

Most likely, the problem is that you’re submitting so many tenders that they look like brochures – carbon copies full of cut-and-pasted content. Or, they are simply responses to the tender specification – which is what everyone else is doing too – without any real strategy to win.

Over the years I’ve noticed a marked difference in the way that clear winners approach bids and tender proposals, while others are setting themselves up to lose. It starts with how (and where) we spend our time.

Spend more of your time up front on the thinking work, without jumping straight into the “doing” work, and good things will happen. You’ll get better engagement from your team. You’ll impress buyers. And you’ll win more often. And that’s a win for everyone.

Robyn Haydon is a business development consultant specialising in business that is won through competitive bids and tenders. Her clients have won and retained hundreds of millions of dollars worth of business with many of Australia’s largest corporate and government buyers. Is it time to pimp your proposals? Stop wasting time and money on proposals that go nowhere. The Pimp My Proposals program will give you the feedback, content and structure you need to build compelling proposals that win business. Learn what you’re doing wrong, and how to fix it. Email info@robynhaydon.com or call 03 9557 4585 to find out more.

Who moved our cheese?

It takes time and effort to build new products and services, and to position for new business – all without a guarantee of return. So when times are good and the work is flowing in, it’s tempting to push this down the list of priorities. But fortunes can change quickly. And when they do, having a solid backup plan can mean the difference between hope and devastation.

During the week, the business press announced that supermarket giant Coles was replacing Bega, its current private label supplier for cheese, with a new supplier, Murray Goulburn, in a five year deal worth $130 million.

Loss of a contract this size isn’t great news for any company, especially a publicly listed one. However, Bega's CEO Aidan Coleman was on the front foot quickly with an explanation to the market about how Bega planned to replace the loss of revenue.

Supermarket private label contracts typically have low margins, although the contracts may be longer than usual (five or ten years).

In announcing the change, Coleman explained that Bega had been preparing for the loss of the Coles business, and was driving its brand towards higher margin and higher value added products.

For example, in late October, Bega announced a joint venture with Blackmores to produce infant formula. If you've been following the news recently, you will have seen that retailers have had to ration the sale of infant formula in Australian stores due to high demand from people buying to export back to China, following health scares in China with locally-produced formula.

Infant formula generates substantially higher margins and value add than private-label cheese products. Bega thinks it will be able to divert about $60 million worth of cheese inventory into the infant formula business, potentially compensating for the loss of the Coles contract. And although losses always hurt, at the same time, you can feel how excited Coleman is about the future of his business entering into this new market.

Only work you love and want more of is going to grow your margins.

Good, solid bread and butter work – although I’m sure you appreciate it – probably doesn’t fire your imagination any more.

And “marginal” work, like this private-label example, often doesn’t generate a good enough return compared to the productive capacity that is expended in delivering it.

We can’t control everything in business, but we can chart a course for where we want to go. 

Robyn Haydon is a business development consultant specialising in business that is won through competitive bids and tenders. Her clients have won and retained hundreds of millions of dollars worth of business with many of Australia’s largest corporate and government buyers. Do you have ambitious growth targets this year? Keen to win the business you REALLY want, at the margins you want, and have more fun doing it? Let me help you to design and build an offer that is so commercially valuable, your target customers would be crazy not to buy it. For a copy of the white paper Pole Position - How to Achieve New Business Success, email info@robynhaydon.com or call 03 9557 4585 to find out more.

Structural barriers to business development

Legendary management guru Peter Drucker said that the purpose of a business is to create a customer. But in practice, what many of us spend our time doing seems to run contrary to this purpose.

Last week we considered the idea that there are thee primary internal barriers to business development – practical, structural and psychological – and looked at the practical barriers. These include lack of access to product information, marketing collateral, competitor research, or any one of a number of other things that we think we "need" in order to get out there and talk to people about what we offer.

This week, let’s look at the structural barriers. These are things that we have created - usually for what seemed like a sensible reason at the time - that actually end up getting in the way of our business development success. Here are a few examples:

·      Treating business development as a function, rather than a goal. This is what happens when we employ a salesperson or business development person and expect them to carry everything, while the rest of the business sees their responsibilities as simply to “deliver” on what they sell. This just doesn't work anymore (if it ever did). The most successful businesses are those where everybody is responsible in some way for business development. There’s no way that one person, or even a small group of people, can do everything that's necessary to create, present and deliver value for a customer.

·      Process for the sake of process.  Particularly in larger and older businesses, it’s common to see processes that have been set up to suit the business, and not the customer.  When someone says "this is the way we've always done things", it's a sign that this is an area that has become internally focused and is probably detrimental to delivering value for a customer. Processes should make things easier, but in fact often make them damned difficult.

·      The way we spend our time. Most of us spend way too much time on things that actually aren't very important, and not enough time on things that are. How much of your day is spent answering email? In meetings? Completing reports? Resolving problems for other people? Now, how much of your time do you get to spend on actually building new things, and creating value for customers? When we spend all our time reacting to things, we’re not creating anything new. And when we’re not creating anything new, we are not building anything valuable for customers to buy.

Is your structure holding you back from achieving the success you deserve? Peel back some layers and ask whether they are creating, or inhibiting, value for customers.

Robyn Haydon is a business development consultant specialising in business that is won through competitive bids and tenders. Her clients have won and retained hundreds of millions of dollars worth of business with many of Australia’s largest corporate and government buyers. Had a tough year? Missed out on business you really wanted? Let’s make sure 2016 is different. The Pole Position program will position you to win the opportunities on your radar for next year. Email info@robynhaydon.com or call 03 9557 4585 to find out more.

Get out there and get on with it!

When it comes to new business development, there are a number of barriers that we will all face from time to time.

These can be internal barriers –the barriers that we make ourselves, or that come from within us – or external barriers, which come from outside of ourselves, including the barriers put up for us by customers and competitors.

One of the internal barriers is what I call “practical barriers”. This includes lack of access to product information, marketing collateral, competitor research, or any one of a number of other things that we think we "need" in order to get out there and talk to people about what we do and offer.

It can be hard to argue with practical barriers. After all, a thing either exists or it doesn’t.

However, when our reluctance to “do” business development is primarily about our lack of brochures, slide decks, white papers, and those sorts of things, what this really means is that we’re not yet sold on what we are supposed to be selling.

The first sale is always to yourself. If you aren’t sold, no one else will be.

In their book Conviction, Peter Cook, Matt Church and Michael Henderson explain that it is more likely to be the person who is doing the selling who has objections – ‘too pricey, don’t need it, not now’ – instead of the customer.

In place of “objections”, they say, what customers really have is questions, considerations, alternative options and time. These are all things that we need to manage when educating ourselves about what are selling, and all of it comes before we try to educate a customer.

According to a study conducted by B2B research and advisory firm Sirius Decisions, up to 70% of content and collateral created marketing departments in business-to-business organisations sits unused anyway.

Practical barriers aren’t really barriers – they are more like “objections” we have to the idea of getting out there and talking to people about what we do.

Worry less about how good your PowerPoint slides are and think more about the value in what you’re selling.

Robyn Haydon is a business development consultant specialising in business that is won through competitive bids and tenders. Her clients have won and retained hundreds of millions of dollars worth of business with many of Australia’s largest corporate and government buyers. Had a tough year? Missed out on business you really wanted? Let’s make sure 2016 is different. The Pole Position program will position you to win the opportunities on your radar for next year. Email info@robynhaydon.com or call 03 9557 4585 to find out more.

What do customers really want?

What do customers really want? It’s a tantalising question, and the central mission of business development. Get it right, every time, and you'll have more business than you know what to do with.

But like the Holy Grail, the answer to this question can be frustratingly elusive. There are many reasons why this is the case. Here are just a few of them:

Personal differences. Like you and I, customers are complex beings. They don't all want the same thing. It doesn't matter if they have the same problems, are in the same industry, or work for the same company.

Changing priorities. Even the exact same buyer may want one thing one day, but something else the next.

Invisible forces. We can never possibly hope to know everything there is to know about another human being. We can't see everything that's going on inside their world or their head.

People have tried many things to overcome these problems; asking customers what they want, poring over a customer’s mission and vision statements, and telling them what other customers have done in similar situations. Some of this can be useful, to a point. But it is not without its problems. 

For example, have you ever bought a present for a friend who admired something in a shop window, only to find that when you give it to them, six months later, they have no recollection of it and it’s pretty clear that they don’t really want it?

Market research can be a bit like this. It turns out that market research (asking customers what they want) is a poor predictor of what they will actually buy. According to AcuPoll, as many as 95% of new products introduced each year fail. Time Magazine lists the top 3 product failures of all time as the Ford Edsell (1957), which cost $2.9 billion in today’s terms; the Hewlett Touch Pad (2011), which was discontinued almost immediately at a cost of $885m in assets and $755m in wind-down costs; and Crystal Pepsi (1992). All were backed by expensive market research and extensive marketing campaigns.

One useful way to figure out what customers really want is to watch what they do, not what they say.

Yesterday, The Age reported that Spotless Group lost a 31-year contract at Suncorp Stadium to the much smaller O'Brien Group (which employs 6,000 people to Spotless' 30,000) as part of an international tender. Suncorp said that the winning O'Brien bid "best met all key criteria" and described them as innovators, with a bid that included a plan to redevelop Suncorp's 70 bars and restaurants. It can be inferred from this that Suncorp valued the winner’s investment of time and thinking about how to revamp their hospitality suites and overall customer experience.

What are your customers spending their time on? Their energy? Their money?  This tells you what they are valuing right now, and give you clues as to how to frame your own offer. 

Robyn Haydon is a business development consultant specialising in business that is won through competitive bids and tenders. Her clients have won and retained hundreds of millions of dollars worth of business with many of Australia’s largest corporate and government buyers. Had a tough year? Missed out on business you really wanted? Let’s make sure 2016 is different. The Pole Position program will position you to win the opportunities on your radar for next year. Email info@robynhaydon.com or call 03 9557 4585 to find out more.

How to avoid becoming a commodity

Buyers don’t commoditise suppliers. We do that to ourselves, by not giving them the criteria to make a better choice.

Warren Buffet once said that “price is what you pay, value is what you get”. While it’s a simple idea on the surface, there’s a lot to this concept of value.

Price is easy to understand, which is probably why we default to it so often. “Value” is much harder.  Value is both a subjective and objective concept. It exists in tangible and intangible form.

Value is like a snowflake – no two people see value in exactly the same way.

What creates value for me probably won’t represent value for you. That’s because we have different hopes, dreams, goals and problems to solve.

Acccording to the Harvard Business Review, value in business markets is the worth in monetary terms of the technical, economic, service, and social benefits a (business) customer receives in exchange for the price it pays for (your) market offering. The HBR authors, James C. Anderson and James A. Narus, point out that these same customers are increasingly looking to their purchasing or procurement departments as a way to increase profits, and therefore will pressure suppliers to reduce prices. (No surprises there).

So, they argue, if we are to have any hope of getting our customers to think about total costs rather than simply the cost of acquisition, it’s essential to have an accurate understanding of what our customers value now, and would value in the future. 

Because of this, I reckon the way we run new business pursuits is completely wrong. We wait until customers tell us what they want, and then, like everyone else, try to give it to them – for the lowest price. And all the while, we know there is a better solution for the customer – if only we could crack the commercial value that will make them sit up and take notice.

A recent study on sales execution trends by Qvidian found that only 63% of salespeople actually make their targets, with pursuits ending in “no decision” the major reason for the shortfall. While four in 10 salespeople thought that an “inability to effectively communicate value” might be behind their lack of success, only half of them also chose this as a skill they needed to work on.

Understanding what customers truly value is the only way to combat price pressure, and to avoid becoming a commodity.

There is thought and work involved – certainly more than sitting and waiting for a tender to cross your desk – but it’s the most worthwhile work you will ever do.

Robyn Haydon is a business development consultant specialising in business that is won through competitive bids and tenders. Her clients have won and retained hundreds of millions of dollars worth of business with many of Australia’s largest corporate and government buyers. Had a tough year? Missed out on business you really wanted? Let’s make sure 2016 is different. The Pole Position program will position you to win the opportunities on your radar for next year. Email info@robynhaydon.com or call 03 9557 4585 to find out more.

Top 5 summer reads on business development and sales

The summer break is a great time to get inspired by new ideas. And it’s often the only time we have all year to read a book straight through without interruptions.

Here are my top 5 business development reads for the summer break.

All are bestsellers in their own genre, so if you haven’t had a chance to check them out yet, now is the perfect time:

·      Start with Why – A modern classic by Simon Sinek that tells us that customers don’t buy WHAT we do, they buy WHY we do it. This book will spark ideas about the context of what you’re selling.

·      The Challenger Sale – Dixon and Adamson present compelling research that explains why customers prefer suppliers who don’t just give them what they think they want, but instead “teach” them new ways to compete better and do business better. This book will help you think about the content of your offer.

·      Selling To Big Companies – Jill Konrath’s practical, easy to read guide on how to navigate large organisations and sell more successfully. This book gives helpful tips to re-think how you’re selling.

·      To Sell Is Human – An engaging and approachable read from Dan Pink about persuading, convincing and influencing others. This book provides a useful re-frame for experts and technical professionals about why what we do is actually “selling”.

·      Hooked – Gabrielle Dolan and Yamini Naidu have written the definitive text on how leaders connect, engage and inspire with storytelling. This book will expand your right-brain communication skills and help you connect emotionally, as well as rationally, with customers.

Wishing you a safe and happy festive season and the best of success in 2016.

Robyn Haydon is a business development consultant specialising in business that is won through competitive bids and tenders. Her clients have won and retained hundreds of millions of dollars worth of business with many of Australia’s largest corporate and government buyers. Had a tough year? Missed out on business you really wanted? Let’s make sure 2016 is different. The Pole Position program will position you to win the opportunities on your radar for next year. Email info@robynhaydon.com or call 03 9557 4585 to find out more.

What is the legacy of short-term thinking?

Short-term targets and short-term thinking are stifling the growth of too many businesses that should be doing much better than they are.

Last week, SmartCompany reported the results of MYOB’s most recent Business Monitor survey, revealing the top 5 pressure points for small and medium enterprises. The top two were “attracting new customers” and “pressure from competitive activity”. Not surprisingly, pressure on profitability and price also rate highly among businesses that have experienced a decline in revenue this year.

There’s no doubt that conditions are challenging, and probably will be for some time. According to Deloitte Access Economics, economic growth here in Australia is expected to remain below its long-term average until 2017.

But short-term thinking is not the answer. There are opportunities out there, as long as we are prepared to do the work and planning it takes to land them.

Remember The Young Ones on TV in the 1980s, with everyone’s favourite hippie Neil earnestly explaining that “We SOW the seed, nature GROWS the seed, then we EAT the seed”?

It’s funny because it’s so obvious, and as it turns out, much easier to say than to do.

Pressure to attract new customers, coupled with increased competition and fewer market opportunities create the perfect environment for a game of chase-your-tail.

It’s one thing to be powerfully motivated to move away from what we DON’T want. But until we have a clear idea of what we DO want, we may see a lot of activity, but also a great deal of fear and confusion that will hamper results.

This year, the stock value of Amazon.com ($248b) overtook the stock value of America’s largest bricks-and-mortar retailer, Walmart ($233b) for the first time. Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com, doesn’t take this for granted. “If we have a good quarter, it’s because of work we did 3, 4, 5 years ago. It’s not because we did a good job this quarter,” he says.

The work we do today on our business model, products, services and customers may not bear fruit immediately, but without it, there will be little to harvest in the long term.

The downtime over Christmas and New Year is the ideal opportunity to reflect on the rewards you’d like to reap next year, and what you can sow now to make it happen.

Robyn Haydon is a business development consultant specialising in business that is won through competitive bids and tenders. Her clients have won and retained hundreds of millions of dollars worth of business with many of Australia’s largest corporate and government buyers. Had a tough year? Missed out on business you really wanted? Let’s make sure 2016 is different. The Pole Position program will position you to win the opportunities on your radar for next year. Email info@robynhaydon.com or call 03 9557 4585 to find out more.

Time to re-set your sales plan for 2016!

How has your year been? Brilliant? Pretty good? Not so good? Terrible?

As we hit December, we are already calling time on 2015 and making a mental checklist of what happened, what didn’t happen, and what we can do differently and better next year.

·       If you had a brilliant year, how will you make next year just as brilliant?

·       If you had a pretty good year, how can you make next year really rock?

·       If you had an average year, how do you break through patterns that are getting you less-than-ideal results?

·       If you had a terrible year, how will you get a lock on what’s going wrong, and come up with a plan to fix it?

The beauty of a new year is that we get a fresh start. 

In The Power of Focus, Jack Canfield says that we make our own luck through great preparation, good strategy, and focusing our time and energy doing the things we are truly brilliant at.

So what’s on your new business wish list for 2016? There are lots of opportunities out there. These can be yours if you really want them, know why you want them, have a strategy to go out and get them.

This is easier said than done, when most of us are so crazy-busy. And it’s heartbreaking to see opportunities pass by that you know you would be perfect for.

Let’s make 2016 your best year ever. My new program, Pole Position, will help you to design and package an offer that is so commercially valuable, your customers would be crazy not to buy it. I have only three places available in this extraordinary program over the December/January period. Contact me if you'd like to know more.

Robyn Haydon is a business development consultant specialising in business that is won through competitive bids and tenders. Her clients have won and retained hundreds of millions of dollars worth of business with many of Australia’s largest corporate and government buyers. Had a tough year? Missed out on business you really wanted? Let’s make sure 2016 is different. The Pole Position program will position you to win the opportunities on your radar for next year. Email info@robynhaydon.com or call 03 9557 4585 to find out more.

How to build customers into raving fans

“How likely is it that you would recommend our company/product/service to a friend or colleague?”

If you’ve ever been asked this single question (and given a scale of 1-10 to respond) you’ve participated in the Net Promoter Score, a measure of customer loyalty used by many businesses.

If you respond with a score of 9 or 10, you’re a “Promoter” – and a valuable asset to that business. Promoters are the most likely to buy more, stay longer, and refer other potential customers.

Fred Reichheld, who created the Net Promoter system and is also author of The Loyalty Effect, found that most corporations lose 50% of their customers every 5 years, 50% of employees in 4 years, and 50% of investors in less than one year.

In a bid to address these scary numbers, the Net Promoter Score is a simple, point-in-time measure that can track fluctuations in the customer experience while there is still time to influence any decline.

Even more importantly, polling customers this way helps to identify your most valuable assets – the loyal customers who love you, support you and are prepared to sell you to others.

We all have important customer relationships that need some love and attention to build the Promoter effect.

Come along to How To Retain Your Most Important Contracts and Customers on November 24 in Melbourne and discover creative ways to nurture your most important assets.

Robyn Haydon is a business development consultant who helps helps service-based businesses that compete through bids and tenders to articulate the value in what they do, command a price premium, and build an offer that buyers can’t refuse. Don’t let others dictate how far and how fast your business can grow – take your power back! Email robyn@robynhaydon.com to request the white paper for the Beyond Ticking Boxes program.

Playing the Trump card

I've recently returned from the United States, where presidential candidate debates are in full swing and Donald Trump is a front-runner for the Republican nomination, consistently ahead of his nearest rival. 

And this is not surprising. 

Politics is theatre. While other candidates are talking about the same old “boring” stuff like healthcare and education, the audience is tuning into Trump as he sounds off about women, migrants, trade deals with China, Ebola, Obama and what he thinks about celebrities from Bette Midler to Rosie O’Donnell.

Time magazine recently chronicled a list of Trump-isms titled Here’s Roughly Every Controversial Thing Trump Has Ever Said Out Loud. Yet despite offending a great many people, Trump’s approval ratings continually go up. No candidate has yet been able to surpass him.

Why?

Trump sees business as a game, and his massive wealth simply as a way to keep score.

He is successful, opinionated, with a massive online platform that includes 2 million Twitter followers and the TV show The Apprentice, which is syndicated in 25 countries and spawned the famous line, “You’re Fired!”

While the other Republican candidates are measured, professional and polite – behaving they way they think voters want them to behave - Trump runs rings around them simply by speaking his mind. 

Political debates SHOULD be controversial. As voters, hearing things we don’t necessarily agree with forces us to re-examine our opinions and beliefs and to define new ones.

Likewise, in our business relationships we shouldn’t constantly kow-tow to customers. 

Customers may hold the purse strings, but they also appreciate us – as the experts they hired – standing up for what we believe in, even when they don’t agree.

Robyn Haydon is a business development consultant who helps helps service-based businesses that compete through bids and tenders to articulate the value in what they do, command a price premium, and build an offer that buyers can’t refuse. Don’t let others dictate how far and how fast your business can grow – take your power back! Email robyn@robynhaydon.com to request the white paper for the Beyond Ticking Boxes program.

How to “grow” your own proposal writers

In a proposal, what you say is more important than how you say it, and making sure the people in your team contribute their knowledge is very important. This means getting everyone involved in proposal writing, even if they don’t see themselves as “writers”.

Proposal writing is a skill that can be taught. Everyone in your team who has knowledge to share can learn to be more effective in proposal writing.

However, some people will be more suited to proposal writing as a regular gig than others.

Responding to tenders can feel like you are sitting an exam every day. People who were good at exams at school or university and who quite like the challenge of sitting exams (yes, it happens) are ideal for this type of work.

Bid writers need to quickly understand what’s being asked for in a Request for Tender and know how to respond.

Likewise, getting good exam marks requires the confidence to understand and interpret unfamiliar questions very quickly and under time pressure. It means being able to plan a response that addresses that question, then identify relevant content and ignore stuff that isn’t relevant, and weave an argument or point of view throughout.

A team member who has a good academic record with high exam scores in complex subjects is highly likely to be suited to the task of working on tenders. It doesn’t really matter what kind of subjects they were good at – it’s their pre-existing aptitude for this kind of work that is important.

But proposal writing can be a lonely and demanding job, often leading to exhaustion, frustration and burnout. When someone does choose to take it on, make sure that they get proper training, supervision and support – or their time in the job will probably be short-lived. 

Robyn Haydon is a business development consultant who helps helps service-based businesses that compete through bids and tenders to articulate the value in what they do, command a price premium, and build an offer that buyers can’t refuse. Don’t let others dictate how far and how fast your business can grow – take your power back! Email robyn@robynhaydon.com to request the white paper for the Beyond Ticking Boxes program.

Five business development behaviours that sabotage long-term success

Do you spend more energy getting new clients than servicing the ones you already have? Praise and heavily reward new business wins? Would you rather start a new job with a new customer than fix a problem with an existing one?

Our prevailing business development culture tends to measure and reward new business success over everything else. 

But this could be costing more than you think.

A study by Bain and Company (cited by Harvard Business School) found that the high cost of acquiring customers means that many customer relationships are initially unprofitable. However, this changes when the cost of serving loyal customers falls and the volume of their purchases rises. 

The same study found that increasing customer retention rates by just 5% can increase profits by 25% to 95%.

Add to this the Gartner Group’s assertion that 80% of a company’s future profits will come from just 20% of its existing customers, and it’s clear that investing in the business we already have makes logical commercial sense. And yet, in many cases, this investment just doesn’t happen. 

Here are five business development beliefs and behaviours that sabotage our long-term success.

1. Focusing too much on revenue. Most BD metrics focus heavily on the revenue line. New customers push that line up much faster than incremental growth in existing accounts ever could, and what gets measured gets rewarded.
2. Believing customer satisfaction will result in customer loyalty. Most organisations run annual customer satisfaction surveys. Unfortunately, satisfaction measures are not a good predictor of loyalty OR of future behavior. I hold customer interviews as part of my pre-work for the retention programs I facilitate for clients. On more than one occasion, a customer who at one point reported themselves “highly satisfied” has turned out to be angry, disengaged and/or preparing to walk.
3. Performing well, but becoming complacent. When we’re hitting all our KPIs, it’s easy to forget that good work is what we get paid for, and not a selling point.
4. Shying away from the hard work. Let’s face it, some large customers are demanding and hard to deal with, and the relationship can become strained and tense over time. It can be easier to get excited about a new customer than to dig in and turn around a difficult one.
5. Being seduced by bright, shiny objects. It’s fun and exciting to pursue new business, with all its promise and possibility. In contrast, re-competing for customers you already have feels like applying for your own job. It’s hard, and confronting, and there is much, much more at stake.

Customer retention pays enormous dividends when we get it right. While the probability of converting a prospect can be less than 25%, we should be odds-on favourite with an existing customer. 

But incumbency is only an advantage if you choose to use it. Request the white paper and learn more about Getting Ready to Recompete For Your Most Important Contracts and Customers.

Robyn Haydon is a business development consultant specialising in competitive bids and tenders. Are you part-way through a contract term with a big customer? Have an important piece of business coming up for renewal or re-tender in the next 12 months? Join Robyn’s one-day workshop “How to Retain Your Most Important Contracts and Customers” and develop a Ready to Re-compete plan for the business you can’t afford to lose - http://www.robynhaydon.com/workshops/

Robyn Haydon is a business development consultant who helps helps service-based businesses that compete through bids and tenders to articulate the value in what they do, command a price premium, and build an offer that buyers can’t refuse. Don’t let others dictate how far and how fast your business can grow – take your power back! Email robyn@robynhaydon.com to request the white paper for the Beyond Ticking Boxes program.