Why buyers make the wrong decision

Competitive tenders don't always result in the best decision. Buyers go for what LOOKS like the best decision - on paper – which sometimes proves to be the wrong one.

If you've ever lost a bid you were certain you would win, been shocked by who the buyer actually DID choose instead of you, and seen that supplier go on to deliver (predictably) inferior work and results, you are definitely not alone. 

Professionals are often uncomfortable about parading their wares for money, and that’s what a tender can feel like.  In an ideal world, buyers would offer you an alternative way to show them what you can do – one that actually helps you demonstrate your best work.

For instance, if you’re an architect, how much more comfortable would you be if you were allowed to let your work speak for itself in a design competition, rather than preparing a 100 page tender response?

But of course, buyers often choose the easier option and run a tender instead.

Competitive tenders are an unnatural, artificial and uncomfortable way for professionals to sell themselves. Unfortunately, they are a reality, so we need to find a way to do our best work within them.

It all starts with your business development culture. The most successful business development culture for a services firm is one that feels natural and comfortable; supports how your smart people think best; and gets them energised and excited by the opportunity first.

When you do have to prepare a tender, think about creative ways to bring out the best in what you can do. Include infographics, use interesting case studies, and offer the buyer a taste of the great things that happen to people who make the smart choice to work with you. You'll win more business, more often, and have more fun doing it.

Robyn Haydon is a business development consultant specialising in business won through formal bids, tenders and proposals. She is the author of two books on proposals and sales, including Winning Again: a retention game plan for your most important contracts and customers. Read more about it here.

Incumbency + innovation = guaranteed return on investment

Are you pursuing new ideas SPECIFICALLY to benefit your major customers?

If you are in a service business that is accustomed to getting paid for things before it will even contemplate doing them, chances are, you might not be.

Typically, we pitch for a contract and do the work later. The contract defines the scope and the performance measures, and everyone’s attention is focused on meeting these. In this environment, the thought of positioning new ideas and investing cash without a “guaranteed return” is often difficult for business development leaders get their heads around.

However, no matter how good your performance is, the biggest risk of losing a customer or contract is to do no more than focus on the day-to-day.

In my book Winning Again, procurement expert Neil Hubbard sums up the buyer’s perspective beautifully. “Don't wait until it's time to do a tender”, he says. “As soon as you're awarded the contract, your time starts. Be very conscious that in three years’ time, your contract will come up. Start working on innovation that will bring cost savings or benefits to our business and start telling us what you're going to do now.”

When you’re innovating in a way that is designed to help a major customer grow their business or to do business better, you ARE guaranteed a return: a better reputation and relationship with the customer that will help you to win again.

And there is another benefit too. When you start to think this way, you’ll find there are many people working in your business who would love to have an opportunity to do more for your major customers – provided that the leadership culture will support them.

Robyn Haydon is a business development consultant specialising in business won through formal bids, tenders and proposals. She is the author of two books on proposals and sales, including Winning Again: a retention game plan for your most important contracts and customers. Read more about it here.

Competition is coming

No matter where you are in the procurement cycle, one thing that you can be sure of is competition. Whether it's from the customer putting your business out to tender again, or from competitors pushing their own agenda, competition never really goes away.

Yet the way we approach the certainty of competition says a lot about our likelihood of future success.

In her book Mindset, psychologist Dr Carol Dweck explains the difference between fixed and growth mindsets. Those with a growth mindset, like champion athlete Michael Jordan, find success through learning and improving. Others with a more fixed mindset regard success as “establishing their superiority”. As a result, while growth-minded athletes see setbacks as a motivating wake-up call, those with more fixed mindsets give up because they are scared to lose.

One way our mindset is evident in business is in how we engage with customers over the life of a contract. Suppliers with a fixed mindset are full of nervous energy when submitting the tender response, in a flurry of activity when getting the contract set up and hit a flat line of delivery over the course of the contract until the Request for Tender arrives again. On the other hand, suppliers with a growth mindset are always bringing new ideas to the customer – not just when they’re obliged to.

As we end the month of January and are about to run full tilt into the rest of the year, it’s time to engage your growth mindset. What do you know about your most important customers' plans for 2015? What big items do they have on their agenda this year? How can you help them achieve success with these? How can you be ready for events that are going to shape and change their business? When you already have the business, these are not challenges to be fearful of – they are exciting opportunities that will help you win again.

Robyn Haydon is a business development consultant specialising in business won through formal bids, tenders and proposals. She is the author of two books on proposals and sales, including Winning Again: a retention game plan for your most important contracts and customers http://www.winningwords.com.au/winning-again/

Why procurement and service businesses are natural allies

Selling services is never going to be completely transactional and all about price. It is always about something more. Buyers need help to navigate complex problems that weren’t conceived of a year ago – let alone 10 years ago – and service providers can help them.

Unfortunately, many people find selling to procurement complex, adversarial and intimidating. It doesn’t have to be that way. In fact, if you sell services you will actually benefit from cultivating a relationship with procurement.

According to procurement expert Adel Salman, procurement doesn’t “own” services expenditure (although they are responsible for raw materials) and has to satisfy many other stakeholders who are actually using the service and paying for it. Therefore, it is part of procurement’s job to engage good service providers and help them deliver exceptional performance.

Increasing expectations of the procurement function are also driving this trend. A survey of 70 chief executive officers by brain.net revealed that CEOs expect much more from procurement departments in areas like innovation. In his book Selling To Procurement, Christopher Provines says that “…increasingly, particularly for more mature organisations, procurement is being asked to help the company grow.” He explains that innovation needs to be thought of in the broadest sense – process/business model innovation and product innovation – and that often, suppliers can contribute significantly to both.

Provines cites a survey of more than 300 chief purchasing officers by CAPS Research, a supply chain research firm, which revealed that about 60 per cent saw innovation from suppliers as “extremely important”. This is encouraging news for suppliers, and especially for suppliers of complex services.

Robyn Haydon is a business development consultant specialising in business won through formal bids, tenders and proposals. She is the author of two books on proposals and sales, including Winning Again: a retention game plan for your most important contracts and customers http://www.winningwords.com.au/winning-again/

Five characteristics of clear winners

It’s no longer enough just to be a good supplier. We must strive to become great suppliers, and this doesn’t just mean being great at what we already do for our customers.

Something that I’ve noticed over many years of working with incumbent suppliers in many different industries is that the most successful ones share a very clear and focused pattern of behaviour that helps them retain existing their contracts, while others are setting themselves up to lose. The most successful suppliers are those that I call the ‘clear winners’.

For me, the term clear winner describes the mindset of the business development leader as well as the course of action that the organisation follows to win and retain business.

Here are five ways that business development leaders demonstrate the mindset of a clear winner.

1. Clear winners love what they do and speak eloquently about their business and its opportunities.
2. Clear winners have great ideas with the potential to deliver genuine value for their customers. They focus on serving their customers first and themselves second.
3. Clear winners are truly excited about the opportunity to work with customers. They see this as a privilege and not just a ‘numbers game’.
4. Clear winners believe that there is always a better way of doing things, even when there are already great at what they do.
5. Clear winners have a lot on (like everyone else) but always seem to manage to focus on just the right thing. You’ll never hear them complain about being ‘busy’ – instead, they are energised by the work they’re doing.

Clear winners may seem lucky – like they are 'on a roll' – but they know the real story; to achieve at this level takes courage, investment and hard work.

This is an extract from Robyn’s new book Winning Again: a retention game plan for your most important contracts and customers. To order your copy, go to http://www.winningwords.com.au/winning-again/

Why gratitude wins business

When we first win a customer or contract, it’s natural to be on a high and very excited – a bit like the first flush of love. But when business as usual kicks in, it doesn't take long before we are taking the customer (our partner) for granted. In doing so, we tend to forget what a risk it was for them to choose us in the first place, and the gratitude we felt during the honeymoon period.

Last year one of my clients was bidding for an important government contract. The Department in question was looking to reform this part of the market, so we had several bids in place and the team was braced to expect change. The first call we received was to notify us that we had lost our (small) current contract. The CEO, always gracious under pressure, was genuine in thanking the Department rep for the opportunity to participate and assured him that she understood the reasons for the loss. He was grateful and surprised to receive such a reaction, having made similar calls to other unsuccessful suppliers and been given a much more aggressive and angry reception.

Not long afterwards, our team got better news. We had won a much larger contract that not only replaced the revenue (and jobs) of the first one, but increased both exponentially.

No matter what business you’re in, long-term contracts are a game of strategic relationships.

When there is a setback, think carefully about the future and don’t burn your bridges.

Expressing true gratitude for the opportunities we've already been given in business actually helps us to win even more. We never know what lies ahead, and we can achieve so much more with the customer’s backing and support.

This is an extract from Robyn’s new book Winning Again: a retention game plan for your most important contracts and customers. To order your copy, go to http://www.winningwords.com.au/winning-again/

7 wishes on my Christmas list for Procurement

As thoughts turn to the Christmas holidays and what Santa might bring the kids, my Christmas letter asks for something a little bigger.

On behalf of the wonderful supplier organisations I have worked with on bids, tenders and proposals during the year, here are 7 things I’d like to see Procurement deliver to all of us this festive season.

“Dear Procurement, all we want for Christmas is….

1.  Let suppliers talk to you again. A Request for Tender isn't the only way to scope the market and for complex purchases, it really isn't the best option. So let’s have a chat. Things change quickly and you might be surprised about what we can do for you now that you haven't yet heard about. And, while we’re on the subject…
2. Bring back Expressions of Interest, which seem to be disappearing faster than the Antarctic ice shelf.If you want to assess potential suppliers on paper, why not use an EOI, rather than an RFT? These are short and straightforward, and make us feel like we’re in with chance.
3. Say what you mean.Tender documents are often hard to interpret, and the evaluation criteria don’t always match the questions. With better instructions, any supplier with a bit of common sense will be able to bid confidently. That’s good for everyone.
4. Timetable a response period that’s fair and reasonable. We run a pretty tight ship these days; our staff are stretched and it can be difficult to keep up with complex tender requirements and shrinking deadlines. Crunching us for time because you’re late to market only means you get rushed, poor quality submissions. On the other hand…
5. Don’t issue a timetable only to grant a last-minute extension just before the deadline. This unfairly disadvantages (and discourages) the suppliers that are prepared, and have made it a priority to respond to your request.
6. Please, answer our questions. We don’t ask many. But often, we don’t get meaningful answers (or any answers). Giving us better information will mean better proposals for you to evaluate. And finally…
7. Have a heart – please don’t drop a tender on Christmas Eve. We know you like to come back in January to a full inbox, but we would like to see our families too.”

Wishing you all a Merry Christmas, and a successful and prosperous 2015!