Are You More Successful At Work Winning Than Your Competitors?

Successful work winning is the foundation stone of all profitable businesses. This may sound obvious to you, in that all businesses have to win work to be profitable. But what we mean by "successful" is more work than you should, when compared to the average. So if the average in your industry is to win one out of every four tenders, i.e. having success rate of 25%, do you always win more than that? Do you always win more than your competitors? Most importantly, though, do these projects give you increased profitability? We have developed our 360° approach to successful work winning which we call the 4P's.

The 4P's are:

* Plan * Prepare * Present * Pursue.

You should follow this sequence whenver you are trying to win work. Either through an opportunity presented directly from a client or through pursuing a standard PQQ and tender response through the OJEU procedures.

By "Plan" we mean the preparation of your internal bid winning team, which will include amongst other things the designation of the bid leader and the bid team, the preparation of the bid management plan and bid management program and most critically the development and agreement of the bid strategy. It should also be made clear at this stage of the process of the responsibilities of the individual team members.

"Prepare" is the preparation of the bid document in whatever form it might be required to take. The most important thing to take into account in the preparation of any work winning bid document is to ensure that your answer questions from the perspective of the client and not just from your own perspective. Make sure you understand what ALL of the stakeholders want to get of the project and that your response puts ticks in all of their boxes.

"Present" is the way the physical bid document is represented to the client. It could mean a hardcopy document; it could mean an electronic submission or it could mean a face-to-face interview. How you present your bid to the client is of critical importance as to how successful you will be at winning the work. We all know the old adage that the relationship is made or not,in the first five seconds of meeting. In this scenario "meeting" means not just meeting face-to-face, but also when a hard or an electronic copy of your tender its first viewed by your potential client - this is also a meeting.

Finally the "Pursue" stage. This is quite often the stage that people do not undertake. In a way it is the most important stage of the four in that if you do not get feedback on both successful and unsuccessful bids, how are you ever going to improve. This section of the successful work winning cycle is the link that connects the feedback with the next bid - and shows how your company can become more successful at winning work.

Remember that to consistently win more work than your competitors - you must do things better than they do and this usually means doing them differently. If you carefully use the successful work winning cycle, the 4P's - at all stages of your bid process you will be able to outperform your competitors more often than not.

Combine this with an almost obsessive demand for understanding what the stakeholders of your client are looking for and you will not only win more work that you will win it had a greater margin and profit.

"Winning isn't everything - it's the ONLY thing" Vince Lombardi - American Football Coach