How do you craft a clear and concise bid strategy and narrative?

Understand the requirements: Begin by thoroughly understanding the bid requirements, including the evaluation criteria, key deliverables, and objectives. This will help you align your strategy and narrative with the customer's needs.

A counterview to this is that by the time you are analyzing the bid opportunity and reviewing the key requirements, the opportunity may have been informally decided. It's likely that someone from outside the customer helped shape the bid. Their influence on the evaluation criteria and key requirements may position them as the preferred choice. This means that you need to work to identify opportunities early so you can influence the key requirements,, etc.

As a general tendency before we see and decide anything we analyze everything first and then decide how should we respond to the present situation at hand. In same manner analyzing Bid becomes important as it is the key to check all the requirements and clauses in the Bid. Proper analysis of each and every word and points becomes pivotal because by that only we can be in a better position to access any pain points, future action plans, current state, future state and probable roadmap to achieve them. Proper assessment of the main deliverables, scope and key timelines after various interactions with client can make or break any deal.

The approach to this first step depends on the size and scale of the opportunity. And your relationship to the market/segment and the customer. These AI topics are so broad as to be meaningless with experienced human insights. The simplest approach on very large opportunities is to not bid at all if you had no prior contact or relationship. Chances are that they are price shopping their incumbent. Or seeking free consulting on solution improvements. If it’s a net new project or program, and again, you knew nothing about it, no bid. That’s the best strategy. If you have not been a trusted advisor shaping their solution then someone else has. Move on.

Analyzing the opportunity looks different based on how soon the seller is brought to the table. So I will speak from the perspective of coming from behind. Find out who the incumbent is and perform a competitive analysis. Use the question period to position yourself as a thought leader. I have personally seen this tank competitive offers. If you are comparing apples to apples find out what is unique about your offer specially and repeat that messaging. But not from your perspective. If you have bid on business for this buyer before, perform an analysis of previous offers, assess what worked and what didn't. Avoid doing what has already been done. Competitive analysis, comparative analysis, resulting in a targeted offer.

As the opportunity size shrinks and you descend into less strategic, more transactional bids, score your level of customer and competition data & insights. By the time the tender is issued most buyers are already 80% of the way to their decision, if not made already. In which case the tender is more to justify than make their decision. At this stage - as other have suggested - there may be an outside chance of disrupting the status quo with information or a solution superior to their incumbent or already preferred bidder(s) But your win strategy will need to be very very focused

A counterview to this is to understand your client's objectives and make your bid objective solving their problem. Nothing is more important to your customer than their customer. Rather than focus on your objectives develop a strategy that shows how you help them win more customers, serve their customers better, hold down customer cost, bring a competitive edge to their market, etc.

Aligning with any opportunity we are bidding on becomes very important because we need to speak language of the bid which is there in the RFP and it should be more aligned with the customer terminologies in the Bid. The better we are aligned to it better are the chances of winning the Bid. We should speak language of the customer and more stress should be to highlight what actions and steps we would entail to solve the problems of customer. Each and every line should align with the Benefits and Values which your solution or product would give to customer which will solve their Immediate and Long Term Goals. We should act as an extended arm of customer and should equip the client with all the things to solve and be strategic partner.

Establish SMART bid objectives that directly align with the client's goals and demonstrate your ability to deliver value. When bidding for a public transportation project, a company should define objectives that support the city government's aims. For example, if the city's main goals are to reduce emissions and improve accessibility, the company's bid objectives could be: Reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation system by 20% within 3 years by deploying electric buses and optimizing routes. Increase ridership by 15% over 2 years by enhancing service frequency and expanding routes to underserved areas. Achieve a 95% on-time performance rating within the first year of operations. These objectives are specific and measurable.

Extend your capture strategy into your bid strategy as a cheerful counterpoint to the prevailing wisdom. Whatever actions/tactics/tasks worked in the pre-tender capture phase should now be reframed for your bid strategy. For example, a capture task successfully executed was to take the prospect to an existing client site to see the safety disciplines in place, which supports the solution to address this client hot button. The bid strategy is to detail the safety solution and substantiate the claim with details of the peer solution visited. Was there no capture strategy, and actions/tasks/content developed and delivered? Hmmm - good luck with that... No Bid now while there's still time

What keeps your client awake at night? How can your solution solve their issues/problems or improve on their existing arrangements? Ensure you fully research your client before even commencing the creation of a bid strategy - make sure you understand them and their needs.

Strategy of any product or service is very important because it helps you to defend your existing product or service portfolio and align it to market forces in a better coordinated manner and deliver it in a best possible way. Bid Strategy includes various things like Differentiators, Discriminators, Value Proposition, Win Themes, References, Case Studies, Resourcing and Pricing. Benefits and outcomes should come out clearly in response. Differentiation and USP should also be built in the respond so that we are clear winner for decision makers. Risk should be built in overall deliverables and outcomes and highlighted clearly. Quality and Pricing of the deliverables should be benchmarked against best in class so that customer receives best.

To maintain a streamlined bid strategy from start to finish, the best way is by defining each phase and objective. The best method to establish a bid strategy in an organization is to record the procedures involved for each bid type. I have simplified strategies and firmly written them based on the type of bids for soliciated and unsolicited proposals, so that all bid team members and associations workship the strategy in discipline.

Developing a strong bid strategy requires a team effort. Key players include project managers, subject matter experts, and proposal writers. Open communication is crucial. To prioritize client needs, the team should closely delve into the client's background and challenges. Never underestimate the power of client-centricity. By tailoring your solution to their specific needs, you demonstrate genuine interest and a commitment to their success. Finally, remember that under-bidding to win can backfire. While being competitive is important, a lowball offer often necessitates compromising on quality. A well-crafted strategy justifies your value proposition with transparent pricing, ensuring a successful project for all.

Narrative is very important in Bid Management and it is a skill which needs to be developed by everyone in his/her career. Story telling is an art and it needs to be developed by Bid Manager in articulating offerings and services to clients. Bid Narrative should be aligned to customer's needs, Format and follow the pattern of the RFP. Simplicity and easy of understanding would be the fundamental tasks to win the deal. Also, we should have take care of the instructions, format and evaluation criteria's of customer and respond accordingly. Jargons and Technical terms should not be used. Bid Narrative should deliver same message across the Bid, customized and Personalized for each customer.

I’ve reviewed way too many bids that start with a sentence like "We are pleased to propose..." followed by the history and pedigree of the seller. Guess what? The customer doesn’t care! Nothing is more important to your customer than their customer. ? Start sentences and paragraphs with their name, not yours. ? Use their name more often. Restate their objectives and write about how you will meet or exceed them. ? Talk about benefits to their customers. ? Don’t just tell them “Yes we can do this.” Tell them “Here’s how.” ? Make every word earn a spot on the page. The bid is a sales document and the first deliverable for your offer. Let them know you’ll be focused on them during the project by focusing on them in the bid response.

The bid is a sales document and the first deliverable for your offer. Let them know you’ll be focused on them during the project by delivering a quality response. If you can't deliver an error free, grammatically correct response, how can they trust that you will do a quality job on their project?

Reviewing and editing any document is an important step before the final submission of the Bid because you tend to check the response from the requirements of the RFP and any changes suggested by various reviewers of the Bid. Utmost care should be taken to check that all answers for the question's asked in RFP are answered precisely and client is able to derive value out of the service being delivered. Adequate check should be done for checking grammar and style in the response. All responses should be sanitized based on the requirements. There are various tools like Chat GPT which can be used to improve quality of content and readability.

I love using Hemingway as an editing tool because it provides you with a reading-level assessment. I always aim for a 9th-grade reading level to ensure that all readers can easily comprehend and understand my writing. Simple language goes a long way! A second set of eyes to proofread your bid narrative is crucial to a successful editing stage. It is important to have someone who hasn't read the narrative dozens of times conduct a review for you because they often catch small errors that can easily go unnoticed by the original writers and editors. Another great trick is reading the narrative aloud. This helps you catch hiccups in the flow and ensure that your writing is easy to read.

Feedback of any Bid is important because the stakeholders who are your reviewers of the Bid and SMEs which are answering the responses of questions are finalized by the Kick Off Call itself. Receiving suggestions and Feedback based on the exact ask of RFP becomes important. They should give feedback on giving proper responses to the queries in RFP and check on the delivering coherent ,clear response and seeing to it that the response covers the key essence of the question. Any gaps or improvements should be rectified and incorporating them would help Bid Team to position well in front of customer eyes.

Through the version control method, refining the proposal becomes easier with feedback once the draft version is submitted to the stakeholders involved in the bid. All bid and proposal documents take shape through a well-structured iterative strategy. Keeping the process streamlined and transparent consistently results in the best-winning proposals.

This article seems to be missing a big step - conduct a storyboarding session with your writers, plan out your answers (if you're the only writer) and solicit feedback from others, or provide writers with a pack including annotated outlines and style guide...

Storyboarding plays a very pivotal role in any Bid because this is the phase where we come to a conclusion on what is the full understanding of client ask rather than a knee jerk reaction to giving responses ASAP. This phases also ensures that key messages and win themes should be reflected in the structured written responses according to the evaluation criteria of the Bid. This session helps to assign win themes and unique selling points to all queries in the RFP. A proper understanding of the client scoring can significantly effect the result of the Bid. It also helps assign Bid Graphics supporting each response.