Discovering new insights that win more bids

Pursuits teams need a wide variety of insights to make an informed decisions. You need to make go/no go decisions and then to craft a bid and pitch that meets the client's needs while also standing out from competitors.

So how do you make more evidence-based decisions throughout your bids?

The answer is to listen differently. Your client listening programme can evolve to become an insights engine for your pursuits teams.

Traditionally client listening programmes have been research-based. Seasonal projects that focused on the existing relationships with higher value clients. Manual analysis was time-intensive, outsourcing expensive. So the scope needed to be limited.

But client listening is moving on, and becoming always-on.

When you make the move from traditional to always-on client listening, you start seeing insight signals everywhere. From the information your target company shares publicly, to the informal conversations your people are having.

This informal and unstructured data was often ignored because:

• It's not robust research
• It's hard to manually make sense of it

But when you have an always-on client listening platform, like MyCustomerLens, suddenly the data aggregation and analysis happens automatically. In real-time.

You might be thinking, that's nice but so what?

So let's look at five data sources that we don't see enough firms using, and how they can help you make more evidence-based bid decisions.

• Market intel
• Client intel
• RFP/Bid documents
• Pitch feedback
• Mid-matter feedback

Gathering market intel

A company's priorities don't exist in a vacuum. They are influenced by how the market around them is evolving. So how do you capture and analyse these market signals?

One effective way is to use the quarterly analyst briefings that all listed companies need to give. This is where they share their priorities and challenges. They also field questions from the analysts that watch each industry.

By monitoring your target company's briefings, and those of their direct competitors, you can identify trends and priorities in areas where your practice teams can help. As well as generating new business opportunities, these insights enable you to bring fresh industry insights to your clients and prospects.

Another way is to prompt your teams to ask clients their thoughts, priorities and challenges around a specific issue. ESG is a popular one right now. Then give those teams a simple form to capture the responses so they can be unified and analysed.

This approach to market intel isn't trying to replace robust formal research. Instead it's building a fresh and agile flow of insights, that reflect what's happening in the market right now. It also captures the intel that your teams are already hearing - and using to make their own decisions.

Having these market insights up your sleeve is vital for bids success. Research by BTI Consulting discovered that bringing fresh industry insights was one of the 9 ways that firms remained memorable after a round of pitches.

Gathering client intel

How do you know what's top of mind for your clients? Everyone will say "I know my clients". But how do you ensure that the wider firm knows those clients too?

Unless the pursuits and client teams are on the same page, with access to the same intel, your bid story will be underwhelming.

The solution is to have a simple and consistent way to capture the intel being heard across your firm. For example:

• Secondee interviews, surveys and focus groups to regularly capture what they're seeing and hearing
• Events feedback collected by BD teams. This isn't feedback on the signage and tea bag choices. This is a central place for them to capture the informal conversations and hot topics they heard about in conversations around the event. For example, when CFOs gather at an event, their coffee conversations reflect what's top of mind, not necessarily what the speakers are saying.
• Relationship partner debriefs. These partners have a deep client understanding but if it's all stuck in their heads the bids team can't use it. So why not do a monthly/quarterly debrief where they talk and the transcript gets added to the library of client intel?

As an aside, it's tempting to assume that the only place this text data should go is in your CRM. A CRM does let you centralise the text data, but you lose most of the insights in the process. CRMs don't have the capability to analyse or aggregate text data. So unless everyone reads every entry, opportunities will get lost.

RFP/Bid documents

Don't just read individual bid documents, collectively analyse them. What are companies asking for? What are the emerging trends and priorities?

Look at how their expectations and value-add change for different pieces of work. Compare how these requirements align with previous bids that your firm went on to win or lose.

A go/no go decision is often based on internal criteria. About whether the scale and focus of the work is a good fit for the firm. But you can also look at whether the firm is a good fit for the work.

By analysing the RFP documents, and comparing those you won and lost, you can see valuable new insights. You may need to re-write a case study. Perhaps you need more specific testimonials. Or you may benefit from collecting extra feedback from existing clients with needs similar to the new RFP.

Pitch feedback

I'll keep this one short, as this is the feedback source you're most likely to be using. The challenge is getting feedback from all the pitches.

It's tempting to assume that the learnings are only in the losses. But win feedback gives you the other half of picture. Plus asking for feedback that's assumed to be positive feels easier. So initially focusing on getting feedback on all wins is a good way to build momentum while setting a precedent for asking.

With feedback from wins and losses you can then make comparisons. For example, where do companies see value, but it's not enough to win the work? Could it be that in some practice areas the way you explain your industry expertise makes it sound like table stakes?

Mid-matter feedback

Our future of client listening research revealed that only 33% of firms ask for feedback during a matter. There were various reasons for this. They often boil down to the lawyers and relationship partners feeling awkward about asking for formal feedback when they're having regular matter-specific conversations.

Clients would say if they had a problem right?

Maybe, but from a bids perspective, this misses a crucial piece of insight. Are the expectations stated in the RFP, and set through your response, being met now that they are working with you? You need to know from a relationship perspective because missed expectations reduce the chances of a referral, limit the ability to win future work and - worse case - lead to complaints.

Mid-matter feedback doesn't need to be a formal survey. It can be as simple as asking two open questions: 'where are we exceeding your expectations' and 'where could we be doing more'. Keep it informal, but get in the habit of checking in on every matter and unifying the responses that come back.

With top lines stagnating, firms are taking a long hard look at their process for winning bids and generating incremental revenues from existing clients. That means that BD and client delivery are becoming intwined.

Your client listening programme can support both objectives, by making it easy to gather and make sense of the wide variety of unstructured data sources.

Discovering insights that win more bids

Once you make the move to always-on client listening, your BD & Pursuits teams can tap into a wide variety of insight signals.

The first step is to commit to listening differently. Then identify the insights you require, rather than the ones you currently have.

You won't create a full insight hub overnight. So start with a source you will find easy to develop. Use those insights to inform your next bid, rinse and repeat. As momentum grows, so too does the impact of your business case.