Metrics that matter

Last week, I read an excellent post by fellow bid professional Michelle Bee (https://www.dhirubhai.net/posts/michelle-bee-03421215_just-a-question-for-those-in-the-bids-tenders-activity-6886655724341006336-Ifzk) referring to the number of bid writing companies claiming to have?‘90-100%+' bid win rates. This was a post that really resonated with me, and many others judging by the responses and comments.

Metrics are hugely important to any business, and there are many different metrics and KPI’s that can be used to ‘prove’ performance. We are obsessed at 4S Bid about data and stats to improve our performance and the performance of our clients.

Helping our clients grow by winning new contracts is what we are in business to do. However, since setting up 4S Bid, I have always wondered why so many bid companies focus on the single metric of bid win rates as the measure of success in the eyes of a client, and why do they all use the same 80%+ figures.

Sure, it looks impressive and presents a snappy marketing message, but how credible is it, and how is it measured?

It poses a number of questions in my mind:

• How many bids is the 80% made up of? Does the ‘success’ account for things like qualifying from a pre-qualification to ITT stage, gaining entry to a Framework or Dynamic Purchasing System (where actually the client has not ‘won’ anything yet other than the right to bid for future projects)
• What is the mix in complexity and value of the wins versus losses?
• How many of the wins were with clients who were in favourable positions from the outset, versus those where there was more effort and expertise required to help the client win the bid
• Did the bid consultant have full control over all aspects of the bid, including the solution, writing, pricing, presentation?
• Of those 20% unsuccessful, has the client been supported post-bid outcome to understand why they were unsuccessful and how they can improve for future.

Without regurgitating Michelle’s post and the many excellent contributions, my point is that there is much more to successful bidding than the ‘bid win rate’.

Just to be clear, we are a successful consultancy, and our metrics around ‘Bid Win’ in 2021 (which are all auditable) included:

• Over ￡110m of contract value secured by our clients through our involvement
• We scored 100% for quality on 6 separate occasions, including on a ￡62m construction contract
• We helped our clients achieve 1st rank position on 8 out of 10 Framework bids we supported, and of the other 2 out of 10 they ranked 2nd position
• Of these Framework successes, we have either improved the previous ranking positions for our clients (incumbents), or we have helped new clients achieve these results
• We have helped clients win contracts in Higher and Further Education, Local Authority, Social Housing, NHS and Central Government

We were also involved in projects where our clients, unfortunately, did not win the contract – which does happen.

The purpose of this article is to outline why we do not prioritise bid win rate as our key metric for attracting or retaining clients, as well as setting out what I believe are the metrics that (should) really matter to clients when looking to engage external bid consultancies.

Why ‘Bid Win rate’ is not our key metric for measuring performance

Let me be clear, this is not an ‘excuse’ or us hiding behind poor success rates. Quite the opposite in fact, as I have demonstrated above.

Instead, this is about helping clients and other businesses understand what other metrics, in my opinion, are more credible to look at when considering whether to engage a bid consultancy.

Here I have listed my top 3 reasons why Bid Win rate is not our key metric for success:

1)???Too many factors outwith our control

When you break down a bid into its most basic component parts, the key elements include:

• A client’s ability to comply with the tender requirements and process
• The client’s quality solution and tender submission
• The client’s Price / Commercial offering
• The procuring organisation’s decision-making process and their perception of your bid compared to all others received

I often say to anyone who will listen that bid professionals, especially external bid consultancies, can only truly influence 1 out of these 4 elements – the Quality solution and submission. Even then, our ability to influence this element is determined by factors such as how early we are engaged and the scope of our involvement.

In the vast majority of cases, we have no influence over any of the other 3 elements, other than offering guidance and opinion based on our procurement and bid expertise. In particular, we do not get involved in a client’s commercial offering, and we obviously cannot control the decision-making process of the procuring organisation – (although part of our USP is helping clients understand the bid process from a clients perspective, how they might think, and what ‘good looks like’ to their various stakeholders).

It is exactly for these reasons that we do not offer ‘no win no fee’ or ‘win bonus’ proposals.

2)???We are more than a Bid Writing consultancy

A big part of our value proposition is our 12 years procurement experience at a high level, our expertise and insights of what ‘good looks like’ to your client.

Based on this, we add value to clients in many other ways, including our pre-bid research, our straightforward and honest advice, our insights into what your client might be thinking, our bid management expertise, our client side delivery experience on hot topics in procurement (such as Social Value, ESG, Sustainability and Carbon Management), ‘pre-evaluating’ draft bids before the final submission, and our ability to provide clarity to some of the questions you cannot get straight answers for when speaking to client procurement teams.

We have added value to clients by helping them reach a ‘No Bid’ decision based on the fact that the client did not have a realistic chance of winning the contract. This may cost us income in the short term, but it has reaped rewards by creating long-term trust through our honesty and expertise in helping the client reach the ‘No Bid’ decision.

3)???Our Bid Journey methodology

Our ethos is that ‘the bid’ should be one of the last steps of your bid process, and there is much more to successful bidding than writing bid responses. Bidding is a means to winning work, which should be intrinsically linked to the company’s overall objectives. However, the activity of ‘bidding’ should not start and end when a tender opportunity is issued to the market, and your bid team has 3 weeks to respond. ??

With this in mind, we developed the Bid Journey methodology (see image), to help clients understand what a best practice bid model looks like. Our Bid Diagnostic tool helps our clients benchmark their current performance and identify their existing metrics as a baseline to measure and monitor performance improvement over time. The Diagnostic helps clients to take a more strategic approach to bidding for contracts, linked to performance metrics and overall organisational targets.

Some of the key metrics we help identify in the Bid Diagnostic include:

• Existing Bid Win rate
• Internal cost of bidding
• No. of bids in the last 12 months
• Bid ROI
• Bid specific metrics

We are therefore adding value to our clients, by giving them a realistic and informed analysis of their current performance and likelihood of winning the contracts they are targeting - which may lead to them bidding for fewer, but more targeted and profitable contracts - and providing a detailed roadmap to improve their performance.

We also help them set their own targets and goals for their bid performance, linked to their organisational goals, therefore underpinning ‘bidding’ as a strategic function of their business, rather than a side of desk activity. ??

Metrics that matter to us (and we believe matter most to our clients)

Now that I have set out our reasons for not prioritising Bid Win rate as our key metric for success as a business, let me outline the metrics we focus on, and why we believe these are more important and credible for current and future clients.

We are fortunate to work with great clients, who understand the expertise we bring to their business and who value our advice and support.

Our mission is to ‘put clients 1st’ – meaning that we aim to help our clients win the contracts they want to win, putting them ahead of their competition and growing their business.

The metrics that we measure our performance against include:

• Have we helped improve the outcomes for our client through our involvement – measured by contract wins, improved results, improved ranking positions from previous bids
• How we support our clients when we don’t win – through advising on their approach and line of questioning for gathering meaningful feedback from the buyer, helping them understand and interrogate the feedback (and where required advising them on next steps where they may have grounds for appeal), identifying opportunities for future improvement within their bid strategy and submission responses
• Have we improved our clients overall bid process – measured through efficiencies, cost savings and results
• Have we helped clients arrive at ‘No Bid’ decisions through an impartial assessment of their likelihood of success
• Have we helped to improve our clients ROI from their bid performance – either by reducing the number of unqualified or speculative bids, or helping to improve their bid win rate
• Have we helped to transfer knowledge to our client and upskill their team through our training
• Have we helped them to understand ‘hot topics’ within procurement today, such as Social Value, Carbon Management and ESG, and helped them implement best practice in these areas

Ultimately,

• How many of our clients come back to us for the next project or stay with us long term in the case of retainer clients
• Client feedback and overall delight at our service

We are pleased to note that we have many clients who have been with us on our monthly retainer since we started in March 2020, and 98% of clients we have supported on live bids have returned to us for support on at least 2 other bids.

Through this approach, we have also been able to grow turnover and profitability significantly, which is of course a critical metric for our own business, but also confirms that our values and client 1st approach is the right one for us and our clients.

What you are paying for

When clients engage with us, they are not paying for our time to complete a task.

For all the reasons I have outlined above, our clients are paying for our 13 years procurement experience and our track record in bids, as well as our practical and honest advice (even if the honest advice is something they don’t like to hear).

Some of our large clients have their own excellent bid teams in-house, however they have brought us in to benefit from our experience in procuring major projects, our insights and expertise, and our ‘pre-evaluation’ of their bid drafts that give them a competitive advantage to win the bid.

This has led to some outstanding results and contract awards for our clients on major projects.

For our SME clients, they may or may not have their own internal dedicated bid teams. In this instance they benefit from our ability to identify future pipeline opportunities to help them be more targeted in the opportunities they bid for, our bid writing support, our understanding of best practice and what good looks like, and our delivery experience and practical advice in areas like social value, fair work practices, carbon management and other ‘hot topics’. These are generally the skills and insights they do not have within their business which we can help them with, and would be cost prohibitive to employ.

(Clients of all sizes can now benefit from our experience through our new training programme)

We also care about our clients. I have often posted on LinkedIn when our clients win, and about the unbelievable feeling it gives.

However, perhaps more importantly, we are honest about what we do (and do not do) from the outset of an engagement with a client, so there are no false expectations. We will also stay with our clients after a bid submission to ensure they get answers to the questions they need answered about their bid, and we will also look at our own performance to understand where we could have done things better.

We have supported clients with fair and practical advice and support on their options and steps they can take, which protects their business interests and reduces their reliance on expensive legal advice.

Think of us as the company who care about the results we deliver for you, and help you get meaningful answers to the questions you struggle to get answered from procurement clients.

Instead of thinking of our support as ‘expensive’, think about how we:

• Help you grow your revenue and profit by winning contracts
• Improve your ROI by helping you take a strategic approach to bidding, which can actually save you money by reducing the number of unqualified and speculative bids you chase
• Save you time and money by helping you reach ‘no bid’ decisions (which allow you to focus on other, more winnable opportunities)
• Help you implement best practice processes and develop high-quality bid content, which will save you time and money each time you bid
• Provide you with expertise, insights and practical support which would otherwise be expensive to employ permanently
• Support you to post-bid to get meaningful feedback and learn lessons for future bids

Our promise

Our promise to our clients is that your company will be in a better position after you have engaged with us, than you were before you engaged with us. As I have said before, we ultimately aim to help clients win every contract we support them on. However, our service and support is much wider than ‘the bid’, so whether we provide guidance, advice, bid support, strategy – whatever it is – our promise is that our clients will be in a better position with our involvement than without.

This is the metric that we believe (should) matter to our clients.?