Why TIMING is critical in competitive bids

Enlightened Sellers realise that they have most leverage in the first stage of the cycle, and, as a consequence, spend longer qualifying and advancing opportunities before they present or propose a solution. The main reason for this is that the client needs us. Note that needing us is different to wanting us. They need us in their process early on, even if they don’t want us to win the business.?

Clients need us to demonstrate our capabilities, provide product information, conduct a site visit, conduct a solution or system demonstration, submit a priced proposal, provide alternative solutions, and so on. They need us to validate their selection and evaluation process and even to support the choice of supplier they made in advance.

Enlightened Sellers understand that they have a unique opportunity to leverage and even control the process during the earlier stages of the opportunity.?

Most of the skills and techniques of Enlightened Sellers are most effective early in the buying process when the client needs you and when you, therefore, have leverage in the relationship.?

Think about it this way: As you get to the later stages of the opportunity when the client has gathered all the information that they feel they need to make an informed decision, the client doesn’t ‘need’ you anymore. They achieved what they set out to do and often we lose traction and contact whilst they ‘decide’ or ‘confirm’ the supplier or provider they intended to select in the first place. Call me cynical, but this is often the case.

When I refer to Enlightened Sellers having leverage early on, I am specifically referring to the following:

• Understanding the business case. This refers to the necessary early-stage discussions often referred to as ‘needs analysis’ or ‘discovery’ and involves getting deeper than our competitors to understand their real needs, priorities and their language. We need to establish what they value and, where possible, the financial impacts of solving problems or creating business outcomes. If we can’t establish the value, there will probably be no business case.
• Qualifying the opportunity. In order to understand the client’s needs, the impact on their business, timescales, resources (including budget or investment) and qualify an opportunity fully, we need to take our time and apply a high level of diligence. Enlightened Sellers undertake this process with the client, not in isolation.
• Understanding and influencing the decision process. We also need to be extremely diligent in understanding the decision process by focusing on what decisions will be made, when they will be made and by whom. In complex pursuits where the enterprise stakes are high, there will be multiple decision makers and we need to meet them all early in the process in order to qualify diligently. If we offer help and advice here, we can build credibility and trust.
• Gaining access to key stakeholders and decision makers. Once we understand the decision process and who makes the key decisions, we can use our leverage to meet them. Note that this is not a ‘softly, softly’ permission approach. We need to be firm about the need to meet all decision makers in order to better understand the broader client needs. Enlightened Sellers expect pushbacks here and deal with them.

Enlightened Selling means that we can make some carefully and necessary considered judgements early in the process:

Can they buy??

Should they buy?

Do we want to compete for this?

Can we win it?

If you think about it, it makes absolute sense that you shouldn’t make a proposal or presentation (meaning move towards the value capture phase) for a client without assessing the four things above. You can also avoid ‘premature presentation syndrome’ by making sure that you understand the client’s criteria for judging you before you propose.

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