Most companies adopt losing approaches to winning bids. According to Prof. Coulson-Thomas, “In the competitive bidding arena winners and losers exhibit very different attitudes and approaches.”
The Professor explains “Winners are confident and proactive. They identify prospects that would make good business partners, and ruthlessly prioritise available opportunities.”
Prof. Coulson-Thomas believes most companies could increase win rates by adopting more of the critical success factors set out in ‘Winning New Business’*, a resource pack his team has produced. He explains “Most of the changes required are attitudinal and behavioural and can be quickly made.”
Coulson-Thomas explains "winners enter their prospects’ worlds and structure their proposals around prospect needs, priorities and selection criteria. They understand the value and benefits sought by prospects, and the factors they consider when buying.”
The winners are also better at differentiating, building relationships and establishing the superiority of their offerings. According to Coulson-Thomas “they excel at every stage from being invited to bid to negotiating a contract. They understand their prospects’ purchasing decision making processes”
Coulson-Thomas points out that “winners think through the outcomes they would like to achieve, and allocate sufficient resources early on to build up an unassailable lead. They remain sensitive to changing buyer concerns throughout the purchasing process, and work hard to establish empathy, build trust and match the culture of prospects. They regularly review their approach, and learn from both successes and failures.”
Coulson-Thomas concludes: “Even the winners could do much better. The 4% who win more than three out of four of the competitive races they enter are only very effective at less than half of the 18 critical success factors identified in the ‘Winning New Business’* resource pack. There is enormous opportunity for most businesses to significantly improve their ‘hit rate’."
*‘Winning New Business’ a four-part best practice resource pack by Colin Coulson-Thomas, Carol Kennedy, and Matthew O’Connor is published by Policy Publications in association with the Centre for Competitiveness. The pack consists of four items:
• Winning New Business: the Critical Success Factors. A 172pp A4 format report based on the real life experience of over 300 companies. It explores the key factors which lead to success in winning new business.
• Bidding for Business: the Skills Agenda. A 70pp A4 report based on research among 62 companies. It explores the top 20 skills that are important in winning new business.
• The Contract Bid Manager’s Toolkit. A set of 30 loose-leaf and inter-linked tools – frameworks, tables, charts, worksheets, checklists - designed to help managers in the practicalities of bidding for business.
• Win More Business. A CD-Rom which contains the above three items together with case studies and other resources designed to help companies win more business.
The ‘Winning New Business’ resource pack, winning business reports covering individual sectors and seven professions and related and bespoke winning business benchmarking reports can be obtained from Policy Publications:
Prof. Colin Coulson-Thomas, co-author of 'Winning New Business' has reviewed the processes and practices for winning business of over 100 companies and spoken at over 200 conferences in over 20 countries. He can be contacted by Tel: + 44 (0)1733 361149; Fax: +44 (0)1733 361459; colinct@tiscali.co.uk;
