Selling consultancy and professional services is getting harder all the time with more discriminating clients, a sharper focus on value-for-money results and tougher international competition. According to Prof. Colin Coulson-Thomas, leader of the ‘winning business research and best practice programme’: “Some firms are much more successful than others at winning business. Business development professionals and practice leaders need to understand what these high performers do differently.”
The critical success factors for winning business are set out in a series of winning new business reports. Speaking this week in Manchester to commercial managers from leading firms Coulson-Thomas, Executive Editor of the reports will show how excelling at more of the identified critical success factors boosts bid win rates.
Coulson-Thomas explains: “Successful firms get it right from the start. They work to differentiate themselves at every stage of the bid process. They are better at building client relationships and treat their contact network as organic rather than static. They work harder at understanding and communicating with the client, make every opportunity to pitch count and put the client at the centre of the universe.”
According to Coulson-Thomas:
Winning New Business reports are available for management consultancy, IT and Telecoms consultancy, engineering consultancy, PR and Marketing consultancy, accountancy and the legal profession. Drawing upon data and interviews covering 128 winning business activities and issues they provide comparisons with the most successful and average performers.
The ‘profession’
There are also winning business reports and best practice resource packs to boost bid success rate in particular business sectors. ‘Winning New Business in IT & Telecoms’ and ‘Winning New Business in Engineering and Manufacturing’
The ‘sector’ reports explore key factors which lead to success in winning new business. They contain charts covering 50 bidding activities and issues which compare top quartile new business winners with bottom quartile and average performers throughout the bidding process from market positioning, to understanding and communicating with customers, building a winning bid team and negotiating the deal.
A four part resource pack is available, containing the 165 page report ‘Winning New Business: the Critical Success Factors’, ‘Bidding for Business: the Skills Agenda, a report exploring the top 20 skills for winning new business, ‘The Contract Bid Manager’s Toolkit’, a set of 20 loose-leaf worksheets designed to help managers bid for business, and ‘Win More Business’, a CD-Rom which contains these three items together with other resources designed to help companies win more business.
Professional firms and commercial companies can also now benchmark important activities such as winning business, building key account relationships and purchasing. Completing a questionnaire enables them to compare their own approaches with those of their peers and most successful competitors as recorded in the database of a continuing investigation led by Prof. Colin Coulson-Thomas. Participating companies receive a bespoke report and confidentiality is observed.
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, the critical success factors' and leader of the Winning New Business Research and Best Practice Programme, has reviewed the processes and practices for winning business of over 100 companies and helped over 100 boards to improve board and/or corporate performance. He has spoken at over 200 national, international and corporate events in 25 countries and can be contacted by Tel: + 44 (0)1733 361149; Fax: +44 (0)1733 361459, email: colinct@tiscali.co.uk or via www.coulson-
