Selling: How can I increase my chances of winning?

Bidding is an expensive experience, tends to drag in a lot of resources and diverts attention from other opportunities. Added to the fact that companies can spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on a single bid, you really want to maximise your chances of success.

Countless internet articles tell you why you lose a bid, but most reasons come down to not knowing what the customer needs ahead of the tendering process. However, if it was as simple as that, we wouldn’t still be talking about it.

This blog looks at a key part of this topic and focuses on a single word “compelling”. Why? Simply put, because it’s the one adjective that flows all of the way through the sales cycle; starting with the need, the message, proposal, and contract, and has a massive impact on your success.

Let’s start at the beginning. A person in a customer organization may be charged with looking for a solution to a problem. At this stage they WANT to find a solution. We have all conducted sales calls where we describe our offerings and effectively hope that the person opposite us makes some connection with what they WANT to achieve.  It only becomes a NEED if there are tangible consequences if the problem is not resolved. To check that the WANT has become a NEED, you have to ask the right questions. Great we’ve validated a lead…lets put it in CRM!.

However there are 2 problems with this. Firstly, it is not a COMPELLING need if it’s not time-bound, but also you only have one person’s view of the possible need. Does this person’s manager see a similar need?. Is it compelling enough to motivate the budget holder to allocate funds to the work-scope, or change supplier? In anything beyond a one-man show there is no such thing as a single Compelling Need. It is always nuanced at the very least.

As I said at the beginning of this article, improving your chances of winning is an expensive activity, and as such you cannot afford to maintain the level of focus on a single opportunity that drags out for months or years. Establishing the realistic timeline before a decision is taken needs a broader view than a single person, the more so, if this person is in a technical function removed from business decisions. It may take “SneakerNet” to spread the compelling need within your customer’s organization. In other words, physically meeting with various people, and canvassing their opinions. Only then can you really decide if there is a COMPELLING NEED that will result in an award decision within an acceptable time-frame for you. Unfortunately very few CRM systems place sufficient focus on this critical step to be of practical use.

Let us assume you have successfully identified a compelling need. Can you satisfy the need entirely on your own?, or will you need to partner up?. What are the contract models used in this customer’s organization?. These questions will determine your ability to produce a COMPELLING MESSAGE.. in other words “Why us”. They will also drive your opportunity strategy. Will you improve your chances by partnering up, sub-contracting to another player, or sub-contracting other services that you will lead?. Establishing your ability to deliver the solution to your customer’s compelling need may well expose some unpleasant realities, but you have to face them. If you decide that you will have to work through an integrator for example, will you pick a preferred partner, or aim to be present in all integrator proposals?. The answer will vastly alter your COMPELLING MESSAGE to the end-user. It also means that you are in a dual sales cycle, firstly with the end-user and secondly with the Integrator. If you pick a preferred partner, your message may be about seamless integration, and operational de-risking. If you want to be present in all bids, you may leverage the fact that you are happy to work with any selected supplier for the larger workscope. In Oracle’s TAS terminology ”Fragment-Peaceful co-existence”.

Your COMPELLING PROPOSAL(s), takes your message and takes into account the other COMPELLING NEEDs that exist. For example, the technical solution may deliver clear benefits and address the most obvious Compelling Need, but the budget holder may need to modulate the payments to fit her/his budget limits; or to take our example above, procurement procedures are such that providing a proposal that fits with their Supplier management strategy makes you more attractive than an alternative that requires dispensation.You may argue that these are not Compelling Needs, but they are to the person concerned; and that’s all that matters.

The last step we will cover now is the Contract negotiations, assuming you have been selected. The more Compelling Needs you have addressed as you progress through the sales cycle, the stronger your negotiating position will be, and consequently the more favourable your final contract will be. Everything we have looked at so far is about differentiation. A negotiation is not simply between you and your client, but between you and an alternative your client has available. Essentially, the stronger your COMPELLING PROPOSAL is compared to your competitors, and the wider your ability to satisfy many of the nuances around the COMPELLING NEED, the stronger your negotiating position.

Remember the word “COMPELLING”. It really can make the difference.