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‘THINK AND WIN BIDS: Winning High-Value, High-Stakes Bids through Superior Questioning, Listening & Thinking Skills’
The three fundamental skills of a successful bid strategist and bid leader are the ability to think , to listen and to ask quality questions .
Think and Win Bids is more than a catchy title. This is a book with a strong message and a wealth of commanding insights into the fundamentals of winning bids . . . including the need to deeply understand a potential customer or client organisation, the world in which it operates, its intended procurement, and the all-important backdrop against which that procurement is being made.
The capacity and willingness for a bid leader or business development professional to think deeply, logically, strategically and client-centrically is a key differentiator between those who can sustain a high win rate and provide much-needed leadership in new-business pursuits, and those who flounder in such a role.
It’s a skill set that can be taught – so long as the necessary degree of humility and “coachability” exists. And that’s the reason this book was written. Its title is an unashamed play on that of the all-time business classic, Think & Grow Rich , penned in 1937 by leading business thinker of his time, Napoleon Hill.
This highly readable book will teach you:
- The importance of understanding your customer or client organisation and its procurement from a holistic (versus a narrow, service- or product-focused) perspective.
- How to gain a detailed and bid-winning appreciation of the procurement psyche of your prospective customer or client organisation.
- How to determine the most valuable information to acquire about a customer or client organisation’s intended procurement and the bigger picture directing or impacting it.
- How to plan for the acquisition of the above points of critical knowledge.
- The difference between high-value and low-value conversations and how to plan for the former.
- The specific differences between great listeners and average listeners.
- What highly effective business development operatives and bid professionals do that average ones don’t.
- The many types of information available to help inform your bid strategy, and how to source them.
- Little-known sources of competitor information.
- The criticality of channelling information back, in a valuable format, from the client or customer coalface to the bid team.
- What you need to know when your client organisation has its own (up-the-line) client.
- How to take advantage of arrogance on the part of the competition.
- The importance of avoiding arrogance in your own organisation.
- The value of “sleuthing” the customer’s documentation versus simply “reading” it.
- The critical distinction between “features” and “benefits” and how to capitalise on your ability to translate one into the other.
- What constitutes bid strategy . . . and what doesn’t.
- How to turn raw information into bid-winning intelligence.
- Working wide while drilling deep in the strategy formulation phase.
- How to develop a winning bid strategy.
- Why “thorough” is the best default position when it comes to strategy.
- Why talk of “silver bullets” is naive.
- How to avoid confusing tactics with strategy.
- Why templating is the opposite of thinking.
- The importance of documenting your bid blueprint in detail.
- How to position your organisation as a trusted advisor.
- How to get the most out of a de-brief.
- How to hire the most effective professional support.
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