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, compact 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.