Emotion : A driver for all decision making

Considering that delivering a response that meets 100% of technical requirements and selection criteria is THE success factor is misleading, because every decision-making action is fundamentally based on emotions.

Paul Ekman, in the psychology of emotions, identified six primary emotions: fear, anger, joy, surprise, sadness, and contempt.

A response to a call for tenders can play on three emotions:

1/ FEAR felt by the purchasing team

The fear of the purchasing team mainly stems from making a mistake in selecting the service provider. This negative emotion must absolutely be taken into account and addressed by the service provider in their response to the call for tenders.

A classic example is the selection of a Big 5 provider with a strong reputation to deliver a project with limited scope, having little impact on the organization or business processes, at the expense of players with real expertise. In this case, the primary selection criterion chosen by the purchasing team is akin to a personal "full-risk insurance" in the event of project failure, like: "No one can blame me internally for choosing the market leader!"

To address this fear, the service provider must deliver as much detailed information as possible to prove:

• Their understanding of the different dimensions of the project,

• Their expertise,

• Their project organization,

• Client testimonials, etc.

2/ SURPRISE or the Wow Effect

The "Wow effect" is possible when the proposed solution exceeds expectations, even if the client didn’t expect it.

In the context of a call for tenders, this positive emotion is interesting to trigger due to its ability to create competitive differentiation but has a limited effect during the consultation phase. Therefore, it is often advised to trigger this effect close to the decision-making period.

With the emergence of solutions incorporating generative AI, publishers and integrators are currently seeking to provoke this effect by presenting new use cases to clients.

However, this effect is not a sine qua non condition for winning a contract, especially as it often carries the risk that the client might consider that your understanding of their expectations remains approximate in the event of a failed effect.

The prerequisite for any Wow effect is to have detailed information about the client's needs and expectations gathered during the qualification phase.

3/ JOY to avoid ANGER or CONTEMPT

The response team must take into account the effort required of the purchasing team to analyze the responses from different bidders.

A response to a call for tenders that is characterized by its completeness, ease of reading, and attention to both content and form should foster a favorable environment for a positive reading of the document, avoiding any feelings of anger or contempt. Consulting as a profession requires applying this principle, with response documents where the form is almost as important as the content.

When reading the response document, the purchasing team will naturally project onto the potential quality of future deliverables during the project phase.

Care given to the form of the response document is generally considered by the response team as a secondary priority compared to producing the content. Given time constraints, there is a risk that tasks with a secondary priority are only partially completed.

Better resource planning for the response team should allow for minimal time to work on the form.

"Emotion is the driver of change, and joy is its essence" - Olivier Lockert