How to fail a bid response in 10 lessons?

1/ Rely solely on procurement's arguments to gauge the likelihood of winning the contract.One of procurement's objectives is to ensure that a minimum number of bidders respond to the tender to avoid any form of invalidation or delay. As a result, the objectivity of procurement's argument regarding the value of our solution should be taken with caution. Beyond measuring the chances of winning, qualification should allow the collection of essential information for building the value proposition.

2/ Engage in a tender response primarily because the sales pipeline has too few opportunities.If the absence of opportunities is the main driver of a "GO" decision during a review, it is often a bold gamble. The risk is that the response team invests too much time in an opportunity with a low probability of success. Sometimes, it's better to invest this time in generating new opportunities.

3/ Favor the availability of consultants assigned to the response team over their expertise, skills, or experience to reduce pre-sales costs and limit the impact on ongoing missions. Unless the client has already decided to work with your services before submitting the RFP, responding to a tender is still a competition where the best team with the best proposal wins.The composition of the response team is therefore crucial to winning the contract.

4/ Do not engage the response team in project mode.

Responding to a tender is a race against time with several steps. The risk of not organizing the response team in project mode is not having enough time to work collectively on key components such as delivery models, pricing, risk management, and the value proposition.

5/ Let the sales representative work alone in defining the value of the proposed solution.

It's often observed that sales representatives suffer from "blank page syndrome" when completing the "Value of our proposition" section of the Executive Summary. The value of a proposal is central to the response strategy, which must be built with an extended response team, including management, to integrate a diverse set of value dimensions: delivery, pricing, finance, etc.

6/ Do not establish governance within the response team.

Governance's main role is to facilitate decision-making. In a time-constrained response process, governance should accelerate decision-making within the response team on key issues such as securing a workload plan through provisions versus optimizing pricing.

7/ Underestimate the time needed to comply with internal validation processes.

Respecting internal validation processes serves as a safeguard that protects both the organization and the response team regarding the commitments made. This validation step comes at the end of the response production cycle and may generate revision requests, requiring significant work that can affect the document's quality, especially given the deadline constraints.

8/ Disregard the competition's ability to make a difference.

Acknowledging the competition should remain a driver for the response team to create even more value.

9/ Do not fully comply with the RFP requirements.

Procurement teams are often sensitive to the completeness and compliance of the delivered response with the RFP prerequisites.

10/ Do not respect the response deadline.

How many tender responses, especially in public markets, have not been considered due to failure to meet the submission deadline?

Henry Ford: "Failure is only the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently."