Posts filed under 'Proposals & Presentations'
Once upon a time (last year) in a land far, far away (which looked a lot like ours) there was a contractor named Herbert (who reminded me of you). He was hard working and intelligent.
Herbert believed contracts were won through relationships. So he spent a lot of time building them.
Clive was Herbert’s prospective customer. Herbert liked Clive because of the 1 million square foot campus Clive managed.
Clive liked Herbert for the lunches and dinners Herbert paid for.
During their time together Herbert learned a lot about Clive. Herbert learned what worried Clive at work. He learned how the contracted service impacted Clive’s business. Herbert also heard about improvements Clive wanted to create within his department.
At last, the stars aligned and Clive put the multi-million dollar contract out to bid. Herbert was ecstatic.
However, because of the contract’s size, Clive’s purchasing deparment dropped the cone of silence around Clive. No contractor could talk to Clive while the bid was out.
Herbert didn’t mind. He knew Clive. He’d gotten on the bid list. He was going to produce the mother of all proposals.
So he went to work. He pulled out his best prior proposal. The one that secured his last big contract.
Herbert answered every question in Clive’s Request for Proposal. He used his best answers from the past.
When he was done, he sat back and watched with pride as the FedEx man struggled with the twelve copies of the 165-page, 11-pound proposals.
Time passed. The decision was made. And Herbert’s firm wasn’t selected.
Herbert was devastated. He was crushed. He was deconstructed at the molecular level. Clive, after all, was Herbert’s friend. They’d broken bread together. They were close.
After a period of mourning, Herbert felt he could control the bitterness in his voice. He called Clive to find out why he wasn’t chosen.
Clive told him if the decision was up to him alone, of course he would’ve chosen Herbert. But the dollars involved were too big. And Clive couldn’t jeoporadize his job or mortgage by selecting on relationship alone.
After a long silence, Clive asked Herbert “Why didn’t you use the information I’d given you? Why didn’t your proposal address the specific issues I told you about?”
“Then I could’ve pointed out to the other decision makers that your offer would solve our problems. That you had proposed a specific plan to get it done”.
Herbert learned a painful lesson from Clive. That relationships are important. But become worthless if customer-specific knowledge doesn’t make it into the proposal.
How are you avoiding the Contractor’s Grand Disconnect?
February 12th, 2007
I wish there was a university somewhere for customers who contract facility services. They could learn how to work with contractors more effectively and efficiently. A kind of ivy league Vendor U.
Many customers (those who buy facility services) do little things over and over again that can drive sane contractors up the wall, around the bend, and into a new line of work.
These irritations make our job harder, and ultimately cost us more time, effort and money. It would be nice if we could pass that waste back to the customers that caused it, but I don’t think so. Do you?
Don’t get me wrong. This isn’t a slam against all customers all the time. We all make mistakes, it’s part of learning. But some customers are learning 24/7. And many probably don’t even know they’re a pain to contractors.
So, enough with the kvetching. The first post in this series is not going to start with big irritations, but with small ones. As time goes by, with your input, we’ll work up to the Everest of customer disfunctions. Maybe even come up with an award.
Here goes - the little things that I wish customers were smarter about.
#1: Customers Require Us to Email Proposals
Told you we’d start small, but this one gets me when RFPs come out.
WHAT CUSTOMERS DO:
In the RFP customers will ask us to email them our proposal. Our formal responses to their RFP questions. Have you seen this? It doesn’t happen every time, but frequently enough for me to realize someone is asleep at wheel.
THE PROBLEM:
The file size of many proposals can be too large for customers’ e-mail servers. Most corporations have file size limitations where a large file is rejected and not delivered to the recipient. Whether it’s a Word doc or Adobe pdf , file size matters.
If we don’t deal with this problem early in the RFP process, we can get last minute heartburn at a time we probably don’t need any other pains.
WHAT WE CAN DO:
Try one of these, see if it works for you:
Notify customer at beginning of RFP process. Ask the customer about this problem and see if they can work out a solution, push the problem back to them.
Overnight courier a CD. Burn your file to a CD on off you go. You’ll need to complete your proposal production 1-2 days earlier than the RFP deadline to allow for courier delivery. Plan for that.
Create a web page for customer download. Make it secure. You’ll need user names and passwords, and the tech knowledge. Don’t post your confidential proposal on an unsecured web page. You may get customers questioning your confidentiality.
Use a file transfer service. Like YouSendIt , it moves big files to customers. 
With YouSendIt, you upload your file to YouSendIt’s server and include your customer’s e-mail address. An e-mail is sent to your customer from YouSendIt. They click a link and they’re taken to the YouSendIt download area. Files are only kept for a limited number of days
What do you wish customers were smarter about?
Let me know what customers could be smarter about. Come on, don’t be shy.
January 15th, 2007
In looking at my first two articles, I wondered why so much focus on proposals. This is what I came up with:
1) Revenue begins and ends with a contract
2) Contracts are awarded based on a written proposal
Here’s a couple of things I’ve learned in 19 years selling facility service contracts:
1) Customers use decision making teams (formal or informal) to select contractors
2) Sales people may know some of a customer’s decision makers, but rarely all
Here’s what I’ve heard a gazillon times in 19 years selling contracts:
- Realtionships are everything
Which is not true. Relationships matter. But they’re not the answer to selling contract services. Here’s why:
Binders on a Table
Contractors’ proposals must sell when their salespersons aren’t in the room with decision makers. Picture a pile of competitive proposals on a table in a customer’s conference room. Which contractor is going to be selected?
Relationships don’t Guarantee Contracts
I take that back. Small contracts may be awarded on relationships alone. But medium to large contracts - no way. Customer-friends won’t jeopardize their mortgage to select their Contractor-buddies.
Relationships make Proposals Better
Pre-bid relationships provide salespersons access to customer information. The stronger the relationship, the better the intel and insight. Which should be used when developing proposals.
The Disconnect between Proposals & Relationships
However, years of wining and dining, and all that time and money go down the drain when customer insight doesn’t get into proposals.
Salespersons work to create great customer relationships. They understand customers’ business and service needs. They know what customers are trying to achieve.
However, that intel doesn’t make it into contractors’ final proposal.
Reality Check - Test it Yourself
Don’t believe me? Check any proposal. See if the following are in there. And if they are, see if they’re persuasive and compelling, or generic and boring.
- Specific problems the customer is trying to solve?
- Connection between customer’s service issues & how they impact their business?
- Description of the customer’s unique business situation & goals?
- A unique solution from the contractor, not off the shelf?
- The degree of fit between the contractor’s solution & customer’s needs?
What Are You Doing to Close the Gap Between Relationships & Proposals?
December 21st, 2006
Revenue comes from securing contracts, which makes winning bids a leading indicator of business health. That’s why we measure proposal success in the first place.
Typically proposal success is measured as new sales, revenue growth, etc. If we’re in sales management, we’ll also track closing ratio, win rate, or whatever we’re calling the percentage of wins to bids submitted.
More visibility into business health is always better than less.
So, it’s the win rate (my preferred term for closing ratio) that we want to take a closer look at.
The Number Win Rate
First, there’s the win rate based on the percentage of wins to bids submitted. It shows success based on number of bids.
This is great for bragging rights, which can help increase, or maintain funding to your sales group. Let’s face it, we get far more credibility for sales efforts when we can claim “$78 million secured @ 73% win rate” (shameless plug: this is my technical proposal writing success rate for clients).
The Dollar Win Rate
However, there’s a second win rate. This one’s based on the percentage of dollars secured compared to total dollars bid. My dollar win rate for clients is 59%, which means of all the dollars my clients bid, only 59 out of 100 were secured.
Sounds less impressive than winning 73 out of a 100 times (my number win rate), doesn’t it?
The dollar win rate only comes into play if your customers award less than the full amount bid - but this happens frequently in large bids.
How Do You Measure Proposal Success?
Are there better measurements out there? Tell me how you measure proposal success, post your comments and feedback here.
How Do You Measure Up to Your Peers?
We’re developing a contractors’ group to benchmark proposal success to peers in their same industry.
Names of peer companies and specific customers’ names are blinded. You won’t see other firms’ names and they won’t see yours. Come on, who would participate if that info was shared?
If you’d like to participate in this benchmarking project send an email to info@serviceperformance.com
December 12th, 2006
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