BID COMMANDOS

My No. 1 specialty. I became an expert bid strategist, writer and multiple-times published author in the civil infrastructure / engineering / construction sectors back in 2006, in the heyday of Australia’s project alliancing (later dubbed “collaborative contracting”) movement.

This (predominantly) non-price-based, “collaborative contracting” contractual methodology was relied upon by the Australian Federal and State governments to power through a massive backlog of infrastructure projects and placate an expanding national populace that would wait no longer for their delivery.

With every Tier One player able “to do the job” in most instances, evaluators look (a) to find the most significant points of competitive superiority and differentiation in the proponents’ key personnel, and (b) to identify the proponent with the best culturally and attitudinally aligned team to partner with them over the several years that some of these major and megaprojects could take to deliver.

Jordan Kelly in Municipal Engineering Australia:
Why Engineers Could be More Compelling than the Average Sales ‘Pro’

Defence is truly a world of its own. Bidding for defence contracts is not for the uninitiated.

A solid understanding of the systems, processes, culture, language and mindset of the Forces is paramount to credibility in every section of a Defence bid.

I conducted the primary research for a complex and challenging strategy for a major (global) infrastructure player in its effort to turn around an earlier disaster in delivering a Defence project, and win back its credibility in the Australian military procurement environment.

Following the formulation of this overarching strategy, I went on to produce a detailed blueprint for a daring bid for the highest-profile Defence contract bid (a Royal Australian Air Force project) in Australia of the immediate era. However (to my chagrin), a delay in the ADF’s release of the tender call resulted in another agency enacting the strategy, since I was by then holed up producing my magnus opus duo, ‘Cracking the VfM Code: How to Identify & Deliver Genuine Value for Money in Collaborative Contracting’ (Book 1) and ‘Cracking the VfM Code’ (Book 2) Value for Money … Understanding It & Articulating Your Ability to Deliver It’– in response to industry demand.

However, over the ditch in New Zealand, my authorship activities had not prevented me from directing the strategy inputs for a bid widely recognised throughout the country’s capital, Wellington, as “the biggest game in town” i.e. a contract to revolutionise the telecommunications environment of the New Zealand Defence Force. We won a hard battle . . . TelstraClear was an Australian company and it was generally considered it had no hope against this somewhat parochial country’s own homegrown telco giant, and several other players far longer established in the New Zealand marketplace than my client.

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The phenomenal growth in this market has taken place in lockstep with the number of players, as well as the increase in variety of company type and size, providing the array of services in the disaster recovery and business continuity sector.

Service providers tend to substantially weight their boasting on “hard” factors like technology, facilities and location. Yet each of those factors, and the combination thereof, is either undermined or complemented by the “people factor”.

My first taste of the criticality of representing the value of this sector to the business community, came after 9/11. It was also my introduction to just how badly bids were produced i.e. they were seen as extensions of a company’s marketing collateral . . . generic, rah rah, self-centric fluff.

That’s where I realised that my strategic smarts belonged more in equipping corporations to produce strategic, client-centric proposals, than it did back in the mainstream marketing environment.

Nowadays, it’s a foolish enterprise that dismisses the need for carefully selected, robust DR provisions. However, the critical selection criteria have evolved markedly for prepared and progressive organisations, and there are now more competitive variables involved than might be immediately obvious to either side of the bidding equation.

If reconnaissance is critical to any market entry endeavour, pursuing export markets or bidding for overseas contracts puts this need into the highest gear possible.

Export partners, customers and clients need rock solid reassurance that your people understand not only their environment and markets, but also the cultural nuances with which your people are likely to be faced in servicing their contract with your enterprise.

In reconnaissance, the chain of investigation is longer, deeper and wider. The intel sources are broader. They take even more qualification than a domestic market pursuit. And they take greater cross-checking, contextualisation and analysis – before you even begin to assemble the components of a market entry, or bid, strategy. Ideally, they take savvy identification of, co-operation with, and investigation through, a local business partner.

Thus, there’s not one, but at least two, levels of reconnaissance and strategy involved in an export pursuit. You need to know what you’re doing, or you’ll very easily lose your shirt.

Jordan Kelly in New Zealand Business:
How to Succeed At Overseas Bidding

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With the long-term (and often, client-interwoven) nature of these contracts, signing into an arrangement with a company the personnel of which are incompatible culturally, ethically or even intellectually, represents one of the greatest fears of clients in the facilities management space.

That’s one characteristic of FM bids. Another characteristic is inherent pre-bid intangibility of any claims you make. Sure, you can table references, strut your smarts, and hail your resources . . . but unlike, say, infrastructure bidders, you can’t point to something physical and say, “We built that.” So, short of reputation, you’re dealing with intangibles in many of your potential aspects of differentiation.

Further, for smaller or newer players, you’re up against the massive, household names that have decades of entrenchment across all the arenas in which FM bids are issued. Real smarts are needed to pull up out of a real “IBM” environment (with reference to the old marketing professors’ maxim, “Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM” ).

I’ve conducted deep reconnaissance and market entry campaigns aimed at wedging big-name players out of prized territory, such as the running of large mining camp accommodation facilities bids. Not easy. But with depth, discipline and detailed documentation you will find, it’s . . . mission accomplished.

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While these fields are highly specialist, ironically, participants often struggle to communicate meaningful competitive differentiation.

In insurance, many bidders are challenged in the arena of making non-price attributes as important as financial considerations.

In finance, journalists and other intermediary opinion leaders can make or break the perception of an organisation (like a fund manager) in the marketplace, and many enterprises simply don’t know how to change their strategies and messaging sufficiently for the different types of audience.

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Corporate travel is an intensely competitive arena, with a distinct need for differentiation.

What’s your specific client value proposition? Is it your strength in relationships? Your technology prowess? The depth, breadth and detailed comprehensiveness of your collective service offering?

Or are you a price leader?

Jordan Kelly in Conventions Industry Magazine:
Fall in Love with Your Destination Through the Prospect’s Eyes

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There’s only one way to describe this industry:  Cut-throat. Post-COVID19, let’s make that cut-throat on steroids.

It’s going to be critical – in a flooded marketplace – for an executive search firm to demonstrate its ability and tenacity to skim off the cream of very large crops of candidates. Big brand names and processes aside, it ultimately comes down to the competitively superior skill set and natural talents of each of the firm’s recruitment specialists.

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There’s often a great irony at play in bid submissions in this sector.

The bidder is falling over itself to show off its technical smarts and advancements. However, within the evaluation team are usually several non-IT buffs who are there (a) from other key procurement-interested departments, and (b) to ensure the interests of a broader base of stakeholders are optimally served.

Demonstrating the ability to communicate, and ultimately work, at both ends of the IT-savvy spectrum is central to ensuring all members of the evaluation team, and other involved stakeholders, fully grasp the bid’s key content and strategic messaging. It’s also central to reassuring the client that your personnel will be able to adequately relate to, and communicate with, all user groups within the organisation.

Rarely, however, is this critical balance struck – or, at least, to an optimal degree.

In stark contrast to standard, client-initiated EOIs and RFPs, in a Market-Led Proposal it’s your job to make clear, to the client organisation, its “why”.

Secondly, and directly related, it’s incumbent upon you to take any soft and subjective reasoning with which you have led into your proposal, and convert these into hard-core, tangible, measurable outcomes and stakeholder benefits.

The rationale underpinning the selection of your delivery personnel is critically important in the context of a proactive proposal like an MLP. You must demonstrate your ability to de-risk a project that might not be put to market (read: the client has no opportunity to make competitive comparisons in terms of competence and surety of outcome).

In many contexts, there is a close conceptual connection between collaborative contracting and project alliancing, and Market-Led Proposals.

The most significant key of all, is to demonstrate that the sum total of the value you intend to deliver, and are capable of delivering, is a unique feature of your abilities. Furthermore, that it’s so closely aligned with the needs, desires and visions of the bid’s recipient, that that recipient is rendered totally unwilling to consider any other potential supplier for the execution of your proposition.

Here’s one of the fundamental mistakes I observe professional services firms making:

It’s being focused, first and foremost, on communicating their own brilliance, before fully demonstrating a comforting depth and detail of understanding of the client’s needs and issues. When that priority leads the thinking that goes into a proposal, rather than being subservient to it, the bidder risks missing the mark with the client, while a more client-centric competitor hits the mark.

This issue extends into the profiles of the experts you’re putting up to service that client . . . in that, when the client’s team reads the profiles included in the various competing submissions, they’re looking for the ones that demonstrate the closest possible match between their needs and the skills, experience and qualities of the provider’s personnel.

If you think that sounds very “101”, you’d be surprised at how many professional service firms and their people lose sight of the client when tasked with bragging about themselves – from accountants and auditors, to law firms, to all manner of professional services providers in between.

The growing pressure on Governments globally to make progress in clearing their (social and economic) public infrastructure backlogs has brought about – in an increasing number of jurisdictions – a willingness to consider Public Private Partnership (PPP) ventures.

Bidding PPP projects is not only very different to producing any other type of bid, it’s also a highly specialised endeavour.. Any new, intending consortium has a steep learning curve ahead.

Jordan Kelly in Construction Digital (UK, Mainland Europe & U.S.):
Pitching NZ PPPs: Creativity vs Cost

Many rail bidders rely almost solely on heralding the engineering, design, technological, performance, and comfort features of their rolling stock when bidding.

They place secondary emphasis (if much at all) on understanding the background, and societal, historic and political context of the environment into which they are bidding.

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The depth of understanding of the client’s world that is required to unearth all possible avenues for differentiation is probably at its most intense in the transport, freight and logistics sector.

One of the most commoditised industries, it’s not good enough to offer loose, unsubstantiated reassurances about service levels, for example. One of the ways to avoid this tender trap is to develop a focus on the client that is inherent in every aspect, and every phase, of a pursuit.

Another highly commoditised space, these industries require serious smarts to drill out all points of meaningful differentiation in a submission, beyond the obvious.

The opportunity to differentiate more broadly than the already well-recognised industry imperatives, starts with the ability and willingness to acquire a deep understanding of the uniquenesses of the client’s world.

I’ve led strategy formulation and submission writing endeavours for international specialist consultants and Tier One constructors in dam design and construction, in recycled water plants, and in wastewater treatment plants. In every case, I’ve identified and optimised subject matter experts’ contribution potential to place our team ahead of a highly competitive field.