When flying the kite of work winning in a gale – are you a chicken or a pig?
Beyond the terrible human cost, Corona Virus was such a let-down for construction as a sector.
We were largely all doing so well, but the game changed. We've all probably given ourselves some time to feel a bit beaten up. Leadership, delivery, and support functions have all taken a kicking trying to keep pace with the situation.
But for leaders and their resources applied to winning work that's enough. It’s time to face into the storm.
Throughout the last three months we've been working hard with our clients to respond with crisis management advice on the client and comms side and to quite quickly land strategies and plans to position their businesses well for when the gates open and the street fight for work begins. Because it will be a street fight. We will shortly be in a global depression. Your competition will have changed, with some not surviving, some in distress (driving poor behaviours) and others having weathered the storm better than you. And your prospects and clients will have evolved, with different wants, needs and stresses than when you last saw them.
A question I have been asked by many senior executives of late is: “how do we not only ensure we win our key deals when they come, but how do we defend on all fronts, making sure we win our fair share across our whole business?”
My advice: you need to be Pigs. Let me explain.
Leaders need to decide if they are a Pig or a Chicken when it comes to work winning, especially now. As the old adage goes – when playing their parts in an English Breakfast – Pigs are committed, Chickens are merely involved. Like Pigs, in these Covid times - leaders need to be absolutely committed to the work winning cause.
We’ve found that the biggest determining factor in win rate and the growth trajectory of organisations is the behaviours and commitment of their leadership to effective measured work winning practices and how that is cascaded down through the organisation. Great leaders enable their business to differentiate, to proactively position well and to only bid opportunities that it should win. They sponsor a measured approach to targeting the right business, growing accounts and looking to secure deals far before RFP/ITT. Importantly – they invest in work winning capability, not just employing great proposals people, but also developing their pre-construction, middle management and delivery people in winning business. Everyone has to understand the importance of work winning and their part in it. Many are measured on it. And leaders role model positive mature behaviours, consistently applying good governance.
Once leaders engage, we tend to find these success factors fall into place. They are especially appropriate now:
1. Sponsored Bid / No-Bid Governance
In our research we have found a sad fact that the reasons for more than 85% of bid losses through competitive procurement processes are known to the bidder prior to submission. Taking the time and resources to develop and submit a bid proposal is a significant investment for your business. Those resources could be put to use and add value elsewhere. All high performing organisations focus their efforts on opportunities they will win, discarding those they won’t immediately.
2. Clear roles and responsibilities
Like any project, having well defined roles and responsibilities at the start allows all your team members to be sure of what is required of them and what is required of their fellow teammates. This drives efficiency and reduces the risk of overlap or gaps. Having a sponsored process for securing new business, provides the team and all their stakeholders with a clear road-map of how to get from the client enquiry landing to a successful compliant winning submission.
3. Tendering savvy – the skills and motivation to win
When selecting your teams, the bid leader must understand the opportunity and subject area; but must also be enterprising enough to see how to add value for the client and drive a good deal where everyone wins. It’s not an easy balance or one that comes naturally to many. Also, as many team members as possible must understand work winning, with the ability to articulate the benefits of their proposals. This can be taught to a point, but we would urge that you pay attention to the make-up of your teams and ensure there is a good balance of technical know-how and entrepreneurial spirit.
4. Innovation – the USPs and discriminators to differentiate a winner
Your bid teams must have value to show the client that outweighs the value offered by your competitors. You’ve got to go the extra mile. Having unique differentiators sets your proposals apart. It provides interesting centre pieces for your proposition and exec summary and creates an excitement factor for your proposals; pulling on emotional buyer behaviours as well as satisfying commercial drivers. It attracts the buyers to look more closely at your proposals – as long as the USP is relevant to them and believable.
But how do you raise win rates and then make it stick?
How do you boil the ocean of raising win rates across a whole business? The 70-20-10 model for learning and development (L&D) is a commonly used formula within the training profession. The model was created in the 1980’s by three researchers and authors working with the Center for Creative Leadership in Greensboro in the US. The model outlined the optimum split of learning consumption, suggesting that individuals obtain knowledge, skills and abilities in their roles through the following mixture of sources:
70 percent from on-the-job experience
20 percent from social sources such as interactions with others
10 percent from formal structured training
The previous 55-25-20 Model
In early 2018, Training Industry Inc released an insights report to update the focus and efforts in driving training impact. The overall blend is now closer to what could be called the 55-25-20 model. With higher quality and more impactful methods in live training, huge consumption and availability of online structured content and improved understanding of coaching and social learning there has been a dramatic shift in the dynamic.
In the last 12 months we have found that leveraging the 55-25-20 model with a mixed economy of interventions and learning methods, organised to build and drive momentum, helps deliver sustained increased win rates at scale. We’ve found that mobilising with live training (or webinars) for bidding ‘champions’ across the business creates the initial hockey stick in bidding understanding, the 20.
We then support that initial wave with ongoing mentoring and coaching of key individuals and deliver ongoing modules as part of their apprentice, graduate and leadership development programmes – enabling social learning and embedding bidding good practice in their DNA. The 25.
enterprise bid toolkit platform
Lastly we land an enterprise bid toolkit platform as their constant online bid process and digital reference point, providing them with a consistent roadmap and governance to follow, with embedded microlearning to refresh or up-skill bid teams right when they need it, on live bids. The 55.
Our clients are averaging more than a 20% increase in win rates, winning at better margins and finding the experience of their new measured robust bidding approach far less of a drag on the business. In these cash focused times, we find that investment in work winning development delivers more than 100 times its costs in margin to the business within a year. If ever there was a time to get a hockey stick upsweep in your ability to win, it’s now. Be a pig and commit properly to working winning.
Jeremy Brim
Jeremy has a portfolio career as a Non-Exec, Growth Consultant, Capture Specialist and a Global APMP Accredited Proposals Trainer.
He brings 20 years of experience as a work winning and bid management professional across both the public and private sectors. He’s led successful bid functions spanning professional services, outsourcing and construction, where he was Head of Construction Bids at Mace. He has secured an enviable collection of high-profile projects, programmes and frameworks with blue chip clients around the globe.
He now leads Growth Ignition – a consulting, training and enabling tech firm. They’re on a mission to help clients maximise sustainable growth and focus their spend by joining the dots from marketing, through to initiatives in account management, capture and pursuit.
In October 2018 he also picked up the leadership of the bid toolkit – a unique APMP accredited simple step by step online bid process and guide, with integrated learning content and tools to download.
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