Welcome to the

Work winning : the project manager's survival guide to bids,

tenders and proposal evening workshop

Chair of SIG: Jon Broome

The Project Manager’s Survival Guide to Bids, Tenders and Proposals

APM Contracts and Procurement SIG

David Warley CPP.APMP Fellow

Agenda

Project and business development lifecycles

Project organisation and governance

Customers, competition and win strategy

Surviving the proposal phase

Controlled close

Conclusions and actions

Bids are Projects:

Project Definition: “A temporary organisation established to achieve a defined objective within a specific timeframe.”

One View of the Business Development Lifecycle

Source:

APMP® Body of Knowledge

“An Introduction to the Business Development Lifecycle”

http://newbok.apmp.org/bok/introduction-to-the-business-development-lifecycle/

World of

Opportunities

Bids and Projects share similar lifecycles:

Opportunity Assessment

Pursuit / Capture

Proposal Negotiation Handover to

Delivery

Start Up Initiation Delivery Stage(s)

Final Stage Post Project

Project

Bid

Does this bid / project have a business case?

7

Your turn:

A B C

What management products / exhibits would you expect to have at a Start Up review?

List common issues with Start Up process

Suggest checklist items to aid preparation for Start Up review

Integrated Project

Emerging Project

Lagging Project

Start early

9

Positioning Opportunity Assessment

Pursuit Proposal Negotiation Delivery

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1982 2006

TSTART

PWIN

(%)

$ Spend

RFI RFP Submit Award PQQ

What to do if you start late:

Project Organisation and Governance

• Creating a Controlled Environment for your bid

Project Organisation and Governance

Let’s get organised:

Direct

Manage

Deliver

14

Bid Executive

Bid Manager

Team Leader

Senior Supplier

Senior User

Team Leader Team Leader

Bid Support

SMEs

SMEs

SMEs

SMEs

SMEs

SMEs

Working with partners

•Prime Contractor

•Sub-contractor

•Alliance / Joint Venture

•…

What is the commercial

relationship?

•Documented

•Agreed split of work

•Pre contract

•Post contract

Is there a teaming

agreement?

•Reporting

•Communication

•Location and facilities

Working arrangements

Create a controlled environment

Management

• Governance

• Sponsorship

• Process

Bid Managers • Getting the ‘charter’ right

• Agreement on ‘controls’

Cost

Timescales

Quality

Scope

Risk

Benefits (Business Case)

Get the right charter for your bid

Set clear tolerances on controls

Take a break!

Customers, competition and win strategy

Customers, competition and win strategy

• De-mystifying sales voodoo

• Defining and communicating strategy

“If you wish to persuade me, you must think my thoughts, feel my feelings, and speak my words.”

- Marcus Tullius Cicero

Understand your Customer

Issues, Motivators and Hot Buttons

• Issue • Any problem or concern that

may be affecting the Prospect

• Motivator • An issue that causes the

Prospect to want to act

• Hot Button • An issue that is high in the

list of Prospect’s concerns

Motivators Hot Buttons

Issues

low

low

high

high Customer Orientation

Feature Function Advantage Benefit

-ve Discriminator

+ve Discriminator

Differentiator

Deg

ree

of

Dif

fere

nti

atio

n

Aspect of your offer

What the feature does Feature of the offer that might provide

a benefit to the buyer

Feature that differs from the competitor’s

offer

Feature that provides more benefit to the buyer

than the competitor’s offer

Solution to an issue, reduction in cost or

increase in value

Feature that provides less benefit to the buyer

than the competitor’s offer

Do you Speak Sales?

Know your competition

“If you know the enemy and know yourself,

your victory will not stand in doubt”

Sun Tzu: “The Art of

War”

Our Weaknesses

STRATEGY STRATEGY Sweet Spot

• Mitigate Our Weaknesses

• Highlight Our Strengths

• Neutralize Their Strengths

• Ghost Their Weaknesses

Their Strengths

Our Strengths Their Weaknesses

Customer’s Issues STRATEGY STRATEGY

Sour Spot Base Your Strategy on Discriminators

Customer Issue /

Hot Button / BoD

Your

Company

Competitor

1

Competitor

2

System Availability

Reduced Footprint

Experienced Vendor

Team

50% Reduction in

TCO

++

Savings in current

year

(Current Vendor)

(Current Vendor)

Bidder’s Comparison Matrix (an example)

Develop your solution and target win price early

Solution

• That delivers what the Prospect wants

Price

• Within the Prospect’s budget

• And your acceptable margins

Select the Right Teaming Partners Select Teaming Partners

• that complement our own strengths and weaknesses

• with unique capabilities and/or discriminators that help us win

• to reduce the competition

• select partners based on their strengths

Recruit Teaming Partners

• Search the market (not just the ‘usual suspects’)

• Existing relationships, web or literature search, the customer’s view

• Sell your organisation to your teaming partner; then sell the relationship to the customer

• Discussions need to start early and any “showstoppers” identified

• Involve commercial/legal staff early

• Have a written teaming agreement

Communicate strategy in your opportunity plan

Develop strategy statements:

• WHAT you are going to do

• Mitigate, neutralise, highlight, ghost

• HOW you are going to do it

• Simple description of the approach

Strategies can apply to:

• Solution

• Teaming

• Price and Terms

• Proposal

Your turn:

A B C

List sources of customer and competitive intelligence

Identify linkages between Benefits, Value and customer Budget.

Suggest ways to keep solution costs within target costs

Surviving the Proposal Phase

Surviving the Proposal Phase

• Controlled execution

• Managing time, cost and quality

When the RFP arrives: Confirm the requirements

• Systematically strip requirements from the RFP (you need SMEs)

• Carefully extract any tendering requirements

• Build a compliance matrix

Generate questions for the Prospect (there may be a deadline)

Identify actions for the solution team

Freeze the solution

Finalise your Proposal Stage plan

RE QUALIFY!

• Gate / Stage Review required

Essential tools for managing the proposal:

•Requirements Checklist

Compliance Matrix

•Proposal Outline Responsibility

Matrix

Content Plans Quality Criteria

Prepare a robust topical outline and content plans for writers

A robust outline

MECE

Uniquely Assignable

Compliant

Sample content plan

http://newbok.apmp.org/bok/content-plans/

Kick off:

A well prepared and executed kick-off is the #1 work winning practice

APMP® Benchmarking Study 2002

Winning proposals are compliant, responsive, focused and easy to evaluate

• Compliance • means strict adherence to the RFP • means «question is answered»

• Responsiveness • means addressing the prospect’s

underlying needs • means «they know what my issue is»

• Focused • means «why choose us» is evident • benefits and discriminators are clear

• Easy to evaluate • answers are easy to find • document is easy to navigate • key information is highlighted

Requirements

Underlying Needs

Responsive answers

Compliant answers

Advice to SMEs

Answer each question directly

• Demonstrate compliance

• Don’t waffle

Provide evidence in support of your answer

• What

• How

• Who

• When

• Where

• Why

Use boilerplate if needed to support your answer

ATFQ

Metrohopper™ Installation ?

(Informative, but no benefit)

Man in Shorts ?

(That would be a ‘Horse Title’)

Figure 6: Installation. One man can do it! Metrohopper’s

light weight and packaging mean that a single engineer can

safely and quickly complete on-site installation. This means

that you’ll be in service faster and achieve quicker savings

than with typical transmission solutions.

Ah! That’s better.

Metr

ohopper™

is

a t

rade m

ark

of

Nokia

Solu

tions

and N

etw

ork

s

© P

hoto

gra

ph c

opyri

ght

Nokia

Solu

tions

and

Netw

ork

s Include interpretive action captions with graphics

Keep progress visible:

Daily Stand Up Meeting Proposal Management Plan

Proposal Responsibility Matrix Content Plans

Daily Management Tools

Your turn:

A B C

List issues in managing a distributed team. Suggest ways to address them.

List issues with managing external partners. Suggest ways to address them.

Suggest ways to maintain visibility of status and progress with your team.

Controlled Close

Controlled Close

• Lessons learned vs Lessons noted

• Protecting value and assets

Learn from experience

Seek out lessons learned before

each stage

Include lessons learned in

project plans

Implement lessons learned

“lessons learned” but not implemented are merely “lessons noted”

Project closed or just abandoned?

• Even losing bids have value • Management products

• Plans, strategies, tools • Re-usable outputs • Relationships formed

• What did we learn? • What works / what doesn’t • Customer & Market Intelligence • Effort Metrics

• What will we change? • Ineffective techniques • Broken processes • Skills gaps

Ahead of it’s time?

Or an opportunity

missed?

Archive all bid products

Implement lessons learned

Managing improvement

Frameworks:

• IUK Routemap

• P3M3

• BD-CMM

• BM3

Tools:

• DECA

• Helmsman

• SCAMPI

Use gates as readiness assessments

Fix issues before starting

Conclusions and Actions

Conclusions and Actions

• Applying this in the work place

• Personal Action Plans

Applying lessons in the workplace

Personal Action Plans (SKS):

Start Doing Keep Doing Stop Doing

Some useful resources:

Web resources:

• APMP BoK: http://newbok.apmp.org (APMP member subscription)

• Outperform toolkit: http://bids.outperform.co.uk/

• Intrastructure UK Procurement Routemap: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/infrastructure-procurement-routemap-a-guide-to-improving-delivery-capability

Texts:

• The Bid Managers Handbook, David Nickson (ISBN:9780566088476)

• Bids, Tenders and Proposals: Winning Business Through Best Practice, Harold Lewis (ISBN: 9780749456108)

• Powerful Proposals - How to Give Your Business the Winning Edge, Bacon & Pugh (ISBN: 9780814472323)

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