Why do some firms seem to win more jobs?

By KEVIN BALL
Navy EFA NW

Anybody in market development has been chasing the “Holy Grail” for most their career. What is the secret or magic pill that if used, will consistently create winning proposals? As a client who has been involved with the review and selection of numerous firms for many years, I have good and bad news.

The bad news is a magic pill does not exist. The good news is a pattern of corporate behaviors, cultural aspects and focus areas always seems apparent in winning firms. And the winners ...

Want the job badly enough to win it. Cut no corners in your proposal preparation. Act like your corporate life depends on it. If you don’t think this way, the temptation to cut corners is too great. If the project manager doesn’t show up until after you get the work, you are almost guaranteed failure. Focusing your efforts on specifically targeted work and clients helps ensure your best talents become clearly visible. Shot gunning a marketplace guarantees dilution of resources and makes you hard to see.

Have a well-oiled team. Perhaps the most frequent cause of failure is when this three-sided team œ management, business development and production œ is not working together. The boss says “Let’s chase this,” the production people sit around and the whole company expects the business development crew to somehow magically make it happen. One of the best corporate wake-up calls should be: “Don’t hire a business development person. Give them 18 months to perform or be canned, and then walk away from them.”

Good business development people are wonderful bridges between the company and prospective clients. You don’t want to waste their time doing other things.

Have sufficient critical mass to create and deliver exceptional products. Regardless of the business line, suppliers must have sufficient expertise and support structure to be a “front-line player” in competitive markets. Many firms who functioned well in environmental remediation did not have a critical mass to effectively chase environmental compliance work and lost out for it. If ISO-14000 development is going to be a product line, then you need a separate critical mass to do that as well.

Never assume. If you do this, it’s like football. Three things can happen and two of them are bad. Never assume you know the road your prospective client wants to go down. If you don’t know for sure which road, then orient your proposal so the client’s options are open. This is especially true in emerging markets like ISO 14000 development where even the client does not know exactly what he wants.

Never get sucked in by "corporate knows better." Clients typically could care less about all the great capability that is on the other side of the country and won’t be working for them. They also don’t want to feel pinched by all the corporate baggage like “centralized cost center” nonsense. I have repeatedly seen wonderful local offices fail to get work due to big brother’s “help.” In a recent ISO 14000 development competition, fully two thirds of the failing proposals were negatively impacted by help from their out-of-state corporate headquarters.

Resolve key personnel issues. Each key person on a team was selected for a reason, right? And the reason was correct, right? Everyone looks for the “A” team so when they are on the road, don’t sell the “B” team like it is the best in your stable. Instead, create several “A” teams.

References from past and current clients comprise a larger portion of the valid information selecting officials use in making a hiring decision. Hence, the people who are making the hiring decision are more savvy about the accuracy of your proposal, including bait-and-switch tactics, and the truthfulness in your resumes. As markets get more competitive, lying in resumes increases in addition to taking credit for someone else’s work.

Keep "hot air" out of proposals. Know what is important and what is not. Spewing forth endless rhetoric screams at the prospective client that you don’t know what is truly value-added, can’t tell the difference between adequate and gold-plated, and are looking out for your own interests more than the client’s.

Show up when the client wants to speak. Not many large clients have offerings such as proposal and marketplace analysis seminars. However, take advantage of those that do. For our organization these opportunities are typically sponsored by nonprofit professional associations, such as the Society of American Military Engineers (SAME), Professional Environmental Marketing Association (PEMA), and Consulting Engineers Council of Washington (CECW) and are widely advertised. Most of the issues that trip up unsuccessful firms were dealt with in depth at seminars six months prior to proposal preparation.

Now, what do you do with this information?

First, realize that there is always someone out there who is successfully doing all the above things. Second, prepare accurate proposals. Only then will you have a chance in understanding the gaps between you and the successful firm at the debriefing table. And if you are successful, that proposal becomes your performance yardstick.

Finally, get out of the mode of blaming failure on the client. Every time a discussion brings up the topic of the latest job a firm didn’t get, I hear, “The client didn’t like this thing which had nothing to do with the selection criteria.”

Principals and business development people tear at the professional roots of their occupation when they play the blame game. The reason they didn’t get a job is one or a combination of the above issues. So, the real question is: What did you do today to fix one of the problems above?

Copyright © 1998 Seattle Daily Journal of Commerce.