Winning deals from information requests
"However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results"...WC
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As part of our business at Sherwood Group Consulting, as Performance Management specialist consultants, we are often drawn in the tender process when it comes to working with large companies.
As a team we sometimes surprise ourselves when we win on our own. But of course we never do it alone as we join large vendors like Infor, Microsoft and other big guys and with large consulting firms like Deloitte, who all bring with them their brand weight that can make us attractive.
To lead too it often makes sense, as software is now less important in terms of risk than the ground advisors who actually make it happen. Many operators like us with corporate commercial experience on board with business and vendor tools knowledge can make the difference. Now unlike days gone we no longer sell software but we still stand together with our vendors of choice and lead on deals for the consulting component. That way as we assess a prospect or client needs and then recommend a vendor, we are now often sought out as clincher for their sale. Taking the lead also allows us to leverage better value for our client or prospect, which most often also gives greater value for everyone.
But enterprise projects these days are no place for the faint hearted Clients are ruthless and commercially oriented in the mature business software vendor market. On knowledge and paying for such things procurements processes often don’t bother to invest properly in understanding what they need and the risks. Instead they rely on the market to cover them as they push all the risk to vendors. So no matter how much you tell them they must do their homework, your contract will hang you out to dry if you don’t make it clear in the words and then fight for it as over and over again as you proceed.
When it makes sense to take the prime spot it also means joining all the players to win. That is equally tough and unrelenting as it adds bigger risks to carry the can if anyone fails.
Notwithstanding being advisors we often have no choice. Even as a minor players, be-it on design, integration, process change or the lot, if a vendor product fails, the whole project does.
Being advisory by nature always places us in the middle and we will wacked for sure if we don’t do our commercial and project homework well and know our game. It forces us to be very sharp so it is not a bad position as at least we can have some semblance of control and leverage for best options on the risk management .
This week I was doing an RFI response which I hope will then lead to being shortlisted and then requested for a proposal. From experience we know that deals are won and lost not on the tender but on the work that leads up to it. So if you are lucky to be invited to respond, the information and effort and sales skill to deliver it well at the RPI stage will count.
All RFI’s are different but having a standard boiler plate of responses can help a lot when you are slogging thru a tedious list of requirements. Also if the RFP is sloppy or ambiguous as an appendix it may also help to narrow the risk and swing any influencer bias built into questions.
As a baseline I dug out an old FPI. It was one of those few and hard to win big deals we all used to see in the good old days. On that occasion we lead and won, based a mostly our submission. I must add that we had quality input from our partners, especially the senior people who trusted us to represent them to protect their value.
If the RFI does its job well, the next step is to respond to a request for proposal. Winning was fun as was the outcome when we got sign off on what we had promised and delivered.
If you take on tendering seriously to win it is a project of no small proportions in itself and should be treated as such.
As a useful reference I also found this process and a diagram at invitation2tender.com
In the meantime would like to share that RFI with you now. The client name, a large multinational public listed group in Asia, has been withheld for various reasons.
Any business considering a PM or BI solution, here are some questions to ask your advisors and vendors, to see how they stack up. Even though the client name is suppressed the client questions are real. Some privacy editing has been done on our responses.
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