Guide on How to Submit Winning Bids

1. Guide on How to Submit Winning Bids - By Tendersinfo.com

2. Changing the KRA Majority of the companies assess themselves or their bid desks on the basis of the number of bids submitted. Just a thought, what if those companies or organizations change their key result areas (KRA’s) to submitting winning bids ! Seems Interesting ?

3. Few questions to Bid desks. 1. State the difference between the pricing offered by OEM X this year as compared to a similar bid you have made last year. 2. State the margin or discount trends for all the bids submitted by your company this BU. 3. Enlist the bids submitted most recently in your territory.

4. Role of Bid Managers Everyone over here is aware about the point that Bid managers are generally assigned to ensure that whether the overall bid is submitted in time or not. You may have noticed that often bid managers doing the same things again and again right from understanding the wider scope, getting involved into pre bid interactions with vendors or partners, assisting with the documentation process and guiding the team to work towards the deadline. This is what usually the Bid managers do. Right ? But, Wait !!

5. What if we ask the Bid Desk or Bid managers to change their KRA from submitting bids to submitting Winning Bids ? Yeah, you are right it’s the KRA of sales manager but isn’t the Bid managers can play an important role in this ? Can’t the Bid managers ensure that the sales manager can reach there by providing an enhanced value to the company ?

6. Bid Manager’s Strength Bid managers are the only group in the organization who has the elevated view of all the bids that are submitted and made across the business units and sales teams.

7. Be the Data Steward 1. Be a person who is responsible for at least the bid related processes. Ensure that everyone (i.e stakeholders, pre-sales, delivery, sales, etc) upload all the necessary and relevant documents. If in case you lost the deal, aim at collecting and capturing all the competition pricing and other needed technical info as much as possible in detail. Of Course, not an easy task but not difficult either. Get or develop a MIS dashboard that provides you with meaningful analysis due to which you can determine the bid strategy while bidding in future.

8. Focus on Vendor Pricing Trends 2. Have a closed watch over vendor pricing movements, some industries have an expertise over this while some don’t. Usually vendor pricing is left on to the bid managers and their resourcefulness. Whereas in some industries the pricing is as high as 50-60%. There lies a great opportunity in bringing the prices together from across the bids and build a good theory of futuristic prices. Systematic approach and analysis would help to negotiate better and drive optimum pricing and commercial terms.

10. Create a Competition Pricing Sheet 3. Create a competitor's pricing list : Bid managers are usually very proficient in making pricing P&Ls and all other pricing factors that go with it. Moreover the bid desk team does have complete access to all the technical solutions submitted till now, history of all previous bids, its results, etc. Working hand in hand with the pre sales team they can make a report on what the competitor is about to come up with, in terms of configurations, products, etc. one can initiate it by doing it for the closest or the primary competitor and later on moving ahead with the next level of competitor’s

11. Develop a Scoring Strategy 4. The most important component of winning the bids is calibrating the alignment between clients requirements and its offerings. Map the capability. Find the probable technical rank, who is better to create the composite score and commercial score. Normally sales managers are questioned by the bid managers in a constructive approach to challenge their beliefs and assumptions with reference to the data they get from recent bids. With the cross bid expertise and the analytical skills the Bid managers can present a more detailed and a realistic scenario.

13. Assume Submission Date will not Extend 5. Take into consideration that the date for bid submission is the final one and will not be extended any more. Normally, the majority of vendors work on the assumption that the date for submitting the bids is going to be extended. And the bidders normally gang up together with this one point and make sure that they extend the time for a couple of weeks more to submit the bid. Assuming this and working on the bidding strategy would end up by spending lots of efforts and time on a particular deal, in which you may lose the opportunity of gaining goodwill with the client and scoring brownie points.

14. Make Technology Work for You 6. Let the Technology do the needful : Even though the digital world has taken a deep root over the world, the bid development process is still relying on a manual, unsynchronized, and in an unorganized way which leads the bid team to be stressed out. Can you not replace your complex, brainstorming, over loaded bidding processes into an automated system ?

15. Bid management Tool Yeah ! It’s time for bidders to process their bidding works in a systematic, organized and planned way with an automated follow ups, integrations, synchronizations, collaborations, etc which reduce the team efforts and time in a large manner with an excellent bid management tools available in the market.

16. THANK YOU ! www.tendersinfo.com/bid-management-software