review management and bid governance - scribble · 2020-05-06 · strategy should remain static...

Copyright © 2020 by Baachu

Review Management and Bid

Governance


Jumpstart

workshops

series

• Sales Prospecting and Sales Pipeline Management

• Sales Presentations

• Sales Objections & Deal Closure

• Sales Negotiations and Follow-up

• Value Propositions and Exec Summary

• Capture Planning

• Bid Governance & Review Management

• Team Capability Assessment

• Digital Marketing Fundamentals

• Marketing Gameplan

• LinkedIn Conversations Brand Building 2


Full Stack Bidder

Certification

3


Gate Decisions


Introduction ● Gate decisions or Bid decisions are critical in making effective decisions on whether to compete for business and can help organizations increase their win probability.

5


Make a

series of

gate decisions

● Gate decisions must be organized to achieve organizational objectives related to winning business and managing the cost of winning business.

6

Market entry decision

Opportunity qualification

decisionBid pursuit decision Bid/no-bid decision

Bid validation decision

Final review

Market entry decision confirms that the identified market

segment is aligned with the goals in your

strategic plan.

Use the opportunity qualification decision to confirm whether

the opportunity merits expending

resources for research and assessment.

Use the bid/no-bid decision to determine if you have positioned

yourself favorablyenough to justify

planning to develop a proposal.

Use the bid validation decision to determine

whether the opportunity is still

worth pursuing and the proposal worth

preparing, considering the final

details in the RFP.

Use final review to determine whether to submit the proposal

prepared, considering the anticipated

financial reward and level of risk.

Use the pursuit decision to determine

whether to commit resources to developing

opportunity plans and influencing the

customer to prefer your solution.


Standardize

company

templates and

schedules

● Standardized templates and schedules promote effective decisionmaking.

7


Set expectations

for information

maturation

across the gate-

decision cycle

● Organizations must set reasonable expectations for information quality and maturity at various gate decisions. These expectations must be understood by presenters and reviewers.

8


Determine bid

and proposal

investment

● Cost should always be determined based on what it will cost to win, not what it will cost to bid.

9


Determine

probability of

win and

probability of go

● Probability of win and probability of go (The likelihood that a program will be funded and proceed) are broad-based calculations of an organization’s likelihood of winning an opportunity.

○ They are generally expressed as a percentage, or in some cases, using adjectives such as high, medium, or low.

10


Understand who

is responsible

for gate

decisions

● The opportunity team ultimately maintains responsibility, but at opportunity qualification, that will only be the business developer, marketer, or sales person assigned to an account of a functional area.

● For the pursuit, the assigned Opportunity Manager assumes the lead and generally maintains it through the final review.

11


Follow up on

action items

related to gate

decisions

● Successful gate decisions depend on recording and following up on action items that fall out of gate-decision reviews.

● A simple action item tracking matrix can be used to track objectives..

12


Common Pitfalls ● All opportunity information is known at the beginning of the cycle. Set information maturity expectations for each review.

● Strategy should remain static throughout decisions. Win strategy is key and should be reassessed at every review.

● You can’t win a low probability of win deal if you start early. The right actions can make low probability of win deals high probability of win deals.

● You can’t lose a high probability of win deal if you start late. A late start equals lower probability of win.

● Probability of go has no value in the decision to pursue or not. If a bid does not generate revenue, you cannot gain ROI.

● Resourcing is unimportant in probability of win calculations. Subpar teams do not often win.

● Gates can be treated as reviews rather than decision points. Deferring decisions wastes time and money.

● Gate-decision quality is not indicative of probability of win. Strategy rules. Bad strategy is often associated with low probability of win.

● Price to win can come late in the gate process. Competitive pricing strategy must come early to match the solution presented.

13


Bid Lifecycle

Overview

• The Business Lifecycle is controlled through a series of formal governance Gates.

• We recommend 10, running from 0 to 9.

• Each Gate represents a key decision point and requires formal assessment and review by Senior Management before being approved to progress through the lifecycle.

14


Key Stages Of

The Business

Lifecycle

The Business Lifecycle and associated Standards is formed of 3 sequential stages:

• Sales and Bidding (Gates 0 to 5)

• Transition & Transformation (Gates 6 and 7)

• Operations (Gates 8 and 9)

15


Sales and

Bidding

The Sales and Bidding stage focuses on maximising win probability and reducing the cost of bidding (Gates0-5).

The following key questions or principles are considered at this stage:

• What sort of business are we looking to win?

• Why would the customer buy from us over others?

16


Sales and

Bidding

• Can we create compelling reasons why the customer should choose us?

• Is there enough value for the customer and us?

• Have we got our price right?

• Have we identified and understood the risks and taken appropriate account of them?

• Have we the resources, timescales, plans and processes to provide a winning outcome?

17


Review Management


Introduction ● To effectively manage organizational cycles of reviews, teams must understand, regularly practice, and work to improve execution of reviews.

19


Best Practices


Appropriate

reviews improve

the bid quality

● These reviews focus on examining the applicable building blocks for persuasive proposals at the proper sequence in the process.

21

Market Assessment

Account Review

Competitor Review

Opportunity Plan Review

Proposal Strategy Review

Final Document Review

Business Case Review

Lessons Learned Review

Project Review


Set up each

review to

answer a series

of key questions

● Reviews should be organized around desired outcomes.

● The review should be held well in advance of the expected outcome and should be repeated quarterly to keep focus on the objective.

22


Competitor

Review

● The purpose of the competitor review is to apply competitive assessment by anticipating the approach, solutions, and strategies that competitors are likely to use.

23


Opportunity

Plan Review

● The purpose of the opportunity plan review is to analyze the opportunity plan and win strategy before the bid/no-bid decision milestone.

24


Proposal

Strategy Review

● The purpose of proposal strategy review is to ensure effective articulation of the win strategy within the content plan and to verify compliance with the bid request prior to the start of proposal writing.

25


Final Document

Review

● The purpose of final document review is to comprehensively examine the proposal by independent reviewers who emulate the customer’s evaluation team.

26

Copyright © 2020 by Baachu 27

Guidelines for effective review management


Standardize

company review

templates

● Review templates should be standardized for each primary type of review described which increases efficiency and enables review teams to be more productive.

28


Establish review

teams early

● Proposal review teams need time to become familiar with the proposal strategies and solutions to be effective.

29


Select the right

review team lead

Review team leads must be

● Skilled in the type of review they will lead

● Have good organizational, communication, and leadership skills

● Have a highly competitive nature that helps them drive the review team to actionable solutions.

30


Keep the same

core team

throughout the

review cycle

● Keeping the same people on the review team across reviews enables team members to learn with the performance team and keeps conflicting guidance to a minimum.

31


Incorporate

teammates into

reviews

● Where appropriate, supplement your internal review team with members from your organization’s teaming partners.

32


Use consultants

in reviews as

needed

● Consultants can be excellent sources of customer knowledge, identify problems or issues and provide simple remedies with little additional cost.

33


Conduct effective

review kickoffs

and debriefings

● Enough time must be allowed and clear instructions must be provided for kickoffs to be effective and increase review value.

34


Record

comments and

decide which to

incorporate

● Review-team comments must be recorded, analyzed, and prioritized for action.

● Comments should address risks as well as strengths and weaknesses associated with each reviewed item.

35


Debrief

management on

review results

● Management should always be debriefed on review results to ensure continued engagement and awareness into progress for business win activities.

36


Common Pitfalls ● Reviews are just a “check-the-box” exercise

● Little value comes from reviews.

● Reviewing late in the proposal cycle is alright.

● You can cut review time to gain time for authors.

● Reviews can be planned quickly and easily.

● Anybody can be a good reviewer.

● The Proposal or Opportunity Manager should lead the review.

● Executives should not be part of the review teamSubject matter experts have more important things to do than review.

● You don’t need to review price proposals as carefully as other volumes.

37


Using reviews to

check customer

focus

Win

strategy

Competitorstrategy

Content planning

Documentreadiness

Lessonslearnt

Proposal timeline

Purs

uit d

ecis

ion

Bid

decis

ion

Subm

it p

roposal

Win

38


Win strategy

review

Benefits Assist capture team by improving win potential

Timing As soon as a strategy has been produced and documented

Review method • Bring the capture team together

• Re-visit the tools/templates used to date

• Identify gaps in knowledge

• Brainstorm an action plan to address those gaps

Managed by Capture Manager

Purpose Early assessment of effectiveness of strategies & approval of capture budget

Reviewer(s) Members of the capture team & management

Pre-review information SWOT, BCM, Sales strategy templates, action plans

Post-review actions Modify action plans and implement

39


Competitor

strategy review

Benefits Assist capture team by identifying possible competitors’ strategies

Timing As soon as possible after a pursuit decision has been made

Review Method • Bring the “Black Hat” team together

• Use SWOT or BCM

• Develop sales strategy templates from each competitor’s perspective

Managed by Capture Manager

Purpose Identify competing strategies to ‘beat’ us

Reviewer(s) Experts who have an understanding of the competition

Pre-review information Customer and competitor information

Post-review actions Modify action plans and implement

40


Content plan

review

Purpose Early / independent assessment of effectiveness of messages

Benefits Assist writers by improving potential content of the proposal

Timing As soon as possible after kick-off meeting

Reviewer(s) Experts who will “say how to make this a better proposal”

Review Method Determine consistency of messages across the proposal (horizontal) & withinproposal sections (vertical) through questions/interaction betweenreviewers and writers

Managed by Proposal Manager

Pre-review information Briefing on customer, competition, opportunity & proposed solution

Post-review actions • Writers to incorporate comments from review before beginning to write

• Keep original content plans to allow “looking back” to trace strategy changes

41


Document

readiness review

Purpose Independent assessment of proposal for customer focus, completeness,communication of strategy & solution

Benefits Checks content and win potential of proposal

Timing Allowing sufficient time to incorporate suggested improvements

Reviewer(s) Experts to mirror customer evaluation structure & process, who will“say how to make this a better proposal”

Review Method • Qualitative & quantitative (if possible)

• Parallel review by sections ( 40 pages / person day)

• Collated findings presented to proposal manager

Managed by Review Leader

Pre-review information Copy of the customer’s proposal request – days beforeSpell checked / proof-read copy of proposal sections – on the day

Post-review actions • Small focused team to incorporate suggested improvements

• Deliver proposal

42


Jumpstart

workshops

series

• Sales Prospecting and Sales Pipeline Management

• Sales Presentations

• Sales Objections & Deal Closure

• Sales Negotiations and Follow-up

• Value Propositions and Exec Summary

• Capture Planning

• Bid Governance & Review Management

• Team Capability Assessment

• Digital Marketing Fundamentals

• Marketing Gameplan

• LinkedIn Conversations Brand Building 43


Full Stack Bidder

Certification

44

Copyright © 2020 by Baachu 45

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review management and bid governance - scribble · 2020-05-06 · strategy should remain static...

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