To bid or not to bid?

The best kept secret in proposals is that you can double or even triple win rates by simply deciding whether or not to bid. Rather than bidding for everything, why not bid only for deals you can win? This way you can use your limited resources to make a bigger impact on your customers and improve the quality of your bids. The result will be a much higher win rate.

Consider this scenario; Widgets Incorporated takes the shotgun approach to bidding. They submit 100 bids, even though they can only win 50. Because their proposal team is so rushed, they do a shoddy job and only win 10 of the 100 bids. So their win rate is 10%. Acme Corporation takes the missile approach. They qualify their bids and identify that they can only win 50. Their proposal team has twice as much time to produce a better quality bid. Let’s say they win only 15 of the 50. Their win rate will be 30% - three times that of Widgets. Which would you rather be?

At nFold we use a matrix to help customers qualify whether or not to bid. We ask questions about how well this deal aligns to your strategy, how good is your relationship with the customer, how well you are positioned against the competition, what is the risk to your company, and how well can you deliver the bid in the time allowed. It’s a bit like playing 20 questions. As you can see, the stakes are high. So take the time to choose when to bid, then step back to enjoy the results.