It's not all about me

I'm often asked to review people's Executive Summaries. To me these are very important in "selling the sizzle" to your potential client, yet often they read like the are "all about me"!

"We are a large company..." "We offer a quality service..." "We have a good reputation..."

All this says to the reader is that you are more concerned about yourself than them. Try to rephrase those statements so they don't start with "we" and then also add a benefit to each so the client gets a good idea of what it means to THEM.

For example: "With a staff of 25 qualified technicians, we guarantee to be onsite within 60 minutes, which means you will be operational again quickly with minimal downtime."

Take a look at your last Executive Summary and have a go at changing all your "we" statements into strong selling points.

Stranger Danger

At my seminars people often mention how difficult it is to compete against incumbents. Usually they want to know effective ways of overcoming the advantage incumbents have.

Well, there's good news – the single most important thing is to ensure you are known by the purchaser before you make your submission! Say an incumbent has an 80% advantage going in (which is a figure commonly quoted), you only have a 20% chance to start with which almost reduces to nothing if the purchaser has never heard of you. I know some companies who make a rule that they will not bid under these circumstances. If you seriously want the business make sure you identify companies you want to work with and approach them before a tender comes out.

Of course, incumbents don't necessarily win 80% of the business. Purchasers have told me the principle reason is "arrogance" – incumbents often presume that their relationship is enough to retain the business and don't put a good submission in. So, to even up the odds make sure you answer every question carefully; attach all the requested documents and follow the order and format required. Do this and the odds are much more in your favour.

Executive Summary or not?

I posed a question to one of my linkedin procurer groups, asking how much notice, if any, they took of an Executive Summary in a submission. The following response is an excellent insight:
"To gain an overall impression of the vendor and their response it can be useful. However for me it will not assist them in the actual tender evaluation outcome as I will always publish the specific evaluation criteria (all questions upon which I require them to respond to) with the respective weightings and it is their actual answers to these questions which will be assessed by the panel and scored accordingly.

For effectiveness and efficiency reasons, I am wanting the respondants to see my specific question, consider their response to that question and then respond directly to it, (preferably laid out in their proposal as Question followed by Response) thus enabling the panel to focus on that response when determining an appropriate score and not having to have searched indiscriminately through, what might be, large volumes of general information.

So back to your original question, it is not an evaluated component of my tenders and as such should not contain any key information regarding our requirement that is not already included in the responses to specific evaluated questions".


In a nutshell: It's an introduction to your organisation and can help position you in the assessor's mind but make sure you answer the questions!! Also note that not all procurers will be that helpful in being specific about their evaluation criteria.

Gobbledegook kills submissions

When you've finished writing your next submission, take a look at how many times you've used the following words:

innovative; leading company; optimized solution; overdeliver; customer centric; cutting edge...

You get the picture - these words, and many more, are used time and time again in submissions and cause evaluators eyes to glaze over. Don't use such word clutter - tell me what you really mean and what's in it for me. Everyone who has responded to my RFT can't be an innovative market leader with cutting edge solutions!

What type of client are you dealing with?

Organisations, like people, come in all shapes and sizes. In order to communicate with them effectively you first need to understand what type of organisation they are. I like to map them on a scale of 1-5 from 'creative' at one end to 'corporate' at the other. 

An organization that is highly creative is more likely to be open to new ideas, interested in innovation, and flexible in their approach. Think of Richard Branson's Virgin Group.

A corporate style organization is more likely to be interested in systems and processes, hard facts, documented experience and formal language. Think of a typical government department.

Where you place your potential client will help determine the “tone” of your submission. No point in extolling your creativity if that scares off the fact/process - loving client!

Did you understand clearly what was being requested?

A number of people have asked me about tips relating to my Answer the Question post. Here's a list of things to think about to show that you really understand what is being asked:

1. The purchaser usually has a picture in their mind about the ideal tenderer. From reading the tender request carefully, build up your own picture – does this describe your company?
2. Look beyond the questions that you are asked to answer and put yourself in the purchaser’s shoes. By focusing on just the questions you will miss many cues in the document itself.
3. Do your answers to questions demonstrate your understanding or are they just a collection of individual comments?
4. Have you answered all required sections of the Tender Document? Are all components requiring a signature completed? Ie: Statutory Declaration. You don’t want to lose a Tender by failing to complete the required information.
5. Don’t “overanswer” questions – make sure anything you write, or any documents you append – are relevant and add necessary proof.
6. Pay particular attention to requests for Certificates and Insurances. Without evidence of the required information it is unlikely that a provider would be successful. Once Insurance or Certification has been obtained it must be maintained and/or increased as required.

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I know you can do it - BUT tell me HOW you'll do it.

One of the biggest gripes I hear from procurers is that people making submissions often fail to tell them exactly HOW they propose to tackle the job. Yes, you've rabbited on about your experience but that's not enough to inspire confidence.

Make sure you show that you know how to put a project plan together. What unique systems and/or processes do you bring to the table? What will you put in place to ensure you finish the job on time and on budget? Have you a Communication plan in place that shows me how easy it will be to deal with you?

When people see the word "methodology" in an RFT they start to panic - but really it's just a big word for TELL ME HOW!