Consulting: Strategy & Direction

Why Consider
Strategy Consulting?

• A strategic approach to tender responses is essential today
  
• Understanding your client's strategy is essential to success in today's world
• Applying some simple but useful tools can help you align strategies - yours and the client's

"However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results" - Winston Churchill

Many organisations grow their presence and influence in the market by successfully responding to tenders, and almost every aspect of your business is referenced by a well-designed, fully-compliant tender response. In fact, done properly, tender responses are a valuable marketing tool for your business and can save the purchaser & supplier lots of time and energy when identifying mutually prosperous partnerships.

Consequently, in recent years, tenders have increased in popularity across all aspects of business; the public and private sector as well as large and small enterprises.

People Buy from People

Many business development and sales people dread the thought of completing a tender document, believing that real sales are done face-to-face person-to-person. And, to a large extent this is true. Sales professionals will tell you that people don't buy products or services people buy from people. This is equally true in a tender response situation.

The challenge then is twofold: to get to know the buyers before the tender is published and/or, use the tender response as an opportunity to ensure the buyer wants to know you before they make a buying decision.

A strategic approach to writing your tender response will ensure you optimise your success rate and use the best of your resources. This will ensure you win business you really want - and can deliver it professionally. It will also help you to align your strategy with the clients objectives and goals. 

Strategic Tools

Tender Success will help you with some of the following tools:

• A Bid, No-Bid Analysis. This will help you to identify business you actually want and make sure it fits into the long term strategic direction of your organisation.

• A Competitor Analysis will help you to identify your points of difference and assess your realistic chances of winning the business.

• A Stakeholder Analysis (and a relationship map) will help you to see if your relationships are strong enough to win the confidence of the buyer, and which 'hot buttons' to emphasise in your pitch.
  

Understanding both your own company's strategy and that of your client is critical to a successful tender submission. And, more importantly, it's vital to a successful ongoing mutually successful and economically viable relationship.