The most stimulating enjoyable, stimulating and rewarding aspects that I do is chatting about business with the most intelligent people that make up my customer base.
The remark I’ve heard from them lately has to do with be about proposals and securing new business. If I’m talking to the director of development for business at a multinational engineering and construction company or the CFO at an active public sector contractor or the chief of an intimate, family-owned architectural firm, they’re all saying exactly the same things: devices that help them efficiently and quickly create proposals are not just nice to have but are vital for securing the best business.
Additionally, the businesses that are truly flourishing in the field of new business owe a large portion of their success to an organized, consistent approach to seeking new business as well as tools to simplify, automate and standardize their pursuit and capture procedures.
There is always a need to put a premium on the interpersonal skills required in gaining new business and establishing long-term relationships. But, in a competitive business environment such as the one we’re in , with workers scarce and businesses across all industries and markets looking for every edge they can in the race to win more business opportunities, the relationships help a company only so far in its latest business ventures. The feedback I’ve received from those across the various industries we work with is that their organizations are more reliant than ever before on tools that allow them to more effectively assess business opportunities in pursuit of new business, and to automate and streamline their pursuit procedures.
All over the world, businesses perform better in their latest business ventures with a more robust proposal process, and more efficient tools to assist the teams and individuals involved in the process
Based on my ongoing conversations with my customers as well as the initial research we conduct regularly to gain insights into our clients and the industries we service Here are some strategies techniques, methods and capabilities which consistently result in optimized rate of winning:
1. Utilize analytical tools and a formal gating procedure to determine what pursuits can be achieved and which ones don’t. When we sought the government contractors to list the top challenges in business development (BD) issues they planned to tackle this year, they stated “being smarter about targeting their pursuits” as their first priority. To achieve this we are seeing more companies conducting strengths weaknesses, strengths, opportunities as well as threats (SWOT) as well as other competitive analysis. There are more companies taking a more formal gate procedure and incorporating advanced analytical tools into their analysis of each endeavor at specific stages of the process of capture. These types of strategies allow the company to better make bid/no bid decisions and also to eliminate “losers” early in the capture process, before they turn into money and time sinks. The most successful companies have multiple reviews during the course of a bid and aren’t afraid to stop a proposal when new information negatively affects the probability of winning.
2. Establish and adhere to an systematic, repeatable and automated process for new business opportunities instead of a single approach to every solicitation. The inaccuracy of RFP deadlines as well as staff shortages and increased workloads are number of the major obstacles in consistently producing quality, effective proposals. Just throwing more people at the issue isn’t going to solve the problem given how costly this could become in light of the present shortage of talent. Instead, companies that are successful at turning proposals into new business models have established standard electronic frameworks, digitally automated and processes, and apply them to every business endeavor. Automating the parts of the process for creating proposals will ensure that the entire company is working towards the same goal in terms of deadlines as well as deliverables. It also assists with speedy turnaround on RFPs, especially when the company is short of personnel. It also saves the company the expense of hiring new staff.
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3. Improve communication between the proposal team and other parts within the company. To create and submit high-quality, well-priced, and well-supported proposals that are on target and in time The entire team responsible for capturing has access to information, data and the people in the organization. Automation can greatly assist in this and lead to smooth and faster processes among the teams involved in the process of creating proposals which includes sales, business development and project management as well as finance, human resources and. Businesses that have a robust Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software that allows open communication channels and the secure, continuous transfer of information throughout the organization are ahead of the curve in this area.
4. Get yourself the best CRM tools and make sure you use them regularly. Our recent study of government contractors and contractors, nearly half of them said they still rely upon Excel to be their principal pipeline software with another third saying they do not use any CRM (CRM) tool in any way. Although that’s not necessarily the case of every industry and business however, it’s evident that using an integrated, single CRM solution that is specifically tailored to your company’s needs can aid in keeping the pipeline full and the backlog of projects expanding.