Consulting Journal: Bid management

Bid management: Reasons

by David Blakey

This second article in the series gives some reasons for both clients and consultants to embrace bid management.

[Monday 24 September 2001]

There are three major reasons why clients may need an external bid manager.

They do not normally bid

Some clients do not normally manage bids as a standard process within their business.

This may be because they do not often get involved in competitive bids. This is understandable. These clients may normally sell to their existing clients or they may get additional sales through recommendations from their existing clients. As a result, they may not have to take part in competitive bids except for major new customers that they are keen to work with. It is not surprising that these clients would not have a formal bid process.

It is also not surprising that these clients generally welcome an external bid manager to work with them under contract for the duration of a bid.
They have no bid process

Other clients may be involved in competitive bids regularly, but they may have no formal bid process. This may seem extraordinary, but there is still a belief held by many clients - and especially by their sales staff - that anyone who can sell can also manage a bid. Some clients are not even aware that there is a skill known as "bid management".

These clients need an external bid manager who can bring skills and experience to them.

Sometimes, they need the disciplines of bid management to be introduced as a formal process, with their own staff trained as bid managers.
They need more bid managers

For clients who manage bids as part of their normal routine and who have bid processes in place and who have their own bid managers, there may be a temporary need for an additional bid manager.

As a consultant, bid management is a skill that is useful to you, in three ways.

Service for bidding clients

First, it is a service that you can sell to those clients who need to manage bids in order to gain new business.

If the client has never used formal bid management processes before, the best way for you to work with them is between bids, so that you can start by setting up their policies and procedures for bid management. When a customer or prospect requests your client to bid, you can manage the bid. This gives you an opportunity to adjust the policies and procedures in the light of practical experience within that client.

For subsequent bids, you can gradually hand over responsibility to your client's trainee bid managers, while continuing to refine the policies and procedures.

Even when you have handed over entirely, you can continue to advise the client and to provide checks on how the whole process is working.
Process for internal use

Second, it is a skill that you can apply in your own bids.

This is certainly true if you are a free-lance consultant. You know the value of being able to convince prospects that they need your particular skills and experience. Bid management can help you to define ways to influence them.

It is also true of many large consulting companies and firms. You may find it harder to convince the partners or principals with a consulting firm to adopt bid management, as this generally means delegating the management of the process. Many firms have their sales processes in the hands of people with no formal sales training or experience, and this makes the introduction of bid management even harder.
Service for acquiring clients

Third, you can apply your knowledge of how the bid management process works to clients who are about to approach the market for products and services. Knowing how the bids will be managed within professional responding suppliers will enable you to build requests for proposals or tender documents that will enable those suppliers to give your clients the best solutions for their needs.

It will also enable you to understand the objectives of particular suggestions and initiatives from bidders, so that you can adopt them if they help to move the selection process forward or reject them if they are bid management "ploys" for the bidder to seize control.

Bid management is one of those techniques that you can offer to a variety of clients, in a variety of situations, that will be useful to you in your own business, and that can be successfully sold to new clients on the basis of your own skills and experience.

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