Using the formal clarification process as a competitive weapon
In our fast-paced world of Public Sector bid and proposal submissions, deadlines loom large, and the pressure on us to create a flawless proposal is immense. We think we have it all buttoned up. And then one of our SMEs says, “I don’t understand what the client means by this. It does not make sense!”
In the early days, I rarely took advantage of the normal questions process set out in Public Sector bids. I was worried that in some way it might weaken our win chances. I still kept on losing bids. I started reading the questions sent by other competitors to the client which the client circulated with its responses. Even though many of the answers were of the type “It is up to the proposer to make its own decisions before submission”, I started to understand how some other competitors were approaching their proposals. I could get an idea of what they were doing. But they were still winning.
My next step was to rethink my entire approach to the questioning process. Perhaps it was a good idea to ask the questions my SMEs needed answers to, after all. That could improve the quality of our proposed solution. However, how could I do this without giving away what we were doing?
Burying the question that matters
Step one was to overcome this problem. The answer seemed to be to bury the question we really needed to have answered. We could embed it in a lot of questions for which we really did not care about the answer. This way, the other competitors would not be able to work out which was the question which was important to us. The idea was to ask several questions designed to hide our intentions from the competition. The obvious next step was then to ask questions deliberately designed to mislead the other competitors.
Step two was the cunning plan to get the competition to waste bid effort in trying to find out what we were doing. We could ask a question of the client which seemed to be legitimate. However, it would be outside of what might be expected. It was designed to get the “It is up to the proposer to make its own decisions” type of response from the client. However, all our competitors would be worried they had missed something. They would then take people from their pool of resources to research what we were up to. Not being able to find anything would likely get the unfortunate researcher told to go back and do it again, as they must have missed it.
Eight uses for the formal questions process
Now on a roll, the team and I brainstormed how we could exploit the formal questions process to get a competitive advantage. This is what we came up with:
- Ask questions to find missing information or to clarify what has been said in the ITT documents. Consider doing this covertly by asking similar questions about other points in the ITT.
- Demonstrate your credibility. Ask a question which will impress the other competitors with your knowledge and insight. Woo the client at the same time.
- Mislead your competitors. Make them waste bid resources chasing red herrings.
- Test variant bids, and mind the timing. You can try out a radical idea to gauge its acceptability, but don’t do this too soon. If the client likes it, your competitors will try to modify their solutions too.
- Identify your competitors. Sometimes it is obvious who is asking the question from the question asked. Don’t let them identify you.
- Uncover your competitors’ strategies. If you can work out whether your competitors are going for, say, the lowest price or the best quality, you can tune your bid to counter this.
- Expand the specification. If you ask a question about how valuable an additional feature you can offer (which you know your competition cannot match) and you get a positive response, you have widened the evaluation criteria to your advantage.
- Delay the process. Dangerous if you find a way to do this and the client does not receive a benefit afterwards.
The Argentinian ISP
I remember asking a question of the client in a Facilities Management bid shortly after this. It was along the lines of “Would the client have any objection if we were to use an ISP based in Argentina?” We had no intention of doing this. However, the client duly sent the question and the “make up your own mind” answer to everyone. I found out afterwards that at least one of the competitors had wasted several days trying to see what the advantage we had uncovered actually was, before giving up.
Did all this make a difference? I think so, but I cannot be sure. What I do know is that our win rate went up in later bids. I now believe that asking clarifying questions before submitting your proposal is not a sign of weakness. It is a strategic move that should significantly increase your win rate.
If you would like to talk through how to use the questions process on a live bid, please call Sixfold on 01227 860375 for a no-obligation chat.
