Shipley Tips

Many organisations will spend countless dollars investing in sales training and activities related to opportunity capture, yet fail because the investment made in the pursuit of an opportunity does not make it into the proposal document itself. What happens when your response is compliant only and lands on the desk of an evaluator that has

…Prospects must explicitly acknowledge or confirm the value of a feature, to convert its advantage into a benefit. Sellers that claim to know the benefits of their offerings before collaborating with the prospect are guessing. The risk of failing to test your assumptions about benefits delivered to your prospect by solution features, is that prospects

Compliance means strict adherence to the customer’s bid request. Responsiveness means addressing the customer’s underlying needs. Responsive solutions are not necessarily compliant however often contain a greater benefit to the client. The relationship between responsiveness and compliance should, therefore, be used when determining your solution and strategy. Make sure to understand your client and whether

Winning work requires more than a compliant response, you need to understand AND articulate your competitive position. This competitive position comes from understanding how you differ from the competition, against criteria your clients care about (discriminators). Discriminators can be positive and therefore used to enhance your competitive position. They can also be negative and left

The primary objective of proposal managers… Prepare a winning document, on time.  Any activity that adversely impacts this objective must be identified and eliminated or managed.   The difficulties of managing teams are compounded when you have: •Large teams •Dispersed teams •Part-time members •Members from different organisations •Untrained, inexperienced members Industry-leading organisations use the following

  Your executive summary is often the only document decisions makers read. Avoid the risk of them losing interest and failing to read it, by starting your executive summary with a theme or topic of significant interest to your customer executives. Brainstorm a high-level strategic theme that encompasses: •the prospect’s strategic direction •this specific opportunity

In 80% of instances customers with an incumbent supplier remain with their current supplier. If you are the incumbent – great! statistically speaking you have a good chance of retaining the contract. BUT… What does this mean if you are not the incumbent? You need to engage with the client far earlier in their buying

…over your competitors? Are you articulating this in your proposals? Win themes or major theme statements tie a single, unique discriminator to a critical customer need. Themes tell readers why they should select you. Winning proposals use theme statements throughout the entire proposal to reinforce win strategy across each section of the response. They also:

…until the proposal is submitted. Evolve the content, form and detail in your Executive Summary until the proposal is submitted. Many people have been told their executive summary should be a one-page document prepared after the proposal is written. This is unhelpful advice as executive summaries are the most important pages in your proposal. Your

Value for Money is cited as an evaluation factor in many proposal request requirements and is left as a judgement call to the evaluators. In its most basic form, value propositions are the net benefits to the client of the seller’s solution. They describe how your solution will improve the customer’s business and how the