Amanda Reid-Young

Tip 132 – Are your bids compliant or responsive, or both?

We know that non-compliance can cost you a place on the short list. But research also shows that clients highly value responsiveness in proposals – that is proposals that address their underlying needs. Sometimes this means coming up with a new offer that does not comply with the request. For example: A customer needs the

Tip 131 – How well do you understand your customer’s attitude to price?

Is your customer telling you one thing, and doing another? Consider this paradox: • Most sellers say customers in their market select the solution with the lowest price • Most customers say they seldom select the solution with the lowest price The reality is that most customers try to select the best value solution within

Article – Three ways to turn pursuits into captures

What does the term “pursuit” mean to you? What about the term ”capture”? Are they same thing? It’s a tricky one as many people / companies have differing definitions. I’ve never liked talking about “pursuit” in Business Development. To me, pursuit means following and not catching up. I’d rather prepare teams for capture than for

Tip 130 – Collaborate to win the customer over with both reason and emotion

Brain imaging research has shown that all decisions involve a complex interplay between the emotional and logical centres of the human brain. By collaborating with the customer throughout the sales process, you can gain information, develop rapport, validate assumptions and assess your progress in persuading them that your organisation can best meet their needs. While

Article – 6 ideas for keeping your proposals punchy

Do you ever look at the proposal you are going to submit and wonder what happened to the energy and ideas that originally fuelled your solution? At the beginning of the proposal period, the team has so much good input, expertise and enthusiasm, but the final proposal somehow doesn’t convey those things to the reader.

Tip 129 – Keeping your solution options open may be damaging your positioning

After targeting an opportunity and analysing their position, many sellers delay selecting what they are going to offer. They may continue to modify their solution, or carry too many solutions, alternates, or options through the sales cycle. While you may believe that this demonstrates flexibility, it can impact your ability to position with the customer

Article – 5 ways to save your sanity (and everyone else’s) when you’re leading a proposal

Late nights and weekends working on proposals that are still incomplete as deadlines loom, we’ve all been there. There’s an adrenaline high – then a deep exhaustion at the thought of doing it all again. When I wrote my first proposal for Shipley, that was my expectation. But I soon learned that a few principles,

Tip 128 – Don’t leave evaluators to their own interpretations

A good general rule for proposals is: “Don’t make evaluators do their own thinking”. Tell them clearly what you want them to know, and make sure they read it by highlighting those key messages. Graphics are an important tool when you are trying to foreground a particular piece of information. A picture may be worth

Tip 126 – In the era of deep fakes, seeing’s still believing

The power of photographs to convince people is still strong, even though most of us realise that they can easily be manipulated to distort the truth. Many organisations underuse photographs In proposals, simply because they have not planned ahead to collect photographic evidence. Plan to gather relevant photos throughout the sales process that you can

Tip 125 – Question: How do I get my strategy into a Question/Response proposal format?

Response: Plan to concentrate your proposal efforts on answering the most important questions. If you can submit an Executive Summary, put extra work into developing a strong narrative that pulls together all the threads from the different questions and themes in the request. In addition, spend time identifying, on an 80-20 basis, which are the most