Shipley Articles

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

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.

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,

In these unprecedented times of uncertainty and stress on businesses and their supply chains, there are new and complex challenges arising for service providers. In the few short weeks that the Coronavirus crisis has been impacting the Australian economy, we have heard from many of our clients who are experiencing opportunities and issues they have

First post in a series This post is the first in a series where I will use my own past experience to pattern-match topics from other BD, sales and bid silos, that I believe have insights and lessons not previously brought together. For example: Delivering successful projects requires active stakeholder engagement and communication, with a

Life can be tough in bids and proposals. Where sales, Business Development (BD) and capture teams are usually primarily face-to-face activities – bid and proposal management, and especially writing – are often more remote, and often isolated roles. The entire BD-Lifecycle – from Capture to Proposal Planning to Proposal Preparation – runs on trust –

Be clear, concise and correct when writing your bids. Don’t make readers think about what you are trying to say. Get to the point and use the simplest words possible. Proposal contributors often make several fundamental errors when writing. All these errors lead to the same outcome; a document that is harder to read, which

Customer focus is the key to growth. When we audit our clients failed bids or proposals, a lack of customer focus is generally the first thing we observe. Yet most say they know their customers well. Unifying Business Development – by bridging the gap between sales conversations and proposal win strategy – requires senior leadership

This article is for anyone responsible for or in BD and working with: *Technical people with pre-sales and sales duties, but who do not consider themselves salespeople. *Operations staff who help retain customers, and cross-sell and up-sell to them. So what’s the problem? You have a significant opportunity or an existing contract coming up for

What sort of Business Development (BD) organisation are you involved with? Particularly concerning time? The extraordinarily successful US investor Warren Buffet explained: “The stock market is a device for transferring money from the impatient to the patient.” In other words, a sound understanding of time as a factor in human behaviour and decision making is