Shipley Insights

Tip 143: No-bid decisions. What have YOU got to lose?

Improving your bid decision gate discipline is one of the most effective ways to improve win rates. Improved bid/no-bid discipline can double or triple win rates, while extensive training and coaching to improve proposal quality might lead to 15 to 20 percent improvements. But an individual’s bid recommendations are often influenced by their job function.

Problem / Solution by Shipley Associates

Problem: Our customers don’t see how our solution benefits them. Sales and proposal professionals often focus too little on benefits and fail to link key solution features to benefits. Or worse, they wait to articulate the benefit until the end of a proposal section. When the benefits are buried, the customer won’t see how your solution

Tip 142: Avoid disrupted colour team reviews by clearly differentiating them from gate reviews

Gate reviews are the forum for bid/no-bid decisions and for senior management sign-off on the strategy and progress you have made towards winning an opportunity. They determine whether the opportunity is still worth pursuing. By contrast, the focus of colour team reviews is on improving the quality of the capture and proposal effort,

Tip 141: Unite the proposal team around a single vision with a draft Executive Summary

Drafting an executive summary early in the capture process gives you a powerful internal tool that you can use to: · Refine your bidding strategy · Gain senior management endorsement for your approach · Communicate your strategy in-house to all proposal contributors · Drive proposal development · Provide a model for the complete proposal.

Featured Article – Problem: They don’t trust us.

Problem: Our customers don’t see that we have the perfect solution. They don’t trust us. We may have the perfect solution for our customer’s problem. Another probability is that we have the perfect solution for what we perceive the customer’s problem to be. The customer may not trust you because you missed the mark by

Tip 140- Use capture planning to align your whole team with your sales approach

Capture planning is compatible with most common sales methodologies. Many Sales or BD Managers blend an established sales methodology with their approach to capture, leveraging the discipline that is already embedded in the business. Like capture planning, most popular sales methodologies include both strategic and tactical elements. Strategic elements focus on assessing your

Featured Article: Colour Team Reviews—Who to Invite and Why

Most of us know how vital colour team reviews are to ensuring a well-written, concise solution for our customers. But these reviews can get tricky and become ineffective if we’re not careful. During Shipley’s most recent webinar on colour team reviews, we were asked many questions about how to hold effective reviews. But, by far,

Tip 139- Increase the value of each contributor’s work by giving them clear ground rules

Instead of using the kickoff meeting to initiate discussions about how you will run the proposal, prepare in advance so you can communicate the ground rules for all contributors. Distribute writers’ packages that include guidance for style, procedures and configuration control. This approach will eliminate the extra work often created for the production team by

Featured Article: Shipley Associates – Why Your Proposals Don’t Win

by Eric Gregory This is one of the most common questions in our industry. The funny thing is most people and organizations want to create all sorts of complex dynamics, conspiracy theories, dreams, fables, and excuses as to why their proposals fail to win and why their win rates and capture ratios are so

Tip 138- Exploit value propositions as a collaborative selling tool

Collaborate with the prospect to develop a value proposition to pre-position yourself as the preferred, trusted supplier. Collaboration between the customer and the seller offers the following potential advantages: Both gain a clearer understanding of the customer’s objectives and potential benefits. Both better understand the actions required of each party, which reduces risk. The