Shipley Insights

2020 has seen us wrangling with all the administrative challenges of working from home. Telecommunications networks are feeling the strain. So are parents who are working remotely and sharing the space with children kept or sent home from school. Teleconferencing contends with competing demands. And some of you are struggling for the first time with

Many organisations tell us that they have a defined business development process – but only for specifically selected opportunities. Teams muddle through on other opportunities as best they can. To really switch on your organisation’s business development potential, you need to commit to a single, flexible, tailorable, scalable process – and for your leadership team

Have you ever used a previous Executive Summary and done a “search and replace” for the customer name? Yes, admit it! Every time you do that, you are effectively throwing out the work already done by your business development team. Instead, use Shipley tools including the Bidder Comparison, the Integrated Solution Worksheet and the Strategy

When you are bidding for a complex opportunity, you may want to pursue it with other organisations in a formal or informal teaming arrangement to improve your chance of winning. Select teaming partners using selection criteria based on customer requirements and issues. Identify probably selection criteria, including technical, management, past performance, cost, timing, funding, regulatory,

Cover letters are not officially part of a submission, but they represent another opportunity to reinforce your messages. If the cover letter is likely only to be read by the person who accepts delivery, use it to list the contents of the submission and to confirm compliance. If the cover letter is likely to be

You cannot assert a discriminator unless you understand your customer, your competitors and yourselves. A common problem is lack of accurate competitor data when you claim that an aspect of your solution is a discriminator. When you do not know specifically what your competitor offers, discriminate your features against other criteria, like national averages, independent

Evaluators have to compare different bidders’ approaches and want to know that a bidder considered all feasible alternatives. By including relative cost comparisons in your technical proposal you can justify your approach even when you are not permitted to include pricing information in this section. In a relative cost comparison, you can demonstrate how you