Q & A discussion on strategy
Last week I was invited to respond to questions from bid and proposal professionals at an ask the expert session in the Stargazy community. https://shorturl.at/8vkYB
There was one topic: setting up bid strategy before responding to an RFP. The questions came from practitioners in Australia and overseas and all of them were ones I hear from clients. The questions and my answers are below.
"What do you ask a client before you start writing?"
My first question to explore is about the bid or no bid decision. A deer-in-the-headlights look at that point is not a good start. Three questions need a clear answer: why this tender, why now and why this organisation. "We just saw it and thought we'd have a go" is not an answer.
The second conversation is about the customer, and the background behind the RFT. What matters is understanding what is happening behind the scenes including who the decision-makers are, what stresses them, what has gone right or wrong with the incumbent, the history of the relationship, recent media and any other internal pressure points. If these questions cannot be answered without major fuss or internal chaos, my advice is no bid.
An earlier Therisano post covered where customer intelligence comes from: when every response reads well, writing well stops being what wins the tender.
"What works best in engaging Australian federal agencies before the RFP?"
The questioner noted the volume of US federal capture material, some decent UK and EU knowledge and not much on Australia. Most capture work sits with the client rather than the external consultant, so my answer comes from working with the clients who do it well.
The Australian market is still relationship-driven. This is not beers at the pub and handshake deals breaching probity. The clients who build strong relationships early know how to influence future direction, well before anyone talks about specific products or services.
Problem framing sits upstream of scope, budget, evaluation criteria and contract model. Whoever frames the problem picks the game played out at tender time.
Aged care is a working example. Define the problem as "more care workers, more training places, more nurses" and the RFT is about training volumes and headcount pipelines. Reframe it as "reduce the time from qualification to employment" or "reduce first-year churn out of the industry" and the RFT becomes about retention outcomes, deployment and pastoral care models. The discussion with the agency then becomes an exploration of what is possible, what leading practice looks like and which risks it should watch for.
The other piece is homework. Each agency releases forward procurement plans, portfolio budgets tell you where the money is and ministerials and media tell you where the attention is going. Every machinery of government change moves money and fresh RFTs follow. Follow the money early, then influence what the end goal looks like.
"What do you wish clients already understood about win themes?"
This followed a question about the APMP Win Themes micro-certification, which I pilot tested this year. It is an excellent refresher on win themes as the joiner between strategy and writing, broken down plainly: what matters to the customer, what the strategy should focus on, why the customer would pick us and how to make sure evaluators score us.
The term itself causes trouble. Use "win themes" up front and most clients picture slogans and taglines. With any client, new ones especially, I run a strategy discussion instead: why they are bidding, how they stand out from competitors and what the value and benefit of their offering is. I listen to the standard information, then ask a lot of questions to get them thinking differently about what they have to offer. The response then shows evaluators "we understand your problem, here is how our solution benefits you and here is the value".
One previous client opened with "let's talk about response strategy, but don't give me any of that win theme rubbish". We talked strategy and the win themes came out of it anyway. A win theme is the response strategy made visible, and it does the evaluator's work for them by positioning the whole response around the benefit, value and justification for choosing the offer.
"What shows up in the debrief when you did everything right and still lost?"
This was the easy one. Two things stand out almost without fail.
Proof, or lack of it. "Extensive experience", "proven approach" and "highly qualified team", unsupported by numbers, facts, project case studies or outcomes.
Linkage, the old "what's in it for me". Responses full of detail on the solution where the link between the outcomes and the benefit to the buyer is weak, unclear or missing. Evaluators armpit-deep in responses do not want to go hunting for value. It should leap off the page.
The strategy work above takes time at the front of a bid and shapes every page after it. It gives a clear view of when a tender is not worth pursuing, advice Therisano will give when needed.
Therisano runs this strategy discussion with clients before a response begins. If a tender is on the horizon and those three questions do not yet have an answer, that is the conversation to have first.
