TLDR: This article emphasises the importance of learning from lost bids, providing insights into three key areas for improvement. Firstly, it suggests seeking feedback directly from the client, either formally or informally, to understand areas for enhancement. Secondly, it advocates for internal reflection through a lessons learnt workshop, gathering feedback from bid participants on various aspects of the bidding process. Finally, it recommends an independent review of the submission to identify improvement opportunities. Ultimately, we aim to highlight the value of utilising gathered insights to refine bidding strategies and foster a culture of continuous improvement within your organisation.
When bids are lost, it’s often easy to make generalisations around what went wrong. Maybe the competition were just better, maybe you couldn’t compete on price, or maybe there was some bias or an existing arrangement that was hard to overcome? In reality, losing a bid provides an opportunity to dissect the overall approach taken to developing and submitting the bid, as well as gaining excellent market insight into the commercial positioning of your offer. This opportunity for learning is seldom explored when you’ve been successful in winning as the focus of attentions then switches to mobilisation and contract commencement activities. So losing is where the real learning sits, and where this article focuses on helping you to lose better.
Unsuccessful outcomes offer three main chances to gain insights:
1. Directly from Client feedback
Where an outcome letter is provided, there is typically evaluation information on the submission you’ve made. This information may include an overview of the evaluation criteria, a comparison between your own and the winner's submission, as well as a critique of the technical elements of your proposal. If you don’t receive this information, it’s possible you can request it, although those involved in the evaluation may not be obliged to provide it. Public sector bids in the UK have governance around providing feedback and we would prompt you to explore the tender requirements to find out what this is. Not withstanding the formal feedback, it’s always helpful to request a follow-up session to more informally gather feedback from those involved in the evaluation. This should be done in two stages for better insight and impact. The first stage is to request that some more feedback can be obtained for the purposes of strengthening future tenders. It’s important to request this is for your own internal purposes and that it’s not to disrupt the specific tender that you’re requesting feedback from. With this in mind, it’s preferable for a date to be requested that is some weeks following receipt of the outcome – we would normally suggest a minimum of four weeks – so that there is no concern that any feedback you obtain could potentially derail the procurement through any formal challenge of the outcome. For the second stage, where the feedback session is held, we would suggest that someone unrelated to the procurement represent your organisation to prevent any potential bias in the questions asked and the interpretation of responses received. It’s also valuable to avoid very general questions, instead be mindful what information that you’d like to gather that’s valuable. We have a template for this which may be helpful (send us an email if you’d like a copy). Buyers are not obliged to give you any feedback and it’s valuable to consider this as a courtesy session, even if the feedback may be harsh, incongruous with your submission, or seemingly improper. The key is to understand the factors that are within your ability to influence on future procurements.
2. Lessons Learnt Workshop
Irrespective of the outcome, we would always propose carrying out an internal lessons learnt or post-bid review between the members of the extended bid team. This is typically done as part of a facilitated workshop or through a series of surveys and feedback capture platforms (we value the Microsoft Whiteboard tools for this as well as Microsoft Forms). Face-to-face is always better in our opinion as it helps to tease out issues and thinking through engaging discussion and skilled facilitation. Normally, we would structure these sessions to address the below topics:
- Prebid: Preparation for the opportunity (including capture planning, pursuit planning, and sales management), understanding the Client and their challenges, competitor awareness, and alignment of corporate capability, capacity, and competence.
- Administration: The management of the bid process, including sharing of documents, diary management, document updates through the procurement, clarification, and other opportunity related communications.
- Planning: The undertaking of bid management activities beyond general administration, including initial kick-off session, the generation of meaningful and relevant win-themes, clear articulation of milestones, monitoring progress, and adherence to corporate process.
- Functional Areas: Technical solutions for key elements of the bid, bringing together corporate strengths including technological and operational advantages, aligned fully to the specific requirements of the Client. As an aside, we would consider Social Value as a functional area for public sector procurements given the weighting it has on outcomes.
- Operational Alignment: Buy-in from operational delivery team on management structures and the delivery model proposed, in addition to constructive bilateral challenge on service outputs, resourcing, and performance.
- New Ideas: Discussion and evaluation of improvements and innovations that impact on commercial advantage and the quality of outcomes for the Client, including alternative service delivery models, technology concepts, or novel supply chain approaches.
- Writing: Processes underpinning the quality of writing, including storyboarding, structuring of responses, inclusion of supporting graphics, the relevance of technical content, and the effectiveness of ongoing technical reviews and evaluations.
- Pricing: Effective use of internal company data and tender information to determine optimal service approaches and value-for-money for the Client.
- Supply Chain: The exploration and selection of a resilient, right-sized, and agile supply chain that integrates fully with the delivery model and that represents best value-for-money.
- Progress: The pace at which the bid advanced, identifying any bottlenecks, restrictions or limitations that prevented desired advancement through the bid programme.
- Governance: The process and pace of obtaining approvals from the senior leadership team for stages and or components of the bid.
The ability to obtain meaningful feedback in these sessions is very much driven by the capability of the facilitator. To make these sessions more valid, we would propose that there are three considerations that underpin the session. The first is that the intention is to explore ways to make bidding better. It should not be about the persecution of individuals and teams, nor vilification of principle actors in the process. Personal attacks are not conducive to valid outcomes and in fact, encourage hostility and defensive behaviours if someone feels victimised. Instead this must be purely around the pursuit of excellence in bidding for future works. The second point is that the session should be sponsored by a senior leader within the organisation. Without this, participants may not see the value in adding insights in the belief that nothing beneficial will happen for future bids. Finally, the third point is what we like to call ‘Vegas Rules’ in that whatever happens in the workshop, stays in the workshop! Nothing presented or discussed should be used for any other purpose than learning and improving the organisation’s approach to bids.
Outcomes from the workshop should be shared initially between participants of the workshop before being distributed wider, accompanied by an invite to personally discuss any aspects that are subject to contention or misinterpretation. It’s important that participants feel protected and included in the process.
3. Independent Review
Finally, we propose that having an independent review of your submission by an impartial party can aid in identifying areas for future improvement. This may be the accuracy and quality of written responses, compliance with the tender requirements, or validation of the methodology for determining the service model.
What next?
The information gathered from the above areas can be extremely valuable in driving value into your approach to bidding and work winning, but only if information is gathered, distributed, and digested in ways that will make a difference. This may involve the alteration and optimisation of existing processes, the creation of new procedures and tools to promote successful outcomes, recruitment of additional resources, restructuring to leverage organisational strengths, or the provision of meaningful training to enhance the capabilities of existing team members.
Whatever the outcomes, learning to lose better is an essential step in providing a winning culture within your organisation and contract wins that are accomplished by a capable and dedicated team.
Are you ready to lose better?
Keyne can help
If you need help with reviewing the outcomes from any of your bids or proposals, or would like to find out about how we can help you prepare for a winning submission, get in touch for an informal chat and some more insights on enhancing your win rates through better bid responses.
To find out how the Keyne Group can help you with your complex bids and proposals, get in touch here and let us know what you need.
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