Bid Performance Analysis

A true understanding of why recent bids have been won or lost will help your company improve its sales.

The investment in tendering for major contracts is huge and every business strives to improve its conversion ratio. But it is still quite unusual to find enterprise suppliers standing back and taking an objective look at why they have won or lost a particular piece of business. The sales culture is very powerful where large contracts are concerned and the psychology of sales management (including commission based remuneration) favours cracking on with the next opportunity rather than learning from the last one.

The sales team may undertake a debrief with the client/prospect, but unless an independent and objective 3rd party is involved it is unlikely that the full truth will emerge.

We speak to all of the key people in the evaluation team. Our expertise is in enabling them to talk candidly about the selection process and how the various competitors shaped up. Our individual account report based on these interviews will:

• provide a succinct summary of why you won or lost the contract

• identify opportunities for further sales into the account

• describe the background leading to the requirement, identifying any internal politics or external parties influencing the outcome

• identify the most important issues on which the evaluation team needed to be convinced, and measure your performance compared to competitors

• measure the extent to which the sales team adhered to any formal sales process used by the supplier and evaluate the effectiveness of such processes

• identify competitor strengths and weaknesses

• provide clear recommendations to improve your sales approach and pre-sales support process

Over time, we can identify more general corporate and systemic issues (for example, inadequate qualification of opportunities, or common misconceptions about your company) that can be addressed to increase sales performance.