WINNING


Before you can manage a project or program to profitable conclusion, you must win it. Winning takes a variety of forms, depending upon the market. It may be accomplished by simply having a superior advertisement, causing your prospective customers to forsake the competition and become your actual customers. It may involve a great deal of performance/production in reviewing, staffing, producing, delivering, negotiating and assuring a meeting of the minds between you and a buyer. The compexity depends on the transaction circumstances.

The first, and most vital step in winning is to set priorities for the available targets.

According to The Wizard of AN, for every ten rationally selected targets:

Don't waste a lot of time on the first six to eight, just staff, prepare and prosecute a competent pursuit of the work. Concentrate on the remaining two to four, where effort pays off.

Winning in competitive markets simply is no accident. Whether the market is retail or commercial, products or services, structured or open, planning, expertise in Winning and coordination of promise-to-performance are all vital. Each market has its peculiar needs, and each market responds uniquely to your actions.

It is important that your approach match the circumstances of your market, and that you have expert guidance in selecting the elements of your Win Strategy and in applying resources.

For example, procurement of Professional Services by many large firms and all public agencies is conducted in a highly structured market. If there is real competition, and you intend to Win, the following tasks are crucial to success:

Solicitation Analysis
Whether a candidate project/program has been tracked since its inception or is a heretofore unknown requirement, informed analysis of the solicitation can reveal much about the intentions and desires of the personnel responsible for selecting the awardee and for managing the effort after award.

The most obvious area of return is insight into how heavily the requirement has been marketed by competitors. Beyond this are other indicators that determine the strategy of the technical and pricing positions to be proposed.

While often otherwise hidden, administrative processes and actual selection criteria are also often revealed by details of the form and content of the solicitation.


Competition Analysis
Any reasoned market development approach needs an accurate picture of the alternatives that the market presents to the prospective customer. Competition analysis support offered by AN, Ltd. includes:

These and other ancillary factors influence the real advantages and disadvantages of competing firms. Even basic knowledge in this area is of obvious worth to the processes that determine whether and how to commit your firm and its resources in pursuit of a specific market or program.

AN, Ltd. will work with your firm's specialists in identifying and assessing your competition. Reduction of inappropriate or unnecessary expenditure of marketing time and costs improves your position both by enhancing the quality and expanding the coverage of these efforts.


Proposal/Bid Strategy Development
The conventional approach to determining bidding strategy is to review the requirements and to prepare a plan for accomplishment thereof; then to price the array of resources that are called for in the plan. No proposal effort should ignore this procedure, however, sole reliance on this function limits competitive advantage to:

While each achieved its conventional position by virtue of value, managing a proposal merely from the standpoint of performing the job eliminates the valuable function of managing the proposal from the standpoint of winning the job.

Among the factors that most often under-influence both technical and pricing strategy development are:

  • type of contract
  • direct cost mix
  • profit/fee alternatives
  • direct/indirect rate development vis a vis the job
  • expectations of customer reviewers
The firm that relies upon proposing a product that is superior to the competition in technical and cost aspects as they pertain to performance just will not win all the jobs to which its efforts entitle it.

Unless proposal management includes expertise in the realistic assessment of the relationship(s) between winning the job and performing the job, the firm's capture ratio will surely suffer.

These two concepts are often markedly different. Where this is true, their treatment will determine both the winner of the job and the quality of performance of that winner.

Particularly in a services environment, these are the coarse elements of return turn on investment.


Negotiation Preparation/Participation
The elements of a successful negotiation vary from circumstance to circumstance. A vast compendium of opportunities and pitfalls are potential determiners of victory or defeat in negotiations. Even though certain conditions are almost universal, a successful negotiation can be neither planned nor conducted by formula.

AN, Ltd. provides support in this area based upon decades of first hand experience in winning. Among the areas in which experience and judgment are provided to support clients at every stage of any type of negotiation are:

  • identification and preparation of support
    data
    materials
    personnel
  • reading and evaluating the opposition's
    decision points
    general alternatives
    instant (specific case) alternatives
  • creation of substitute decision points
  • derogation of undesirable alternatives
  • presentation/delivery
    initial submittal
    responses
Other Markets
Similar considerations govern who prevails even in simpler markets. Whether you are competing in a simple or a complex competitive market, consult AN, Ltd for expert guidance. AN, Ltd. will perform under the direction of your management in these areas or support the performance of your personnel.