02.
BID
The bid process and rules need to be worked through to identify your opportunities to differentiate:
Your customer will be ‘last minute’, therefore so will you. The ability to react quickly and work with extremely tight timescales is a necessity.
ALMOST GUARANTEED
In nearly every bid scenario, the following stages and deliverables will be consistently needed:
- Win themes / bid messages and story construct
- Executive Summary (scored or not)
- Core bid presentation
ALSO GUARANTEED
In most instances, despite the end customers best efforts, you can anticipate:
- The process will shift and change, unknowns are a fact of tendering
- Opportunities to differentiated at any time, without notice
Once the detail of the actual bid emerges, either through RFI and early consultation, or directly from the RFP, the messaging strategy needs to be locked down at the earliest opportunity.
In the absence of a pre-bid strategy, they need to be defined; with a pre-bid strategy they will almost certainly need to be revisited.
Defining and agreeing the winning messages and tactical ideas at the earliest opportunity avoids lost time throughout the bid process.
CASE STUDY
“GO BIG, OR GO HOME”
Our customer received an RFP that they knew would favour the incumbent, which wasn’t them! Our brief was to create a response under the instruction: “we need to go big, or go home.”
With our main stakeholder, we re-wrote the brief, creating a full business case for a dedicated innovation solution, which was offered to the customer as the central message within the overall response.
Core to most bids is the Executive Summary and main bid presentation. Our belief is that everything should be crafted, there’s no room for “that’ll do.” We assist with the structure, content, design and even the delivery. We work in conjunction with the bid team to ensure the content covers all requirements.
The Executive Summary can frequently be non-scored. However, it is an opportunity to influence a key audience, and so should be treated as if it is scored.
When creating the core assets, it pays to be clear on roles and responsibilities: who provides the insight, who signs-off etc. When it comes to other opportunities to deliver messages via different mediums, we begin with a plan that we adapt with new ideas as the process unfolds:
Creating content effective ‘in the room’ or consumed independently by the customer to support the bid creates further opportunity for stand-out.
This may include:
• Video (formal, animated, piece to camera, semi-pro selfie)
• Supporting ‘props’ (physical or digital)
• Physical leave-behinds
• Digital content mechanisms
CASE STUDY
LOW IN, HIGH OUT
Opportunities to differentiate can be simple. As part of a major bid, our customer was required to conduct a technical walkthrough of their solution.
As opposed to the standard architectural presentation, we re-designed the content to be more user friendly and suggested they presented on A0 boards in a workshop format.
The end customer was able to deconstruct the solution in a hands on way with our customer; completely changing the presentation environment.
No one else did it that way and this simple approach was highlighted as a key factor by the end-customer when they awarded the contract.
CASE STUDY
FULL SERVICE
Differentiated were asked to support a contract renewal that held significant strategic and commercial value – the incumbency position meant that ethical walls were required between teams, creating a challenging communications environment.
However, we deployed a full bid DBM approach, creating a successful re-sign, including:
- Win theme and Executive Summary consultancy and development
- Core presentation storyboarding and development
- Key stakeholder videos and a bid animation
- Video cards for personal delivery
- Notebooks with bid infographic messaging as leave-behinds
Or contact us directly: hello@differentiated.co.uk
Find us
Differentiated Ltd, Wyvols Court, Swallowfield, Reading, Berkshire, RG7 1WY
Visit our website differentiated.co.uk
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