Comment décidez-vous quand enchérir ou ne pas enchérir pour une opportunité?

Infinite opportunity, finite resource. Firstly, every (potential) customer is different. Existing customers should have priority over others, as you have an established relationship and hopefully, a proven track record. Secondly, every opportunity is different. Some will be more profitable than others. Finally, it’s more about prioritisation than qualification. Prioritise your best customers requiring your most profitable capability, then repeat until you run out of resources. Infinite opportunity, finite resource.

Undoubtedly, bidding for work is a common way to secure work in particular markets and organisations often have some ability to undertake bidding activities where this is the case. For specific opportunities, there are three primary perspectives to consider: 1) Is the specific opportunity a strategic fit for the organisation? 2) Can you demonstrate the capabilities, capacity and competencies to deliver against the requirements? 3) What’s the opportunity cost of bidding? Of particular note is the last point, particularly in organisations with a strong sales focus. The desire and push to bid for everything from sales leaders can be overwhelming for bid teams, often diluting their efforts and producing unfavourable outcomes.

Bidding is the most important part of any business. By this you can expand the reach of your organization by showcasing expertise and value proposition and also gaining more revenue and profitability by securing new areas to market your product and most important is the repeat business which will drive your business to greater heights. You gain key insights by your competitors and market by researching on their key strengths and weakness and gradually you keep on improving your own skills in improving bid writing and key processes through feedback from customer. Continuous process of improvement, learning and feedback makes the vendor more competitive in each bid.

Benefits of bidding are usually focused on the business case for winning: growth, profits, reputation, market access etc. Where winning is not the sole objective then bidding can be a very expensive sort of marketing. Always ask yourself: "Could we spend this effort better elsewhere?"

Public sector tendering can be a great way to establish financial stability for your business, winning 3+ year contracts with a 30 day payment guarantee. They are SME friendly, too!

Considering Bidding? Do you have a track record of providing the product or service? Do you KNOW that your offering is of good quality / reputation compared to others? Do you KNOW that your pricing is competitive? Do you KNOW the competitors, their products, their service and pricing? If the answer to all the above is yes and you have the resources to put a very well presented and comprehensive bid together in the time frame allowed, then go ahead. If the answer is not a categoric 'YES' to all of the above, don't bid. Focus on the opportunities where the answer is definitely 'yes' and you also have engagement with the tendering body / organisation.

Bidding is crucial for business growth. It expands your reach, showcases expertise, and boosts revenue. Securing new markets and repeat business drives success. By researching competitors' strengths and weaknesses, you gain insights and continuously improve bid writing and processes through customer feedback. This cycle of improvement makes you more competitive with each bid.

Bidding presents a valuable opportunity to connect with potential customers and expand your network. Public RFPs are required to be published, ensuring a transparent and fair process for all bidders. This creates an equal opportunity for everyone to compete, stand out, and establish their presence in the market. Additionally, bidding offers a significant chance to win new business and increase your market share, making it a strategic way to grow your company's opportunities.

I'd break the risks of bidding into three: 1. The risk of losing this bid - the wasted effort, risk to reputation etc 2. The risk to other bids - bid (and SME etc) resources are finite. If you bid this opportunity as well as others that are more 'winnable', how much effort /resource are you diverting from these other bids - potentially making them less likely to be won? 3. Risks of winning - do you really know what you are committing to - especially if this is a new market? Have you got 'bid fever' / been told this is a 'must win' - so are promising too much / pricing too low - and won't be able to deliver / make a profit if you do win? Within this think cash flow and investment requirements.

The art of Bidding has some inherent risks combined with itself as without thinking and having a proper Go/No Go call we tend to waste time which is not suitable or we do not have capability to service the requirements as asked by customer. Even while working on many opportunities at a time we loose on our reputation and resulting in losings of reputation. As your resources are wasted in pursuing many opportunities and losings out on many as they are not in your own sweet spot. In an effort to win many bids at a time and committing resources without adequate care to profitability it hurts the overall business viability.

Avoid the 'me too' bidding approach - Multiple opportunities all arising at the same time, and going for all of the them regardless of any bidding considerations such as: 1. Do you have an existing relationship with the client? 2. Is this a warm prospect that you already have good knowledge of, or just reactive (you spotted the procurement notice and decided you must bid). 3. Is the opportunity and open tender - or have you completed a prequalification exercise to gain the right to bid for the tender stage? 4. Does the bid exactly fit your criteria, company long-term objectives, and do you have the relevant expertise and certications/accreditations?

Risk mitigation is one aspect of the role of a proposal manager that is often overlooked. A review of the bid provides an opportunity to assess the risk to the organization. As stated loss of reputation by submitting a low quality or non compliant response can and should be called out by the proposal manager. Proposal leaders know their teams capacity to deliver the response as well as the availability of resources to support the awarded contract. Both of which can impact the go no go decision, while also mitigating the risk of bidding.

Potential Resource Drain: Engaging in bidding can lead to wasted time and resources on unsuitable opportunities, which may harm your reputation if proposals are of poor quality or non-compliant. For instance, a contractor might invest significant effort in bidding for a project that ultimately does not align with their capabilities or strategic goals. If they submit a subpar proposal, it could damage their credibility in future bids, diverting attention from more lucrative opportunities that better fit their expertise. This illustrates the importance of strategic focus in the bidding process to avoid detrimental outcomes.

There is always the risk of winning it! But you’ve not checked the tender contract terms, over promised, margins too low… Contract management and KPI reporting will be holding suppliers to account more - so it’s got to be right. And this means systems for monitoring and reporting, including your social value commitments.

I would add the risk of errors, conflicts, omissions, and inconsistencies in the solicitation package that may give rise to disputes and litigation. Has the bid package been sufficiently scrubbed for defects in language? Has AI double-checked it?

One of the biggest challenges in bidding is knowing when to proceed and when to step back. This decision-making process is crucial, and having structured frameworks like a Bid/No-Bid process or an Opportunity Review Board (ORB) in place is essential. Tools like the "magic six questions" from CSK can help guide you toward the right choice. The risks of bidding on the wrong opportunity are significant: it can drain valuable resources and demotivate your bid team, who may feel their efforts were wasted. Additionally, focusing on the wrong bid may cause you to miss out on more promising opportunities.

For every opportunity we need to have an Assessment framework in place. It helps in avoiding the risks and having a single method to assess each opportunity objectively from all angles. This works as an effective tool that can help you evaluate the fit, feasibility, and attractiveness of an opportunity. For this we need to assess the same from many facets which are as follows:- 1.Alignment with Vision, Mission and Goals 2. Compatibility with capabilities, skills, and experience. 3. Availability of Resources, Time and Budget. 4.Understanding of the client's needs, expectations, and preferences. 5.Knowledge of the competition, market, and industry. 6. Potential for value creation, impact, and innovation.

At my previous company, I helped create a framework to guide the bid/no-bid decision. That included a flowchart with questions that would send an opportunity down a specific path, such as contract value, project location, resources required, and more. Each opportunity would end in one of three buckets: disqualified, complete bid/no-bid process for standard opportunities, or complete bid/no-bid process for non-standard opportunities. With the objective information about the opportunity known, our bid/no-bid decisions would then assess the more subjective criteria: client relationship, competitors, customer pain points, etc. The goal here was to evaluate our chance of winning against the resources required to complete the contract.

Assessment frameworks, bid/no bid guidelines, and decision gateways all help in focusing the priorities of bid teams and the wider capabilities of the organisation. Unfortunately, these are often subjective in nature and are open to manipulation by those populating them. Thorough consideration of deciding factors as well as validation of outcomes by a wider team can aid in assuring consistency in the assessment. Examining the workload of the bidding teams is also essential and must be considered. While there may be a desire to bid for everything, assessments must be effective and focus attention on primary opportunities. Overturning or ignoring outcomes of any assessments on a frequent basis devalues any benefit to the organisation.

Deciding whether to bid or no-bid involves evaluating the opportunity against a structured assessment framework. Key factors include alignment with our strategic goals, resource availability, and the potential for a win. We assess the client’s needs, the competition, and our ability to deliver a compelling proposal. If the opportunity aligns well and offers a strong chance of success, we proceed; otherwise, we opt out to focus on more viable prospects.

To assess the chances of success in bidding, using a consistent set of questions that every member of the Review Board must answer is really beneficial. The board consists of the same core team, ensuring continuity, but it brings diverse perspectives: technical, financial, operational, and more. A critical aspect of this process is the "grilling" session, where the Account Manager faces tough, probing questions. They must not only sell the opportunity but also clearly demonstrate stakeholder pain points and outline potential risks. This rigorous approach ensures that all angles are considered before deciding whether to pursue the bid.

As part of any bid writing process, your bid-no-bid decision is so important and is often one of the quickest ways to improve your ROI! Even if your assessment is over ruled it’s essential to still monitor it and help you justify future decisions. I have seen plenty of different ways businesses assess the opportunity and risk associated with tendering for a contract, but we always prefer to keep it simple! Make it easy for those involved by ensuring the information is at their finger tips and easy to digest.

Ever felt that tug—should I go for this bid or not? We’ve all been there! A simple assessment framework can cut through the indecision fast. Start by asking yourself: does this align with our mission and values? Do we have the resources and team for it? ✔️ Next, score each factor on a 1-5 scale; higher scores mean stronger chances. Finally, let tools like GovWin or BidNet do some heavy lifting on competitor insights and trends 📈—no need to guess. With this framework, you’ll know when to dive in and when to walk away, keeping your focus on high-win potential. 🌟

Although it's important to score your responses against the RFP's specified criteria, that isn't enough. You need to review and score your response against the audience who is reading it. If it is a technical team, you need to score your response through their eyes. Whereas if a business team is scoring the response, you must score it through their perspective. If you don't know the stakeholders who will be reading and scoring your responses, then you can only guess at how well you are truly responding.

For using the opportunity assessment framework we need to collect information about the opportunity from multiple sources, such as the request for proposal (RFP) or tender document, the client's website and publications, previous interactions with the client, your own records and analytics, and your network, various government websites and tender repository portals. Everything should be scored by giving weightage to each requirement from lowest and highest. For this spreadsheet can be used or a software that weights each score assigned to each criteria. Also, we can assign different weights based on the importance a customer gives for example he may be looking for vendors who have exceptional and experienced resources for delivery.

Typically, we use any intelligence from business development activities or research, such as assessing who have the contract now and which types of businesses the buyer typically awards contracts to. We then assess the opportunity based on the information provided in the tender pack and clarification questions. When bidding a lot, it doesn’t have to be a complex or time consuming framework, but by doing it formally you have data to look monitor the impact of your decisions. Therefore a chance to learn and improve!

Somtimes you have to "sell" the Bid/No Bid Process to the owners and management. The best way is to go back through loser bids and debrief what went wrong. The reason - pricing, not understanding scope, being marginally qualitifed - is due to a lack of relationships. Add up all the blind bids in the last year and look at how much time, energy, heart, spirit and $$$ you lost writing those bids. Go through your winning bids. I bet you had a relationship, you knew the customer, the price and the situtation behind the scenes. Compare the two and show to management. If they simply invested 20 minutes into each blind loser bid on a Bid/No Bid decision, then they will commit to taking 20 minutes to do it in the future.

A word of caution when utilizing opportunity matrices. Don't waste time and energy if the culture of the organization is to bid on everything anyway. It becomes an exercise in futility which can ultimately be demoralizing. Also, refrain from allowing the matrix to be completed by those who could "game the system" by entering scores that boost the chances of receiving a "go" decision. Use a template that can't be manipulated.

I argue against quantitative opportunity evaluation. I've seen too many occasions where the process has been gamed to get a result. There are no guarantees that different teams will use the same scoring scheme consistently. There is broad understanding in the bidding community about the factors most likely to lead to a win. Rather than guestimating percentages or scores, the bid/no-bid decision should be taken by reaching consensus with the stakeholders. Hold a meeting with representatives from Sales and the delivery teams and discuss each factor (customer relationship, past history, solution requirements, current capacity etc). A consensus will likely emerge about whether to pursue the opportunity. If not, escalate to senior management.

Carefully assess your capabilities - I once lost a bid due to underestimating the project's complexity, costing me time and resources. Evaluate the strategic fit - Bidding on a project that doesn't align with my long-term goals was a mistake I won't repeat. Weigh the risks objectively - Ignoring potential risks nearly led me to a disastrous project that would have damaged my reputation. Consider your current workload - Overcommitting resulted in me underperforming on a project, which I learned from. Trust your instincts - My gut feeling about a client's unrealistic expectations was right, and I'm glad I didn't bid.

After scoring each criteria we need to compare total score with a range which have set beforehand. The criteria could be if you score above 80% then only bid is qualified. Do a quick comparison of the scores of the other bids which are being pursued the higher score you have the more are the winning chance of it. We should objectively evaluate values like intuition, values, ethics, risk appetite, strategic vision, and direction. We need to carefully consider the pros and cons and weigh the evidence and emotions. Utilizing an opportunity assessment framework can help you make an informed and confident decision that is in line with your goals and capabilities.

I agree with Nicole. You can create a perfectly crafted bid/no bid decision matrix, only for it to be ignored by senior management, or circumvented/ gamed by sales or others. It's as much about politics, influence and people as process and systems. Make sure you understand what those are, work through them, and if needed provide the evidence (if that's what influences the decision makers) of why bidding the wrong things is fruitless. Or go to earlier in the pipeline and focus on initial sales qualification, so poor opportunities don't get to bid / no bid stage after sales have put effort into them. That can take time and effort . But it's preferable to completing a fabulous matrix or process that's ignored, and getting frustrated.

Raw data is always a good start. Of the bids you have submitted, how many have you won? Why? Did you know the customer well enough to build the compliant, responsible response to their real needs, or just to what the RFP stated and your product or service "was a perfect fit." If you have not been the provider designing the solution, move on.

Great perspective James, as always! I think reaching a meaningful understanding of the value proposition, which has short, medium and long term perspectives, has to be the primary basis, as this should also cover the implications of a no-bid but not as you say artificially promote that. The concept represented in the Decision Poker approach are very relevant also - where is the bid/no-bid decision being made.

Frameworks and evaluation tools are all very well but looking at opportunities in isolation misses an important point: there are always other things we could be doing and maybe they'd offer a better return on our investment. That's why I believe Qualification processes should be part of the overall portfolio management process. That way organisations can focus their limited resource on the best most attractive opportunities.

Follow a tried and trusted process, specific to YOUR business. Don’t just follow templated bid/no bid process flow - they won’t work. Sometimes what might appear to be the ‘wrong’ opportunity is precisely the opposite for reasons you may not fully be able to quantify…takes a bit of bravery (and cash!) for the senior execs to commit to but can be the most rewarding!

There are many important questions to ask, but in particular, do we know the client well enough to define the solution that best meets their needs now, and into the future.

A critical factor is to have a key understanding of who the customer is AND the customer knows who you are as well. As in, the customer knows who you are, they've met you, and know your solution offerings, so you are not submitting this project blindly. From stakeholder mapping to having a deep understanding of the requirements, you should know everything about the customer so you can tailor your proposal to them.

We should try to select only that opportunities and Bids which directly fall in the focus areas where your organization has decided to focus on because once you follow a niche strategy and develop an expertise in particular domain that will help it to cover more ground. Once you develop expertise then will more talented workforce and delivery excellence you will be able to get more references and clients. This is the reason why small and medium organizations are able to establish a though leadership quickly than the established players and play on their strengths.

Knowing your backlog and how any new projects will affect them is important as well. What is the workload of current personnel? Would you have to hire new people to work on the project? Many RFx include a clause that states any replacement personnel have to be approved by the client prior to being allowed to work on the project. At a minimum, you should always know which program managers and which project managers are available to take on new work as they will be included in the proposal response. Make sure that personnel availability is part of your Go/No Go process.

This article is truly amazing. The AI has pretty much described exactly how our WRAP (Win Rate Accelerator Programme) works. We have been using and refining WRAP for a decade. It's an Excel based tool using a balanced scorecard approach, with questions rated on a 1 to 5 scale, all of which lead to a Bid Viability Rating plus dashboard summarising the key issues. Even the range of values for bid viability in the article approximate pretty closely to the WRAP guidelines. At the end of the day, it's a tool and the humans make the final decision informed by what the discovery tool unearths. But the artificial intelligence has come spectacularly close to what human insights have produced!

It's never the nicest thing to consider when looking at new bids and new projects you may be working on, but sometimes you have to look at whether the potential client can afford to pay for the work (credit checking) and if you care to attempt the work - sometimes the projects will involve far more back-and-forth than necessary if there aren't clearly defined assessment standards / targets. You have to judge every project on it's own merits

- Availability of equipment for the project - Research the Client; the type of contracts they propose for their project, do they owe their vendors/ subcontractors, etc., this will determine no go/ go bid.