Winning Work (All Parts)

If your concerned with the future prosperity of your firm, with winning more work in a competitive and tough economy, whilst saving money and by doing so more efficiently, then you might value our planned series of blogs to know how!

 

Clearly, there exists a great deal of best practice information on what to do when you have won a project, but as I see very little written information on how to win the work in the first place, or how to retain a client for the long-term, I felt that this is a void where valuable win work insights through blogs could prove helpful.

MarketingWorks evolved from my own experience in construction management in the mid 80’s morphed into bid management. After undertaking an MBA in the early 90’s I realised that all the tried and tested tools and techniques other industries have used very successfully are totally applicable to the construction industry. Things have grown considerably since those early days and we now help many contractors and consultants refocus their business development activities in order to win more profitable work from their new and existing clients.

 
 

 Tailored approaches to winning more work with less waste

 

Given nearly 10% of a consultants turnover and up to 4 % of a contractor’s can be spent on work winning activities, hence why achieving just a few improvements in effectiveness and efficiencies will significantly increase the firm’s profitability.

 

Our approaches focus on developing bespoke win work processes and checklists which improve work winning behaviours to assist all types of roles and levels of construction industry people. They help those who have are full time in work winning e.g. estimators, planners and design managers or those with an occasional role in work winning such as project managers or site managers but they all still value being prompted in best practice behaviours, covering BD pursuit activities, bid / proposal management, key client management and management reporting. For example, they could be seasoned bid managers but in the same way that a pilot uses a checklist to ensure he arrives safely, our prompts are valued because they will ensure the best win themes are developed, and our checklists ensure client centric proposals are created which correspondingly significantly increase success rates.

 

By the same token, most leaders realise that their central goal should be to establish long-term client relationships. This approach recognises the cost efficiencies in repeat business, versus the relatively higher cost of converting new opportunities into actual clients. (Studies have shown that it costs five times more to acquire a new client than to make a sale to an existing one.)

 
 

The cost of Bidding

 

Our conviction was substantiated by the results of our research with the University of Reading in the UK that put the average cost of construction tendering at 3% of the value of the project, with the average pre-qualification costs running to 1.5%. That means if you are winning one bid in five, then 22.5% of your win budget is spent on bidding costs. This is huge. The opportunities both to improve win ratios and to reduce the cost of each bid is something MarketingWorks has been committed to helping our clients achieve through selectivity matrices.

 
 

Building on existing foundations

 

Ideally a business-winning culture starts at the beginning with feedback on whether client expectations and relationships are being properly managed. How confident are you that you will play a part in their future? Do you know what your clients think, what they want, and more importantly how they see your relationship with them developing? Procurement philosophy is becoming more enlightened, but to exploit this change, we too must adapt to our clients and become more client-centric.

 

 

Most firms start off with excellent core competences and services, which initially fulfil niche client requirements, but as they grow and develop new services and operate in new sectors, they can start to develop bad habits. One such act of heresy is to treat all clients in the same way. This often takes the shape of considering existing clients on a transactional sales level, with the client / supplier relationship being based simply on being given yet another piece of work. It is equally important to understand why you were awarded a job, as it is to learn from the mistakes when you fail to win one.

 
 

Your strategically important clients need urgent attention

 

 

So what does this mean for firms in the construction industry? Well, it means assiduously following the 80:20 rule (80% of fee income coming from 20% of clients). This means researching your existing clients’ actual requirements and potentially changing the way you serve them. Clients have been getting bigger and more sophisticated. They want tailor-made solutions and are prepared to rationalise their supplier base. Look at the many blue chip clients of this world - these big players started to play hardball a few years ago and this trend has spread. Cosy relationships and frameworks now face regular strategic reviews, as the current demands of economic reality must surely be passed down the line to achieve cost savings. The key therefore, is to actively court a close relationship with your strategically valuable key clients, perhaps by developing new ways to work with them so that they cannot easily drop you and to create exit barriers such as a growing dependence on your knowledge of their business.

 

No longer can incumbent service firms feel safe. They will have to proactively differentiate and to demonstrate why they continue to offer the client the best option. This will mean exploiting distinct sector strengths and marketing their unique problem-solving abilities, perhaps honed whilst on the last few jobs. For example, I am aware of some firms offering existing clients a lower fee structure for the following year’s term contract, because they have developed streamline processes to the benefit of all. This truly shows commitment to building a long-term client relationship.

 
 

Embed improved win work behaviours into tactical win work activities

 

To achieve this, it must become fundamental to your tactical and strategic plans, as winning work is far too important to be left solely to the marketing department. Therefore it depends upon the shared vision of the senior leadership and a willingness to engage all operational client facing staff to play a specific and aligned role in client relationship development. The critical organisational changes that are needed to deliver a client-focused service must be successfully communicated throughout the firm. Every service industry, including construction, is reporting new behavioural models. The current favourite is knowledge sharing and collaboration platforms that facilitate improved internal communications. But it’s important not to get entangled in the jargon or the technology solutions. Basically leadership must ensure it is easy for teams to communicate within and across delivery teams and easy for the client to deal with their firm and also hard for them to leave.

 

 

This means:

• Having a clearly thought-through 12 month tactical BD plan encompassing new business development and key client management strategies and tactics

• Offering a truly integrated client focused service with default feedback capture

• Implementing IT solutions to effectively support (not to drive) behaviours such as collaboration platforms, hosting proposal/ PQQ content, key client management plans and BD Forums and communities.

• Having the right calibre of staff, fully trained, revitalised with refreshed aligned and integrated win work processes.

Ensuring regular communications designed to engage with client’s decision makers to encourage rapport and relationship building.

• Having a clearly thought-through 12 month tactical BD plan encompassing new business development and key client management strategies and tactics

• Offering a truly integrated client focused service with default feedback capture

• Implementing IT solutions to effectively support (not to drive) behaviours such as collaboration platforms, hosting proposal/ PQQ content, key client management plans and BD Forums and communities.

• Having the right calibre of staff, fully trained, revitalised with refreshed aligned and integrated win work processes.

Ensuring regular communications designed to engage with client’s decision makers to encourage rapport and relationship building.

 

Visibility of BD effort at Board Level

 
 

Of crucial importance on top of all this is to ensure the visibility at board level of the opportunity pipeline that will fill the order book in coming months and years. It is of extreme importance that the current reporting provides the board with confidence and certainty that all your win work activities feeding the opportunity pipeline are being effectively actioned now, not finding out in 3 months’ time that BD pursuit slipped due to individuals “current project commitments”.

 

No amount of hard work by staff will lead to any real improvement if these basic business development elements are lacking and senior leadership’s commitment is not there.

 

Hopefully all this has started you thinking about your own win work objectives and activities. But I advise against leaving it as just thoughts. Please try to implement the necessary changes to your work winning teams behaviours and processes before it’s too late!

Culture change is the key and using external consultants like ourselves can make it much easier, very cost effective and incredibly faster to unlock your work winning potential.

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