Critical Path to Closed Sales

The following illustration shows the relationship of the skill sets and adds the dimension of managing the process over time, which includes producing the proposal.

Take a few moments to calculate the degree to which each variable happens in your organization. Using % of time from 0 to 100 (50 is mid-point) on each axis, plot where your organization falls. Also calculate how consistently the entire sales/bidding process is managed.

How Well Does Your Organization
Bridge the Client Belief Gap?

Critical to closing sales are the skills to communicate effectively in client terms. Effective communication involves 4 major components:

These areas must be developed before any proposal process can be effectively used. Effective proposal departments can only manage, refine and remove barriers and obstacles during the process. If the front-end (what the client wants—a consulting sales skill) is not communicated where PM and Proposals understand them, no effective proposal can result. If discipline areas do not understand how to communicate benefits of the solution in client terms, much clarification and re-work is necessary during the bid process.

Effective proposal departments are facilitators of this process and help to bridge the client belief gap. Top proposal coordinators have excellent abilities to bring about effective communication. This involves three essential skills in working with people: they can engage, support and redefine.

The ability to engage operates on several levels. First it kick-starts the process and gets it focused. Engaging helps elucidate what needs to be done and plans the process. Like any good FEED, if this is well-done, the proposal "falls into place." If front-end focus is lacking, the process proceeds "willy-nilly" and proposal lacks cohesiveness. The ability to bring about a collaborative and creative process is the mark of an individual who can engage others to think and contribute in a positive manner. It builds commitment in others to provide their parts in a timely manner and subsequently monitors the process to keep busy people on track and the parts "falling together."

The second people skill is the ability to support. A good supporter removes barriers and obstacles as they occur along the way. The people element of this art is "bringing out the best" in people. It assists and supports others who may be having difficulty "saying what they want to say." It promotes non-defensive communication and helps individuals deal with difficulties in expressing what they want to say. A top proposal coordinator is not as much an editor as he or she is someone who encourages others to say what they mean. The coordinator addresses the people element and can help with messy syntax and gobbledygook—they approach it as a supporter, not an adversary. They enable versus become a barrier to the process. This brings us to the third skill: redefine.

Redefining helps translate the technical to client: it helps pull out the benefits of a solution in client terms. The effective proposal coordinator helps people come back to explaining how our solution benefits the client from the client’s perspective and priorities. This can’t be done without good front-end work, planning and tracking—again the ability to assist business development and project management in their respective roles.

Effective proposals are bridges to communication—both externally and internally. The non-customer focused proposals coordinator views his or her job as a controller, editor, and nit-picker—the authority on style, form, grammar and presentation. One of the greatest barriers to building client-focused communication is a technical mindset—either in proposals or in project management. This mindset is linear, sequential and narrow-focused. Technical mindsets overuse logic and ignore insight into the client. Developing a client-focused mindset can help a good proposals department manage, refine and produce the product. Developing insight skills to "think from the client’s perspective" are essential in proposals, project management and business development. Straight-forward methodologies exist to develop client focus—you have to understand the client first and foremost.

Out-of-date sales relationship skills rely primarily on loyalty (these still count for inside information) to bring about client trust. Today’s sales relationship must produce client belief that we meet your needs. Belief is produced by what we do rather than what we say. Hence, presentation and proposal is one of the first things the client sees us do to translate their needs. Essential is the ability to engage the client to truly understand where they are coming from—moving from thinking of sales as presentation to thinking of it as collaboration. Establishing value and measures of success from the client’s viewpoint, understanding their process and the context for decision-making and communicating them are the new selling skills that separate winners from losers. Our proposal supports or undermines client belief and can be used for or against us.

Process only measures don’t change mindsets or communication skills levels. Human communication is the key element of any sales endeavor. Successfully implementing any proposal system requires these skills and mindsets are in place to ensure systems can be effectively used and followed. Spend time and energy on issues essential to the client. Simplifying what the client wants guides design, integration and dealing with change. Subsequent presentations and talks with the client are easier to prepare, communicate and ensure the client believes we can execute their project!

We have found tools such as What/How Matrixes used both at the planning and solution integration phase keeps writing a proposal more client focused. By defining the project in client terms before writing begins, enables a more thorough and systematic approach to truly thinking through the issues sufficiently to execute.

For each issue or hot button, how does your product or service benefit the client? Effective proposals departments segue technical material with introductory paragraphs that explain in client terms how the technology, product or service benefits the client. 

For example, in our example above of short cycle time, your proposal might read, "our worldwide capabilities in purchasing and inspection ensure timely purchase, manufacturing to specs and expedited delivery. Our field offices, established relationships and working methods in each major manufacturing sector speed your equipment delivery. This capability has produced two record breaking projects of similar scope in . . .

Moreover, your maintenance agreements will easier to negotiate because of our experience with the fabricator."

In four simple sentences two objectives of the project have been covered in the client's terms. More technical data can be added. The next major objective, Health, Environment and Safety can be covered with the other objectives detailed and supported with more technical data. The client sees HIS issues and how your solutions and services work to HIS benefit.

The Executive Summary

You'll miss the Short List if you miss the mark here. If Business Development has provided good intelligence and information to produce the matrix, you should be able to formulate strategy and develop your approach based on this intelligence. The Executive Summary can be written, refined and provided with the graphic punch and sophistication that decision makers expect. If you're on a short time frame, leave the technical portions for clarification and spend your time here. Decision makers will decide if your technical data is reviewed. If you don't make the Short List, who cares how good your solution is!

If you can't develop a matrix reasonably quickly, you should probably devote your resources elsewhere--the chances of winning are too slim. Consultants quickly learned to not bid of RFPs (Requests for Proposals) from the US Federal Government unless key contact exists with decision makers. That's how the whole business of grant writers developed. 

Time, expense and manpower are too precious to spend on a futile project. Unless you are attempting to gain a foothold in a new area, don't waste your time on RFPs or ITBs (Invitation to Bid) where you have no relationship.The odds of winning the award are slim-to-none. 

In working with people, we have found that developing judgment and risk-taking requires allowing individuals to develop "how" they are comfortable working. The key is making sure that our individual "hows" work within the system. To achieve this, we have found outcome-based process-mapping that defines who produces what outcome achieves faster and simpler implementation. The individual understands what they are to produce, where it fits in the sequence and what to do if something changes. Allowing each person to figure out how they get the outcome, reinforces buy-in, allows the individual to exercise judgment if something changes and reduces paperwork when technology or other changes occur that change specifics of the process, but not the process itself. It also greatly simplifies learning the new system and subsequently orienting new employees.

One example of outcome-based mapping was a complicated ten-step process that involved 23 people in six functional areas to execute. It had numerous non-controllable changes at every juncture in the ten-step process. The process was requiring 10 days to complete and causing immense external customer dissatisfaction because of the change and variability. We facilitated the outcome mapping in 5 hours—using one-hour increments per day. The "new system" was implemented within two weeks. Sixty days later, the process was reduced to 5.5 days from the original ten days to complete. Over the same time period, customer satisfaction increased 72%.

The new system was successful because it could be produced on one page so individuals could readily learn and remember their parts—especially what to do if change occurred. All twenty-three individuals understood the "big picture" and the impact to others of dropping the ball. Getting these people to understand one-another as internal customers changed the mindset of a group mired in conflict and placing blame. It also eliminated re-inventing the wheel every time change occurred. Straight-forward methods exist to shift whatever mindset is blocking learning new customer-focused skills and developing processes and support systems that work.

The Critical Path to Closed Sales is Customer Focused Mindsets, Skills and Processes. Until the communications aspects and skills needed in the process are developed, no process can be used effectively—no matter how good it is. Key elements are people skills in communication and facilitation to produce the proposal. We have successfully used two techniques to speed and simplify implementation that reinforce customer focus during various stages of numerous sales and non-sales processes. Simplify your proposals system by dealing with root causes of disconnect with customers—it’s all about designing the process from the customer’s standpoint and being able to communicate in their terms! Your internal organization needs the communication skills to develop proposals that close sales.

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