That is
the question. We all want to grow our business to some degree. Regardless of
whether we sell a product or a service we are looking for more opportunities to
win. The issue then becomes what opportunities should we pursue to do this. Not
every deal is a good deal. You may have all the requirements nailed and it can
still be a lousy deal for you. So how, then, should we decide which deals To
Pursue or Not To Pursue?
Each
company will have their own qualification and bid/no bid guidelines to help make that
decision. But the basic questions that I feel need to be answered are:
Is the opportunity real? Not every opportunity you come across is a real
opportunity. Liken it to job boards. I had a recruiter once tell me that 80% of
job postings are not real. I don’t think that this is the case with business opportunities but everything we come across is not a real deal. That is what the
qualification process is about. Is there a real need? Is there a budget? Is it
truly a competitive deal?
Are we competitive? Just because we have some relevant quals and experience
doesn’t mean we are competitive. Do we have a viable solution? Can we
differentiate our solution? Can we afford to compete?
Are we aligned to win? Assume we are competitive. Do we know the customer? Do we
have any relationships with the customer? Are we credible to the customer? Do
we have customer confirmation that our solution would be acceptable? Just
having quals and experience doesn’t necessarily mean we are positioned well to
win.
Is it worth winning? To my statement above, not every opportunity is worth
winning. There are risks involved with any business. Are they mitigated and are
they acceptable? What is the ROI/profit? Can we make money doing this work? Is
there a strategic value? I have
pursued deals in the past that our group knew would not be as profitable as we
wanted, if at all, because there was a strategic value in pursuing it. I have
also walked away from opportunities that were right up our swim lane because we
determined, for a variety of reasons, that it just wasn’t right for us. It’s
not always a simple thing to decide.
Now these are
just high level, basic categories of thoughts and questions. Each of these
categories has a dozen or more other questions to help qualify the opportunity
and decide on whether or not to pursue it. And as basic as it may sound, whatever
your company uses to for this bid/no bid process is useless unless it is objectively applied.
Not following your qualification guidelines usually results in wasting
resources (time, material and money) that could have been better used on an
opportunity that you had a better probability of winning. Or, it would have led
you to walk away from what looked like a good deal but could have ended up being
a nightmare.
Just like
customers are looking for the right provider of a good or service, providers
should be looking for the customers that are a fit for them. Not all customers
are necessarily good customers for you. So the question is…To Pursue or Not To Pursue? What are some of the things you use to
make that decision?
We want
to hear what you think. Leave a comment and let’s start a discussion.
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