We are more than halfway through the year, and you haven’t had time to breathe or take stock. But it is important to take a step back and review your tender results – both wins and losses.
There is much that can be learnt from analysing your results and establishing if you are hitting your sales targets and desired win rates.
In this article, we will explore the significance of reviewing your tender results and the potential improvements that can stem from this invaluable insight.
The Importance of Reviewing Tender Results
Bidding for high-value public or commercial tenders requires a huge investment in resources and time from a wide variety of people and disciplines.
So, its vital to be consistently bidding for your best-matched opportunities. These are the tenders with maximum win probabilities and good financial returns, imperative for the long-term success of your business.
So, let’s get acquainted with the reasons for undertaking a review of your tender wins and losses. This includes:
- Measuring Progress: By comparing your current win rates to your initial goals and past performance, you can gain a clear understanding of how well your sales efforts are working. You can quickly determine whether you are on track to achieve set sales targets.
- Identifying Patterns & Trends: Being complacent or making assumptions about your performance, the market, its demands and competition can be strategically detrimental to your bidding success. Are you repeatedly pursuing tenders with low win probabilities and missing opportunities that are better matched to your business offerings?
- Pinpointing Strength & Weaknesses: Understanding the factors behind both your won and lost opportunities will help you identify areas of strength or weakness. Areas that threaten your success can be addressed and areas of opportunity optimised.
- Refining Targeting Strategies: Reviewing your results and win rates can also shed light on the effectiveness of your targeting strategies. Are you pursuing the right opportunities, or do you need to adjust your approach to target more profitable segments of the market?
- Optimising Resources: Efficient resource allocation is crucial for any business. By understanding where you are winning and losing, you can allocate your resources more effectively to improve your chances of success.
“57% of enterprise organizations use data and analytics to drive strategy and change.” MicroStrategy, 2020
How to Conduct a Tender Results Review
Now that you’re convinced of the reasons to review your tender performance, let’s discuss how to conduct one effectively:
- Gather Data: Start by collecting all relevant data on your recent tender submissions. This should include details on the project, client, competitors, pricing, the outcome (win or loss) and client scores and feedback.
- Categorize Data: Once you have the data, categorize it into different segments. You might want to categorize by industry, project size, geographical location, or any other relevant criteria that will help you spot patterns.
- Analyse the Data: Dive deep into the data to identify trends and patterns. Are there certain types of projects where you consistently win? Are there common reasons for losses, such as pricing or competition? Do you score poorly in certain areas or questions?
- Seek Feedback: Don’t forget to solicit feedback from your Sales and Bid Teams and other relevant stakeholders. They can provide valuable insights into the factors that contributed to wins or losses. It is also vital to share the results and innovate improvement ideas together.
- Compare to Objectives: Compare your current win rates to your initial sales targets and expectations. Are you on track to achieve your goals, or do you need to make adjustments?
- Develop Improvement Plan: Define a plan of action, with timescales and desired outcomes. Factors that you need to consider and possibly strengthen may include your bid strategies, processes, people, products and quality of your tender submissions.
- Implement Changes: Once agreed, implement your action plan across your organisation. Clearly communicate and collaborate with all stakeholders to ensure everyone is aligned with the new strategies and understands their role in achieving better win rates.
- Monitor Progress: The review process shouldn’t be a one-time event. Continuously monitor your win rates and iterate on your strategies as needed. Regularly assess whether your changes are leading to the desired improvements.
A huge challenge for any business looking to review and analyse their tender results, will be the sourcing of the information as described above. This may require the compilation of data from different teams, data silos, storage solutions or formats. The accuracy and reliability of the data may also be called into question if not properly and centrally managed as a ‘single source of truth’.
Implementing a dedicated Bid Management solution, such as TenderEyes, that allows for easy access, use and storage of all tender related information, documentation and data, will make this process much easier and quicker.
In-built tools for automatic and customisable data analysis, insights and reporting will add additional power to deliver rapid informed decisions and actions.
“More than 46% of businesses are already using a BI tool as a core part of their business strategy.” Finances Online
Insight and Outcomes from Tender Results Review
Now we have a process in place to undertake a review and analysis of your tender wins and losses, let’s delve into the outcomes and benefits that can be derived from the results.
- Data-Driven Decisions: A thorough results review provides you with concrete data to drive decision-making. Instead of relying on gut feelings or anecdotal evidence, you can base your strategies on hard facts and real-world performance. Recognising certain types of projects or clients where you consistently excel or fall short will help you make better informed decisions moving forward.
“Data analytics makes decision-making 5x faster for businesses.” Better Buys
- Competitive Edge: In today’s highly competitive business landscape, gaining competitive advantage is essential. By analysing your win rates, you can uncover opportunities to outperform your competitors and win more contracts.
- Improved Efficiency: Addressing areas of weakness can significantly improve your bidding efficiency. This may include reviewing every stage of your bid process and the tools used to undertake tasks and activities. Alleviating roadblocks, reducing delays and better allocating resources can help your teams work smarter. Giving them more time to focus on finessing your best-fit tenders.
- Team Development: With such a wide scope of disciplines involved in your bid activities, it’s vital that all stakeholders are delivering on their individual roles, responsibilities and tasks. A results review can help you identify areas where your team may need additional training or support, leading to better collaboration, performance and increased success.
- Team Motivation: With so much hard work and commitment expended by your organisation in submitting tenders, any loss can greatly impact team and individual morale. Demonstrating a desire to learn from losses and move forward with practical positive actions will go a long way in keeping your teams motivated and engagement in delivery of future quality bids.
- Enhanced Client Relationships: Understanding your win rates also means understanding your clients better. This insight can help you build stronger client relationships by tailoring your offerings and communication to better meet their needs and expectations.
- Improved Return on Investment: By identifying the factors contributing to your wins and losses, you can allocate resources more effectively, focusing on better-fit tenders, where your chances of success are higher. This not only increases the likelihood of securing profitable contracts but also ensures that your investments generate a more significant ROI, ultimately boosting the overall health and sustainability of your organisation.
“In 2020, more than 51% of businesses that leveraged data analytics had a better financial performance.” Business 2 Community
Conclusion
In the relentless pursuit of business goals, it’s easy to get caught up in the daily grind and lose sight of the bigger picture. However, regularly reviewing your tender results and win rates is a critical practice that can make a significant difference to your organisation’s success.
Valuable insight can be gained from measuring progress, identifying patterns and new trends, and pinpointing weaknesses and roadblocks that hamper success.
This gives you the opportunity to make better data-driven decisions, helping you refine your strategies and optimise resources. Ultimately, empowering your teams to exceed sales targets, strengthen competitive advantage and drive continuous improvement for long-term sustainable business growth.
