Brydon Johnson, Systematiq’s Director of Business Development, recently participated in his second annual conference of the Association of Proposal Management Professionals. This year’s conference theme was ‘Limitless’ to reflect the removal of boundaries surrounding innovation in proposal management.
One of the most valuable trends for the Defence industry was the ‘bid less/win more’ presentation from Thales, which was reflected in Alan Tebb’s presentation. The key lessons gained for the Defence industry include:
Pre-qualification of leads – ask yourself ‘How well do you know your customer?’, ‘What are your competitors doing?’, ‘Do you have a solution you can deliver?’, ‘Can you manage the risk?’, ‘Will you make a profit?’ and ‘Does this fit in your core business?’.
Understand your metrics – ask yourself ‘Can you define the probability of success?’, ‘What is your win rate?’ and ‘What is the value of bids won versus lost, what is the cost of bid preparation against bids won and competition versus sole-source?’
Another highlight was the key note speech on day two by Derrick McManus, the South Australian police officer who survived being shot 14 times in the line of duty. He emphasised the conference’s theme of being limitless in day-to-day functions.
All of Systematiq directors and pre-contract staff have completed Shipley capture and proposal training to offer clients a consistent and industry leading approach to defining an opportunity, undertaking the bid/no bid decision, creating capture plans and managing the writing and editing processes to create compliant and winning bid responses.
