How the best win: using bids to seal the deal-How the best win using bids to seal the deal

Video Transcription

Video Summary

John Williams, UK Managing Director of Strategic Proposals, delivered a webinar on how organisations can improve bid and proposal success. He explained that proposals are a critical part of sales and shared research from the free Proposal Benchmarker tool, based on over 1,100 organisations across 34 countries.<br /><br />He outlined the proposal process: qualification/bid-no-bid decisions, pre-proposal planning, bid management, storyboarding, writing, design, sign-off, pitching, and lessons learned. A strong qualification process was emphasized, using four key questions: Is it real? Do we want it? Can we win it? Can we do it?<br /><br />Williams highlighted common pain points: poor content libraries, lack of training, weak competitive intelligence, and reactive bidding. He also shared a top 10 list of practices most organisations do well, including strong kick-offs, skilled proposal staff, good templates, clear structure, executive involvement, visual design, and aligned pitches.<br /><br />He presented sector and country league tables, noting healthcare and the UK/Australia/Nederlands as top performers, and showed that more mature proposal teams have higher win scores. The most successful organisations also use expert reviewers, proactive bidding, learning reviews, and capacity planning.<br /><br />His key message: the goal of a proposal is to make it “overwhelmingly inevitable” that the client chooses you.

Keywords

bid and proposal success

proposal management

qualification process

bid-no-bid decisions

competitive intelligence

proposal benchmarking

win rates

executive involvement

storyboarding