Should you be interested in the competitive tendering process?

If you went into business looking for excitement, then taking part in a competitive tendering process probably wasn’t top of your list when it came to the peak experiences you might have imagined. Not only does it not sound very interesting (and to be frank, it isn’t), but you’ve also probably heard that it involves late nights writing the equivalent of a small novel, answering questions to which you don’t have answers, while you continue to try and run your business suffering from over-caffeinated sleep deprivation.

The good news is, it needn’t be that bad (or uninteresting), and help is at hand.

If you want to seriously grow your business with sizeable, prestigious clients, then the competitive tendering process is becoming one of the few gateways to a whole new world of achievement, success and yes, excitement (being crowned bid winner on a large contract, with no second place for your rivals, is hard to beat when it comes to business milestones). Choose not to enter that world, and you may well be denied its riches.

SMEs are becoming increasingly aware of the competitive tendering process. Lots of us are brilliant at what we do, but understandably not yet brilliant at navigating the techniques and intricacies of tendering. We’re not always sure which opportunities to go for, and when we do, the tender process feels alien, confusing and frustrating. Then, if we lose (which often happens with the first few tenders we embark upon alone), we’re not sure why, and we become disheartened. But help is at hand from East Sussex based McCrudden Training.

One company had tendered for fifty contracts and not won a single one, when they finally called in professional help. “Morale was at rock bottom. One of the first things we identified when we undertook a win-rate analysis for them was that they were simply bidding for the wrong contracts. When they began to evaluate opportunities more critically, they started getting their first wins” says McCrudden Training’s Pitch Perfect tutor, Paul Sharville.

For SMEs new to the competitive tendering process, knowing what it is would be a helpful start. So, let McCrudden Training help with a bit of demystifying.

Competitive tendering is the formal process by which an invited group of competing organisations submit a tender (aka bid, proposal or submission) to a prospective client in order to secure a project or contract. The process differs from simply submitting a quote in several ways.

First, it’s the prospective client who decides what you submit; you can’t just hand them that polished sales pitch: the one usually has clients reaching enthusiastically for their purchase order pad (in fact, you’ll often be asked not to include sales material). You will be asked to submit your proposal in a specific format, and to answer a wide range of very detailed questions, covering everything from your approach to the work, to your approach to the environment.

Second, you’ll be marked against specific evaluation criteria. Your brand new website and company brochure will have little to no effect on the decision, as lovely as they no doubt are, nor will delivering your bid with a bottle of single malt whiskey labelled ‘for the procurement manager’. The latter is likely to get you removed from the process. It all comes down to the quality of information in your bid and how well you respond to the questions asked.

If you’re the incumbent (ie you already hold the contract), then you can draw, to some extent, on your glories as a model service provider with an unblemished record of going the extra mile, and this may count in your favour. Conversely, I’ve known existing providers – good ones – lose a contract by just a few marks. The European tendering model used by some large organisations can be particularly brutal.

Third, and here’s the good part, when you take part in a tendering opportunity, you’ll almost always be bidding for a large project or contract. They’re worth going for because they’re usually worth winning. For the client, it’s one of the primary reasons that the process exists. They will be spending a great deal of money on buying a project or contract service that is very important to them. Competitive tendering, done well – and all its many hoops through which you’ll be expected to jump – will usually find the best provider. Winning a tender opportunity is not only good for your business, it’s a validation of your people and processes, your culture and the way you work. There is well-deserved pride as well as profit for successful bidders.

For SMEs, tendering for new business can be tough, but the rewards are great. A big win can launch your organisation into the next stage of its growth. It can provide security of cashflow and employment, and you can then use your new-found ‘King of the Hill’ (or Queen) status to bid for similar projects.

More and more, the tendering process is the only way to secure large projects and contracts. If you want to secure sizeable work in the public sector, then without a doubt you will have to gear your business up for competitive tendering. Councils vary in their thresholds, but if you want their work, at some point you’ll find yourself receiving a Pre-Qualification Questionnaire (PQQ) or Invitation To Tender (ITT); the start of the tendering process.

Some local authorities will accept a single quotation for goods, services or works under £5k. Between £5k and £50k (£100k for works), three suppliers will be asked to provide a quotation. Over £50k, goods and services will only be offered through the competitive tendering process. Other authorities will have lower tendering thresholds of around £25k.  Most Councils claim to encourage SMEs to bid for work, and most prefer to source their goods and services locally. (What are you waiting for?)

If you’re at the smaller end of the SME spectrum, those threshold figures may be higher than any single project or contract you could, or would, want to handle, so maybe you don’t need to turn that spare room into a bid management operations centre just yet. But consider this: smaller tender opportunities do exist for the smaller organisation, and furthermore, many of the processes, policies and documents that you’ll be required to put in place for tendering are also excellent pieces of company information for impressing any client. When a tender asks for your statement on corporate and social responsibility (CSR), as they always do, once you’ve made some formal commitments to CSR, and written it into your company’s library of great things you do, you’ll find yourself using it over and over again when pitching for work, inside or outside the competitive tendering process. Good tender content, as a rule, is good content for marketing your business anywhere.

On 7 March 2012 professional bid writer Paul Sharville from BidWrite^® will join McCrudden Training’s FREE Network and Learn event in Eastbourne.  It’ll be a stimulating insight into what the competitive tendering process is, and how you can find opportunities. And of course, there’s a chance to network and socialise with other East Sussex business people.

On the 29th March, McCrudden Training will be running a full-day workshop Pitch Perfect in Eastbourne. We’ll guide you through finding and evaluating tender opportunities, building a bid team, achieving a high win rate, and writing compelling proposals.

For more information on either event, contact McCrudden Training: training@mccrudden-training.co.uk

Wellness & Security??

 

The phrase Health & Safety has come to be synonymous with bad news, negativity red tape and pouring cold water on fun.  But that’s really not the essence of Health & Safety and good training should make this clear.

So much ‘duff’ information is imparted about Health & Safety, leading people to do, well, daft things:

One company concerned that staff should be trained in the importance of wearing safety goggles, decided to show a graphic film of the consequences of not being protected.  Though it may have increased the use of personal protective equipment, the ‘stunt’ lead to 25 minor injuries as people tried to get away from the gory scenes.  Thirteen people fainted and 1 poor chap needed 7 stitches after falling from his chair.

Health & Safety is NOT responsible for banning the playing of conker or prohibiting the use of pins with remembrance day poppies.  A client, the Health & Safety Manager of a higher education establishment, recently described to us some of regular calls she got from colleagues asking ‘how they could use health & safety to stop someone doing something they didn’t like’. This is the sadness of health & safety – it’s really just about helping you do the things you need to do in a safe way.

What is true is that ALL organisations, regardless of sector (public, private or voluntary) and regardless of size (from 100’s of employees to sole traders) must have identified leads for Health & Safety.  And these leads, must be equipped with an appropriate level of knowledge and skills to make sure the health of everyone at work is safe.  McCrudden Training offers a one-day Health & Safety awareness course that is ideal for small organisations, micro-businesses and sole traders.  Using risk assessment you’ll be encouraged to think about the risks that might need to be managed in your workplace:

• Chemicals in the workplace: a cleaner innocently mixed 2 brands of cleaning product in a confined space, creating chlorine gas;
• Office workers: prolonged (and poor) use of VDUs and poor workstation design can lead to Repetitive Strain Injury’s (RSI), and many employers have been sued for work that has ’caused’ RSI
• Lone workers: workers and volunteers can be left alone in offices, or those who go out to visit clients in their own home are vulnerable.  If they have an accident or suffer a serious illness, who will provide help? If you staff or volunteers are going into the homes of others, how will you ensure their personal safety?

These are just some of the issues that healthy and safety awareness training helps businesses recognise and manage, others might include the way boxes are stacked, fire safety, safety lifting, electrical safety, stress, first aid, slips, trips and falls.

So our message: please don’t be down on health & safety.  Book yourself onto a good basic awareness course, like McCrudden Training’s Health & Safety through Risk Assessment training running in East Sussex and embrace it as a way of promoting wellness and security within your organisation or sole trader work.

 

McCrudden Training is an independent training, coaching & consultancy company based in Eastbourne, East Sussex.  We can meet all the training needs an organisation may have including health and safety delivered by our healthy and safety specialist trainers.

“We’re a small business, we don’t do training…”

Recently we heard the manager of an independent restaurant say “we only have a small team of staff, so we don’t have training needs.”  That’s not a uncommon view.  Over a third of small businesses offer their staff no training at all.  Far be it from us to knock a healthy skepticism about any potential business expenses; we’d certainly agree some training never really delivers the results that the business needs (most often when it’s sold by someone who doesn’t understand what training can and can’t do for a business).  But I digress, let’s face it ‘manpower’ is one the most important ingredients of a successful small business, and research shows that firms that train their workforce are significantly less likely to close than those that do not.

So, despite the prospects of a second recession, we’re asking why should small businesses be investing in training?  What can training do for businesses?  The answer, we believe is HEAPS.

• Happy staff:  Training is a proven way to motivate staff, particularly where the offer includes a variety of high-quality training opportunities.  Factors like pay and working conditions are known as ‘hygiene factors’.  The presence of hygiene factors has been shown to keep people satisfied at work, but they in themselves do not motivate staff.  Whereas, opportunities for career development and advancement are widely accepted as ‘motivational factors’ (Herzberg).  So, making sure staff have access to training will not only help retain them, but help to motivate them to do their utmost to support the business.
• Expand the business: “The only thing that is constant is change” (Francois de la Rochefoucauld).  That’s certainly true for business.  Legislation that applies to small businesses is always changing, there are always new opportunities becoming available and new developments in IT are always emerging.  Training is fundamental for the small business team that wants to keep up-to-date with changes.  But more importantly, society is constantly changing.   That means that business that thrives today, may struggle tomorrow.  The most successful small businesses are those that adapt – survival of the fittest.  Shifting business focuses often requires a different knowledge base or skills set within the team.  That could be met by recruiting new staff, but that is far more expensive than fine tuning the skills of the existing team through training.
• Alternative perceptions:  Small businesses, by definition tend to be run by small teams of people.  When a limited number of people work on the same thing, day in, day out they can get stuck in a mindset.  The mere experience of taking part in training can encourage people to explore business problems and issues from a different perspective.  Whether it’s the trainer or the other delegates, being in a training environment can bring a fresh set of eyes to an issue.
• Protecting the business:  Like it or not, there is some training that all businesses need to consider – health & safety, food safety and first aid are great examples of training that is legislated for.  And any business whose staff aren’t suitably trained can (and do) get fined.  But more than this, training staff in things like fire safety awareness, HR principles and manual handling techniques protect the business from risk.  Arguably, smaller businesses may need this training more than their larger counter-parts.  Larger companies have HR departments to ensure that employment law is followed, and estates teams to make sure that the business is reducing it’s risk of fire.  And let’s face it – if they do get it wrong, they are more likely to have the financial reserves to recover from a serious fire, or be able to pay fines if they breach data protection legislation.
• Support team working:  Small business teams work in very close proximity to one another.  Perhaps more so than in some very large businesses, where there’s greater opportunity to ‘avoid’ people you don’t get on so well with.  So, harmonious relationships are fundamental to business success, yet not everyone in your team will instinctively know how to cope with their colleagues idiosyncratic behaviours.  What’s more it’s widely acknowledged that great business teams have certain characteristics and skills.  In larger businesses there is a greater chance that these roles and skills will be filled by chance.  In a smaller staff teams, it becomes more important for the business leaders to be proactive in developing these traits in their teams – that’s where good training can help!

We believe that investing in the right kind of staff training can do as much, if not more, to influence the success of a small business as it does for large businesses.  But, and here’s our cautionary word, any business investing their hard won budgets in training should make sure they are focusing on the ‘right’ topics for them.  To help your business direct it’s training budgets to ensure it has the greatest impact, why not use McCrudden Training’s free Training Needs Analysis tool.  Email admin@mccrudden-training.co.uk to request a no obligation copy!

Few really consider the leadership skills they’ll need to recruit, motivate and inspire staff, or even effectively lead them through times of organisational change. Sure businesses can ‘rumble’ along even if the owner doesn’t really understand intelligent leadership, but to truly thrive don’t businesses of all sizes need an effective leader at their helm?

 

Top 5 things to do when presenting!

Standing up in front of an audience can be nerve-wrecking for even the most confident of people. Check out our list of 5 things to remember to do to make sure you give the impression of being cool, calm and collected!

1. PAUSE. When you’re lost for words, don’t be tempted to fill gaps with um’s and ah’s. These type of filler words, make you sound unsure. Just take a breath, pause, take a sip of water, and when you’re ready start again. Remember a few second pause, might feel like a lifetime to you on stage, but your audience will hardly notice it.

2. SLOW IT DOWN. When we’re nervous we tend to rush through what we want to say just so we can get back to the safety of our seats. This one of the most obvious signs of nerves in a speaker. Rushing what you want to say means the audience have less time to reflect and comprehend your message.

3. GET TO THE POINT. Hiding the point to your story initially can spark a little curiosity in your audience (especially if what you are about to say is a little controversial). But be warned, drag it out too long and you’ll lose them.

4. WATCH YOUR AUDIENCE. Communication only happens when the listener receives the message, and after all that’s your aim, to get your audience to receive your message. Watch them carefully for signs that they might not be following, or you’ve lost them and act quickly to regain their interest.

5. BE YOURSELF. Your audience have come to hear you speak. A human being with a personality and who makes mistakes. Take it in your stride if you forget where you were or you miss something out. (Remember you’re the only one who knows what you were planning to say anyway.) Let the audience see your personality and they’ll warm to you – we promise!

For more advice on designing and delivering confident presenting, why not join our next workshop! Click here for more details.

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