Football teams, chess champions and army generals all go into battle with a detailed win strategy. They know simply being great at what they do isn’t enough to guarantee victory. Bidding is no different.

From facilitating bid strategy workshops, through to critical review of tender responses, Chris helps clients find and utilise every advantage to position themselves for a win.

Process

Winning in any competitive arena means having a deep, honest and holistic understanding of your client, their context, your competitors and yourself.

Chris provides a comprehensive service based on an ongoing investment in her clients’ success. She doesn’t just drop in to facilitate a session. She’s with you throughout the journey to make sure you’re in the best position to win your bid.

  • We kick off by reading the tender documents as well as any material you can supply on your capabilities and value proposition. Chris will also conduct desktop research on competitors and talk with you to gain further insights into you, your client, the project and competitors.

  • A robust go/no-go is the first step in a solid win strategy. Chris’s tool has been developed over a decade. It helps bring a rational lens to ‘go’ decisions to overcome optimism bias. Rather than an obstacle or gate, it should be seen as the first step in a win strategy. It helps uncover weaknesses that need to be addressed, and start the thinking about how we will win.

  • Chris will prepare for and facilitate one or more bid strategy workshops with your team. These are collaborative brainstorming sessions based on the RDS (Resonate, Differentiate, Substantiate) framework.

  • After the bid strategy workshop Chris synthesises your key messages and overall win strategy. She’ll validate this with you and then provide a paper that outlines your bid’s executive summary. This will comprise your key win messages and value proposition. The paper will include any other win themes/messages and advice on how to structure the response to support your win strategy.

  • Chris will review your response to provide feedback on the execution of your win strategy and overall strength of your response. There may be more than one review depending on the complexity of the bid, or, level of initial feedback.

  • As part of her investment in your success it’s important that Chris attends post award feedback, including for wins. This helps her learn about you and your clients. If required, she can arrange the feedback session. Afterward she’ll facilitate a session with you to ensure we embed learnings for future bids.

Position to win with RDS

RDS stands for resonate, differentiate, substantiate. Chris has been using this proven framework to develop winning bid strategies for almost a decade. Each word represents one of the three critical pillars of a successful bid:

  • Resonate: Does your offer resonate with the client, and do you demonstrate a deep understanding of them and their needs?

  • Differentiate: Is your offer their best option, with clear differentiation over competitors?

  • Substantiate: Have you provided evidence to substantiate your claims of expertise/experience and the efficacy of your solution?

RDS is a powerful framework that helps qualify bids, create win strategies and write persuasive responses.

Reach out for a chat to see how you can use RDS to position to win your next bid.