written by Tony Corrigan

Knowing your Enemy

To know your Enemy, you must become your Enemy said Sun Tzu, in the Art of War. Sometimes competing for business can seem like a battle, where the odds are stacked against you and the odds of success are insurmountable.

All is not lost however; Competitive Intelligence (CI) is the key weapon in levelling the battle field and allowing you to compete with the advantage of knowledge on your side.

“Competitive Intelligence is the ethical gathering and analysis of competitor, customer and market information from open sources. This analysis is used by organisations to make better strategic decisions. It is the difference between competing and winning.

Why should I care about CI

Your organisation survival may well depend on the knowledge that you can acquire from and about your prospects and market competitors. Public Sector procurement is becoming increasingly transparent and the victors are those that can demonstrate that they understand their clients’ needs and have positioned themselves favourably in comparison to other suppliers. It is not overstating the case to say that embedding competitive intelligence as a core management process is increasingly essential towards survival and growth in the 21st century.

Embedding CI into my Organisation

Make the acquisition and safe-guarding of CI part of your normal business operations. Create profiles of your target customers as well as your main competitors. Collect data from the companies own websites and their published case, aggregate from news and social media websites and flesh out from your real world connections. Finally use your organisations own human intelligence to identify your own strengths where you have competitive advantage and work on your weaknesses to improve your overall ability to compete.

Best Practices for Managing Competitive Intelligence

Qualify your Tenders

Tendering is expensive; compete only where it makes good sense; Learn as much from losing as from winning

Make Intelligence Gathering Systemic

Know your customer, your competitor, your partner…and yourself

Procurement History

Identify Buying Habits, Incumbent Suppliers, Decision Makers, Previous Purchases, Evaluation Criteria

Maintain an Information Repository

Protect your corporate knowledge and facilitate fact-based decision

Remember that CI is more concerned with understanding the big picture and having the right perception of the marketplace that trying to precisely quantify or qualify competitive threats and business opportunities. Each time you participate in the tendering process, you learn a little more about what it takes to win. As Sun Tzu noted: Opportunities multiply as they are seized.

Most of us learned the rules of good communications when we were barely able to walk. We learned how to tailor our messages to our different audiences (one grown-up versus another); we learned how to ask for what we wanted; and we learned what how to trade what we had (affection or good behaviour) for what we wanted.

The rules governing good business communications aren’t very much different. We just have to be a tad more sophisticated in our approach.

 

What do clients really want?

A good pitch starts with understanding the client’s needs. There’s no point in trying to sell a car to a client if they really want a motorbike. And if we haven’t done out homework to find out exactly what they want, and why they want it, then we don’t deserve their business.

So ask questions, and then ask more. Ideally, speak with the client before the tender process starts. Government agencies in particular are very restricted in what they can tell you once the RFT has been published.

In your questions, find out not just what they are looking for, but why. Is their motivation financial, operational or political? Who is the key person behind the decision to go to tender, and what do they really want?

 

Delivery – to the client’s needs:

It is surprising how many tender submissions are for what the seller wants to provide, rather than what the buyer wants. Even when armed with good intelligence about their clients’ needs, many companies veer back to what they are comfortable in providing. They ignore the clear instructions in the RFT. Don’t let this happen to you. Make sure to constantly ask yourself: “Is this what the client wants?”

To make this easier, take a blank piece of paper and draw a line down the middle. In the left hand column, make a list of the four or five points that you want the tenderer to remember. This might include: “Our company has best after-sales service”, or “we have the most technically-advanced solution”.

On the right side column, write in examples and factoids that will help the audience remember those key points. Examples: “We have a service team in every county”, or “we have access to our parent company’s engineering know-how”. Whatever you write, remember that audiences love examples. Don’t just present them with facts; give them anecdotes to help them remember what you are saying.

 

Vocabulary:

When writing and presenting, use the language that your prospective client uses. Try to avoid what passes as business-speak, and the hyperbole and American sports-laden clichés that seem to litter many tender documents and business presentations.

Many business people are perfectly good communicators when huddled over a cup of coffee with a colleague, or at a regular meeting during a not-so-busy morning. But put them in front of a potential client with a big contract at stake and they become a gibbering mass of cliché and jargon.

Not everything that is done differently is a paradigm shift. Not every process can be called a solution. There is no need to describe all your activity as ‘results-driven’; what other motivation might you have?

Don’t be afraid of blank space. If they offer you a page to describe your services, it’s ok to only fill half the page. They might appreciate you being brief and saving them time.

Focus on informing your audience rather than impressing them. They will be impressed, if you give them the information they require, clearly and concisely.

 

Clear slides:

Ah, PowerPoint, the fickle friend of business communication; so easy to get right, so easy to get wrong.

The golden rule of PowerPoint is that it is great for pictures and lousy for words. If your slides comprise diagrams, tables and photographs that you couldn’t describe with words, that’s a good sign.

If your slides contain only words, then ask yourself, what’s on the slides that you can’t convey verbally? If the slides are only repeating what you are saying, then what’s the point? Turn off the projector and talk. It’s less confusing for the audience. And if you are using more than 25 words on a slide – reconsider, and perhaps rewrite.

When submitting a tender document, the same rules will apply. Use photos and diagrams if they will tell your story better than words. Be brief. Be kind to your audience.

For tender presentation training and other communication skills contact Gerry at [email protected]

Background to www.etenders.gov.ie

www.etenders.gov.ie was set up by the Irish Government to facilitate best practice in procurement for public bodies, agencies and authorities when advertising for potential suppliers for the huge range of goods, services and products they require on a daily basis.

The National Public Procurement Policy Unit (NPPPU) has overall responsibility for public procurement, policy making and the implementation of EU Rules and Regulations in Ireland.

To get the most out of etenders it is first important to understand what types of notice are posted on the website, they are:

• ITTs (Invitation To Tender)
• Contract Notices (where, for example, a panel of suppliers is being set up)
• PINs (Prior Indicative Notice) where a buyer is indicating to the marketplace that they will soon be issuing a tender notice, and
• Contract Award Notices (CANs) which confirms who has won a particular project

Getting Started on Etenders.gov.ie

• If you haven’t already done so, you should ‘Register’ an account and set up ‘Alerts’ to automatically inform you when a contract you might be interested in is posted on the website, this is very convenient if you do not have time to search the dozens of contracts posted every day on the website
• The vertical toolbar situated down the left-hand side of each page is very easy to use and contains all the help you will need to use the facilities on the website effectively, for instance you can:
  • Search Notices, either chronologically, or use Advanced Searchto view contracts by publisher, by type of notice or by category
  • Use the Supplier’s Pages to change your account profile, track your interest list, and set up Alerts
  • The Guides/Legislation page contains copies of current rules and regulations pertaining to public procurement and is recommended reading if you are new to the public procurement arena
  • Go to the Help page for User Guides and further tips on using the etenders facilities, for example the new Electronic Post Box system for lodging your tender submission for certain contracts.

• When you find a tender opportunity which interests you, press the red Record your interest now button in order to:
  • Receive copies of the Questions and Answers lodged
  • Get updates relating to the project such as an extension to the deadline or changes in the brief
  • Download all documents relating to the projectMake the buyer aware that you intend to lodge a tender submission

Contact Tender Team with any questions.