Four Weeks to Fabulous Bid Presentations!

On-demand Bid Booster consulting is available when you don’t have 4 weeks* to move through this program. View our Better Bid Presentations on-demand service or contact us to customize your just-in-time service.

Notes:

This is a public program involving multiple organizations or you can arrange for the program to be offered only to your team.

If you can’t commit to one-hour each day through the 4 weeks (recordings will be provided), we can work with your team to stretch out the timeframe. View our Better Bid Presentations on-demand service or contact us to customize your just-in-time service.

Bid Booster Boot Camp Overview

(See detailed outline below.) This is an online program. Contact us to request this program in person or in a combined online/in-person format.

When all bidders look and sound the same, the lowest price always wins because there are exactly zero differentiators between you and your competitors. Current research shows the bid presentation is one of the most overlooked aspects of bids – and yet it’s often the ‘make or break’ part of them!

You have two critical goals to achieve in your bid presentation: To show your organization’s unique value proposition, and to demonstrate your team is effective, responsive, customer-oriented, and collaborative.

Over a 4-week period*, you will build your unique and compelling bid presentation for an upcoming opportunity or design a template for future bid presentations. The Bid Booster Boot Camp guides you and your team through our 4Ps Presentation Process:

Purpose: Strategizing your key messages around 4 critical questions – What, Why, How, and What If.
Presenters: Selecting presentation team members, key roles, and key pitfalls to avoid.
Preparation: Why it’s critical, active speaker and team coaching (voice, body language, presence, etc.), managing Question and Answer sessions, persuasive techniques, and more.
Performance: ‘Day of’ strategies including arrival considerations, when/when not to use technology, responding in Question & Answer sessions, what to ask clients, and follow up.

*4-week format:

• 1-hour per day each week for a total of 20 hours of learning. (Don’t worry if you can’t make it – we’ll send you a recording after each session. One team member can attend live and share the learnings with colleagues. Note: Attending live is best because there are numerous speaking opportunities.)
• Application exercises you will perform each week to progress through the learning. (Activities you and your team will engage in to build your presentation or template.)
• 1-hour Bid Presentation Showcase session with you and your team for customized feedback. (This session is for your team only and will not be open to other participants.)
• Comprehensive manual with all information and templates. (We want you to be able to replicate and sustain your learnings for future bid presentations.)

Go from Mediocre to Marvellous in 4 Short Weeks!

 
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Bid Booster Boot Camp in Detail

You’ve spent days, probably weeks (and sometimes months) writing a detailed bid proposal that shows how your organization is the best candidate to respond to your potential client’s needs. You’re anxiously awaiting notification that you’ve made it to the final stage in the bid process – the bid presentation.

Unfortunately, when that invitation arrives, many individuals in professional services firms who aren’t purely salespeople find this last stage to be the most challenging and uncomfortable of all. Many organizations disappoint their potential client during that presentation. Why?

Because they don’t present and communicate effectively enough to answer two critical unwritten/unspoken questions:

• Can we work with these people?
• What value do they add?

For the first question, your potential client wants you to prove you’re a responsive, customer-oriented team and organization. They want to know you’re the type of people they want to work with long term.

For the second question, many of our clients are told they lost their last bid because of price. It’s not a response you should take at face value. While sometimes that is actually the case, in our experience it’s mostly been because they didn’t explain their value well enough to overcome a lower bid.

Putting real effort into your bid presentations is one of the best investments you can make in your overall RFP efforts, and research shows it’s one of the most overlooked parts of a bid. Your bid presentation is actually the ‘make or break’ step in your RFP efforts.

Your team will transform your bid presentations by moving through our 4Ps Presentation Process:

Purpose

Your bid presentation is not a recitation of everything in your RFP response. That document has already been thoroughly examined, including your credentials, and you were shortlisted on that basis. A mere repeat of your proposal doesn’t add any useful information about why you should win – but it does demonstrate laziness and lack of effort. The selection committee already knows tons about you, your technical skills, and your processes. Now they simply want to know how you will help them and add value.

A successful bid presentation starts with identifying your key purpose and the messages you want to communication. We’ll show you how to apply our purpose-driven planning process:

• What are your key messages, features, and ‘value for money’ services?
• Why should your client care?
• How will your client be able to use each feature?
• What if X happens?

Presenters

Who presents is just as important as what you’re presenting. Here’s where your service delivery team reigns supreme – not the business development team or those who wrote the RFP response. We’ll strategize:

• Who should lead the presentation
• Which team members need to be featured
• Key roles of each team members
• Key pitfalls to avoid

Preparation

Champion golfer Arnold Palmer used to say, “The more I practice, the luckier I get”. No one ever gets good at anything without practicing.

The 3 most common ‘reasons’ people give us for not preparing and practicing adequately for bid presentations are:

• I know my products and services so I’m good.
• I don’t need to practice with my team – we all know our roles.
• Rehearsals make me sound robotic.

Most of the time, we’ve discovered that these are excuses for avoiding speaking. The amount of time you’ll want to devote to preparation and practice will differ for each bid presentation depending on the style/length of the presentation and how comfortable your presenters are. But we’ll employ active speaker coaching and rehearsals for individuals and teams, including:

• Managing nerves
• Body Language
• Vocal Variety
• Vocal Projection
• Word Whiskers/Distracting Habits
• Online ‘presence’
• In person ‘stage presence’
• The power of visuals
• Secrets of persuasive techniques
• Speaking without notes
• The power of a strong opening
• The influence of a strong closing
• Special Situation: Presenting to skeptical or hostile audiences
• Planning for Question & Answer sessions
• Filmed feedback

We’ll also share a 5 Practice Steps to Live By that will ensure you are ready to WOW your client on the day of your bid presentation.

Performance

The day of your bid presentation has arrived. You’re prepared, you’ve practiced, and your team is ready to go! There are still some key considerations to ensure your presentation is successful. We’ll get you ready for a stellar performance with the bid committee by sharing key strategies including:

• When and when not to use technology
• How to respond in the Question & Answer section
• Key questions to ask your client
• The role of technical details and processes
• Key follow up actions

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