Developing strategy 0v4 100314
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This document discusses developing an effective proposal strategy. It emphasizes understanding the customer's needs and perceptions of both your company and competitors. It provides guidance on conducting a competitive analysis to identify positive and negative discriminators. The proposal strategy should state what you will do and how, emphasizing strengths while addressing weaknesses. Theme statements should then link customer benefits to differentiating features of your solution and answer why the customer should choose you.
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Developing strategy 0v4 100314
- 1. Developing Strategy Establishing Requirements Communicating your Plan Planning the Proposal Phase Learning from Experience Choosing the right opportunities Proposal Strategy Development Teaming Identification Winning Price Development Managing Time, Cost and Quality Developing Strategy How are we going to win?
- 2. Learning objectives: In this unit we are going to
- 3. Understand your customer “If you wish to persuade me, you must think my thoughts, feel my feelings, and speak my words.” - Marcus Tullius Cicero circa 54 BC
- 4. Because if we want to do business we need to know who makes decisions
- 5. Where’s the GIFBP?Creating a Value Based Proposition
- 6. What is your Value Proposition? Starting……………………………...…………………… [implementation date] As a result of <your company>’s… [service or product] Client will be able to……...................... [do what specifically] Resulting in………………………………………….. [quantified business improvement] With payback within………………………… [timeframe] We will document ourdelivered value by…………………….……… [result tracking strategy]
- 7. Value Propositions varyby the type of buyer: Consider two examples from a desktop outsource proposition: For the Technical Buyer Commencing November 1st 2006, IT professionals will have extensive and varied opportunities for personal growth and advancement within their profession on their transfer to IT Wizards. IT Wizards will maintain current pay levels for current positions. To maintain our leadership position IT Wizards regularly reviews pay and positions in line with industry standards. Opportunities for training and Development will be provided as part of normal career progression. For the Economic Buyer: MegaCorp will experience a £3m reduction in desktop support costs over the next 5 years starting November 1st 2006 by outsourcing support to IT Wizards at a cost of £2m per year. In addition MegaCorp will receive a £500K payment for its current desktop assets. Annual support costs will reduce by 30% measured against the current agreed baseline. All costs will be clearly visible to you online as documented in monthly invoices and quarterly review summaries.
- 8. Exercise
- 9. Competitive Analysis “If you know the enemy and know yourself, yourvictory will not stand in doubt” Developing Strategy Sun Tzu: “The Art of War”
- 10. Proposal Strategy Development Identify how the customer perceives our organisation Identify the customer’s perceptions of the competitors Identify the POSITIVE and NEGATIVE discriminators for the opportunity Develop proposal strategy statements in a ‘what’ & ‘ how’ format
- 12. Customer Perception- of You & Your Competition Perception
- 13. Customer Perception- of You & Your Competition Your Perception
- 15. Whether youwin or lose
- 16. Suppliers
- 17. Teaming Partners
- 20. Creating your Proposal strategy: Headline sentence(s) that pinpoint the key to success in our case: “In order to win we must……….” WHAT you are going to do in the proposal HOW you are going to do it in the proposal Emphasise the positives Overcome the negatives The focus area of your sales messaging: Driven by Customer Issues Based on Your Company’s discriminators Relevant and supported by evidence
- 21. Develop Theme Statements from your Proposal Strategy Theme Statements: Are derived from the Win Theme Appear in every major section Highlight your Discriminators Linking customer needs to quantified benefits Linking those benefits to features Can be either a concise sentence or paragraph or a visual Links benefit to discriminating feature Answers the question ‘Why us?’
- 22. Quick Quiz Question: Which of these statements best describes a theme statement? Please click on your selection
- 23. Sorry! Try again. “Theme statements link strategy and solution” is not the best description because themes should tell prospects why they should select you. Strategy and solution say more about the seller than the prospect. “Theme statements link the advantages and benefit ” is not the best description because whilst important, these are saying more about the prospect than they say about why the prospect should buy from you. The best themes contain your unique discriminators. That is, something the prospect wants which only you can offer. “Theme statements establish sales objectives” is not the best description because it says what the seller want to achieve for themselves.
- 24. Congratulations! A theme statement links a prospect benefit to the discriminating features of your offer.
- 25. In this session we have:
- 26. Preparing for the eTorial
- 27. Coming up in your next eTorial Demonstration of competitive analysis tools SWOT Analysis Chain of Differentiation
Editor's Notes
- KLP: If we are not customer focused we have already lostRead the ManCo case study. We’re not going to do the exercise just yet (5-10 minutes).Who are we selling to?What is their problem?
- If we want to do business with anyone we had first better know exactly who is involved in the decision making process, and construct our ‘persuasive arguments’ around their individual needs
- Again, this is based on the Holden methodology.
- Once you have got to the root of your Customer’s issues and concerns and checked your company’s ability to deliver you should be able to create a Value proposition.The example is from the Holden methodExercise will help you with thisStarting in Mar 07As a result of our new call centre technologyClient can offer enhanced helpdesk serviceHappier customers, less dropped calls, shorter waits, more telesales etcPayback 15 monthsDocument by collecting call stats** Must confirm with customer that proposition is okay
- In ‘The Art of War’ by the Chinese General and Philosopher Sun Tsu, a basic premise is to"knowyourenemy as you know yourself“.He also said “A wise general never seeks battle until the war is won”In terms of review – where do we check our competitive understanding?Black Hat review.
- Trainers should cover the following either with slides or through discussion for this syllabus subject:Definition of Proposal StrategyTerminology Features, Benefits, Advantages, Discriminator DifferentiatorHow to identify organisation strengths and weaknessesGhosting – terminology and how to do itWe make a distinction between WIN STRATEGY and PROPOSAL STRATEGYThe Win Strategy is made up of many components many not concerned with the proposal itself. The Proposal Strategy is how you are going to implement the Win Strategy in the proposal document. For both we need simple statements of WHAT you are going to do and HOW you are going to do it.As you gather intelligence about the different aspects of the deal start to build up your win strategy a piece at a time. The major elements of the Win Strategy are contained in the Win Plan (Capture Plan)You need to consider:The Customer Pain ChainThe Customer’s perception of Value. The Customer’s evaluation plan. Is this agreed with the Customer?Your competitive strategy. How will Your Company’s offer be differentiated? How can you minimise your competitor’s value?Your partnering plan. Do you need 3rd parties as part of your win team? How will you secure them?
- Hidden competitor: = do nothingCan be won before RFP arrivesSynergy 1 + 1 = 3Now let’s look at the toolsBidding can sometimes seem like war, so to gain an understanding of the competitive environment in which we are operating let’s Look at who we are competing withSources of information about where the competition are atUnderstand where our strengths lie compared to the competitionPeople can sometimes change sides (e.g. Italy) and a foe you may have in one war may be allies in the next (e.g. Britain & Russia in WWI and WWII) – this is a nice link to co-opetition and the concept of the Value Net.
- KLP the Customer’s perception is REALITYChoose another example?Example of Sun teaming with Oracle against Microsoft.When you do the LORE circles exercise recall that we are seeking to change perceptions by MESSAGING
- KLP the Customer’s perception is REALITYChoose another example?Example of Sun teaming with Oracle against Microsoft.When you do the LORE circles exercise recall that we are seeking to change perceptions by MESSAGING
- KLP the Customer’s perception is REALITYChoose another example?Example of Sun teaming with Oracle against Microsoft.When you do the LORE circles exercise recall that we are seeking to change perceptions by MESSAGING
- Present this example: Then have a quick class exercise taking one of the live cases.TCO = total cost of ownershipFrom this analysis it is obvious that we should focus on both B and E. We need to be compliant with A, C and D and clearly state in our proposal that we meet the buy criteria – however we should go to town on B & E so it exposes our competitors’ weaknesses. If key differentiators don’t immediately jump out we need to probe deeper. Performing a SWOT analysis on ourselves and competitors can also be revealing. Doing a SWOT shows that Criteria D needs attention – whilst all competitors will be able to demonstrate a 50% reduction in TCO, competitor 2 has lower purchase price so could appear to be cheaper – we need to ensure that we level the playing field by explaining our TCO calculations.Originally based on servers but could apply in many contexts contextExercise:Get delegates to draw a GAP & SWOT matrix for one of their bids Review the analysisNow take that position of strength and build into a sales themePropose private study on further intelligence gathering and analysisKEY LEARNING POINT:SWOT is fine for assessing general competitive position but to generate winning strategies and compelling themes then all strengths and weaknesses need to be measured with respect to customer specific issues and concerns.Opportunities and threats have less relevance to Developing Key Messages but they can be a good guide to predicting competitor BEHAVIOUR
- From our Win Strategy (which may include lots of things that are nothing to do with the Proposal) we need to generate Proposal Strategy Statements.These should be in What and How format. E.g:“We are going to address the customer’s concern over software support costs by stressing the simplicity of our fault tolerant architecture. We don’t need specialist programmers or programming techniques”“We are going to contain our competitor’s relative strength in formal Project Management assessments by stressing that our model looks at Programmes and Portfolios as well: these are even more important to the customer.”Also, draw the Lore ‘circles picture’ to illustrate the sweet spot and sour spots – and how the proposal help achieves to maximise the sweet spot and minimise the sour spot.The four strategies of LORE:Mitigate our weaknessesGhost the competition’s weaknessMinimise their strengthsMaximise our strengths
- Win theme – could be key discriminatorCan be shown as a graphicHieman Silver – why us? On every page of your proposal
- P272
- In the eTorial we’ll show some competitive analysis tools SWOT analysis and chain of diferentiation.