"We Have to Bid This, or We'll Lose the Business!"

Will you?  What business are you really losing?  You can’t lose business you don’t have.

Tips on Bidding:

1. Look at the data.  If you win 38% or more of your bids and they are profitable, keep doing it.  Without data you will use feelings — big mistake.
2. If you are responding to bids, you are 6 months too late.
3. Politely decline to bid; you’ll at least get someone’s attention, and if you don’t get attention, you had no chance anyway.
4. Management will want you to bid everything if sales are slow even though it is illogical, so learn to say “No” when your sales are good.
5. Bids make a wonderful excuse to be really busy:  they take time, it’s work, it even qualifies as selling, but it could be the worst use of your time.
6. Respect the client/prospect need and habit to bid(it’s all they know) until a more viable approach appears.  It’s not their fault.
7. If you are sub to a general provider, keep selling after you’ve submitted your bid;  your competition is busy moving to the next bid.
8. If you’ve been in your same role 5 + years or have same account 2+ years, and you are bidding, then you have an account management problem.
9. If you get 3 bids every time you make a major purchase, then you’ll likely always be responding to bids in your sales role.  You get what you expect.   People that buy quality can sell it.  Cheapskates sell price.
10. 90% of the sale occurs before the bid response, and 90% of that 90% occurs in the first face-to-face meeting.