Most people instinctively avoid conflict, but as Margaret Heffernan shows us, good disagreement is central to progress. She illustrates (sometimes counterintuitively) how the best partners aren’t echo chambers -- and how great research teams, relationships and businesses allow people to deeply disagree.
Jeremy Pollard's insight:
We are loving Lean Bidding. Work in small groups, draft fast, share with others, be open to feedback, iterate quickly.
We have participants in our workshops getting out first draft Win Themes in just 4 minutes!
But Capture #WinStrategy is harder. Conservatism, fear and the status quo, plus a lot of 'sunk-cost' bias can get in the way of diverse ideas and opinions being heard.
As leaders we can be uncomfortable with conflict, and especially challenges from new ideas. Heffernan's great TED talk highlights the gift of disagreement. Well worth a listen if you feel your team may have some shut-down tendencies.
Shipley Asia Pacific: Business Development - Support leaders improve their BD as a process, not a job description. e.g. full BD-CMM - aka Market Entry, Segment Positioning, Capture Planning & Coaching, Bid and Proposal Planning and Management, Customer Success Stories
How to avoid eight common grammar errors, such as using "amongst" and "whilst" instead of "among" and "while".
Jeremy Pollard's insight:
Why send customers proposals you know have mistakes?
What impact do you think writing errors have on your ability to #WinWork?
It is hard to #WinWork. The effort and investment in long lead times for Business Development - build relationships, building trust. Helping scope solutions, and requirements.
Then, doing something few of us trained in - clear, persuasive business writing.
So, why is it so hard to make the decision to hire a pro-writer? Alternatively, if we think we can battle through to a final draft ok, why not hire at least a professional editor?
Over the decade's clients have us help them with a 3 x part quality assurance process for critical, #MustWinBids 1. Make sure your customer focus and the arguments supporting their choice of you are sound 2. Edit for brevity. Most bids and proposals we edit reduce by 20-30% when jargon, redundant language, and (my favourite) gobbledygook are eliminated. 3. Then with your logical, brief draft - then edit for correctness. Grammar. Punctuation
You can hire writers. You can invest in a great editor.
However, they can only help you with Part 2 and Part 3. You, and you alone have to own and execute well on your customer focus and win strategy in both the Capture Phase and your bid or proposal.
TED Talk Subtitles and Transcript: Simon Sinek has a simple but powerful model for inspirational leadership -- starting with a golden circle and the question "Why?" His examples include Apple, Martin Luther King, and the Wright brothers ... | ToK Essays May 2016
Jeremy Pollard's insight:
Bid Management is a tough gig. Complex material. Complicated stakeholder management. Tight deadlines. Much pressure, and often no real or direct authority over many of the people you are relying on to help deliver the bid on time. Simon Sinek's talks on TED are among the most watched. Because of his ideas on leadership, resonating with so many people. Check out this summary of his key suggestions, and imagine how they would apply to your next bid management project
At Shipley we've helped clients #WinWork well before RFP or RFT (because most deals and negotiations are decided before then) with Capture training & coaching that includes many of Neale's ideas.
Key is in the preparation, in fact Neale even uses the same 'iceberg' metaphor we've used with Shipley clients for years. Getting under the water to understand both the stated/public and unstated/privates drivers for a deal makes a big difference to your customer focus. Just don't forget to do the same thing for your own issues, needs and drivers to ensure you get your needs met.
What she adds you might find helpful are the ideas on 'Mindset' - psychologically preparing yourself to win.
As for the 'Asking' - well that's what good salespeople have been doing for many decades
Chinese search engine and news outlet Toutiao is using an artificial intelligence known as Xiaomingbot to publish articles on the Olympics. The bot was able to write a total of 450 articles during the 15-day event.
Make it past the first round with these apps and tricks.
Jeremy Pollard's insight:
OK - this is tricky. You may already know that many HR departments have BOTS (short for robots) read job applicant CVs. To what extent are you aware of the extent to which the same technology is being applied to reviewing your proposals and tender responses? And how to best get through such a review. While the first pass is mostly going to be checking your bid for compliance, this article provides some clues as to how to survive the BOTS in your future
The ability to pay attention is a skill that's increasingly hard to find. Check out what recent research has to say on the subject.
Jeremy Pollard's insight:
Doing good work needs focus. Multitasking is NOT your friend.
Getting into a productive state of 'flow' requires blanking out distractions. For example I should doing invoices right now, but my Twitter feed just beeped at me, and I've read this great article...
So I (normally) use a tool called VitaminR 2 to blank out distractions, and cut down or eliminate my multitasking.
Most people instinctively avoid conflict, but as Margaret Heffernan shows us, good disagreement is central to progress. She illustrates (sometimes counterintuitively) how the best partners aren’t echo chambers -- and how great research teams, relationships and businesses allow people to deeply disagree.
Jeremy Pollard's insight:
We are loving Lean Bidding. Work in small groups, draft fast, share with others, be open to feedback, iterate quickly.
We have participants in our workshops getting out first draft Win Themes in just 4 minutes!
But Capture #WinStrategy is harder. Conservatism, fear and the status quo, plus a lot of 'sunk-cost' bias can get in the way of diverse ideas and opinions being heard.
As leaders we can be uncomfortable with conflict, and especially challenges from new ideas. Heffernan's great TED talk highlights the gift of disagreement. Well worth a listen if you feel your team may have some shut-down tendencies.
Words can dictate the success or failure of any brand in any market. These highly-actionable copywriting hacks will help you improve your website right now.
Jeremy Pollard's insight:
Your website is a proposal. Use these hacks to also improve your actual proposals to #WinWork
Google wants to know the secret to building a more productive team. The tech giant charged a team to find out. The project, known as Project Aristotle, took several years, and included interviews with hundreds of employees and analysis of data about the people on more than 100 active teams at the company. The Googlers looked har
Jeremy Pollard's insight:
OK - so it's Monday morning - let's keep it simple.
Play nice to #WinWork - just like your parent said.
Only now Google, after years of research (Why didn't they just Google this?) have concluded that in a collaborative world - like winning bids for example - the effectiveness of teams relies on securing useful input from as wide range of sources as possible.
Makes sense. But if the shiny suits and big voices are booming - other points of view and great ideas can get shut down or blocked out.
And the new ideas or alternate solutions can be lost unless the group, team or organisation provides 'physiological safety' - e.g. it's ok to speak up about things are aren't reality or better ways to do things.
In other words, play nicely.
Let others have their turn, listen, do not shut them down if their ideas are not the same as yours.
Your parents and kindergarten teachers were right.
Our most popular Shipley AP workshop starts with the fact that the best deal (according to the buyers stated criteria) on average is still only chosen in 48% of bid decisions.
Improving your win rate requires a BD and Capture process that builds your understanding of the buyers un-stated needs.
And this article by Deepak Malhotra is a timely reminder that many of these needs are emotional, and not necessarily about the content or subject material of the deal.
The weekend before a TED conference, each speaker rehearses their talk in the TED theater. It’s a chance for the speakers to get to know the space, for our curators to give last-minute suggestions ...
Jeremy Pollard's insight:
You've written your proposal - now you have to present your proposal. Some are more comfortable than others at this - for the rest of us, here are some really practical tips from a coach TED speakers spend time with before they go on stage...
There are ways to figure out if a company will be a good fit for your work style before you accept an offer.
Jeremy Pollard's insight:
Fitting in to be effective? Even more so for consultants!
This smart article by Molly Petrilla has good advice for potential employees, but we'd suggest it is just as critical for part-timers and consultants.
Why? Well unless you are stuck just accepting everything that comes your way, the better, busier consultants get to pick and choose their work. Good BD consultants, or great Bid Managers are in high demand. And we all know how hard to is to secure a top technical or proposal writer to help you #WinWork
So as a consultant, many talk about the added value of a good working environment, especially in the high-pressure, high-stakes, often under-resourced and badly planned world of BD & Bids.
So do your homework in the manner suggested in this article. If you are going to put your heart and soul; your years of experience into a role on a 'must-win' deal, surely it makes sense to ensure you will get more than just dollars back?
And hirers of consultants, ask yourselves the extent to which your organisational culture attracts or drives away crucial external resources? And what could you do about it?
How mature is the structure and discipline of your #BDLifecycle ? Are your bid team always stuck in panic loops, with executives changing there mind on #WinStrategy and theme statements?
Trying and doing are two different things. Learning about this distinction is the key to success. Here's how you can do it for yourself.
Jeremy Pollard's insight:
“No. Try not. Do. Or do not. There is no try.” Yoda - you have incredible power in your use of language. We talk a lot about active Vs passive language with clients wanting to build trust with their customers. But you also have an impact on yourself and your colleagues with language. Just stop using the word 'try' for a while. See what I did there? I said 'stop' - not 'try' - because - altogether now.... "There is no try" Use Yoda to #WinWork
Everyone tells stories. But writing them down is harder.
Stories in business are everywhere. Who hasn't told or heard a story about a problem, the journey to resolve it and the 'happily ever after' ending?
But come time to plan and write a winning proposal, and it seems many forget this oral skill and revert to bureaucratic descriptions of themselves and their solutions.
Even attempts at describing a previous customer story become sanitised as 'look-at-us' case studies
Do yourself a favour - do this workshop.
Film-makers can be some of the most powerful storytellers n the world - well, the good ones anyway - so going back to basics at this workshop and mapping the key concepts of story to other forms will serve you well to help you #winwork
The secret mind tricks that keep you from getting stuff done.
Jeremy Pollard's insight:
Winning Work has some hard deadlines - bids & proposals have fixed due dates. So understanding and dealing with procrastination can relieve a lot of deadline stress.
But the earlier efforts to win work are just as important - setting up and validating Capture Strategy is vital - and can be just as subject to procrastination as the hard deadlines of bids.
So this article can help the entire BD team, not just the obvious candidates in the bid team where the ticking of the clock is loudest...
This article from the Nonprofit Quarterly is a treasure trove of examples of how 26 small organizations respond to the challenges and constraints they encounter with their uses of social media for organizing and engagement.
Jeremy Pollard's insight:
Why share 'Social for Small Non-Profits' instead of big company examples? Because much social media advice is either for B2C or global B2B with big budgets and teams of specialists. For Asia Pacific B2B organisations, especially those without large marketing or even large Business Development (BD) teams, or budgets, I believe there are three lessons directly applicable from small nonprofits. Here's why... 1/ Nonprofits have to operate 'lean' - at Shipley, we love the principles of lean, especially as applied to winning work processes. For us lean is about innovation, making do with 'less is more'. Lean is not just throwing money at a situation. Lean is smarter, not harder. Test & Refine, only use or do what works. Nonprofits' use of social media is a great example of value for money in action. 2/ Nonprofits are all about trust. Winning work is all about trust. Building trust, maintaining trust - so social has to be genuine, not some marketing exercise. Your intent has to be right. Connections and offerings to help have to be legitimate - not about marketing spin or hype. Great B2B companies know this, and their leaders and practitioners already live by these principles. Nonprofits' use of social media is a great example of a trust-based connection to follow here. 3/ Nonprofits are all about understanding, connecting and influencing multiple stakeholders, often with very different issues and needs. Just like complex B2B contracts, deals and relationships. So look at these examples to see how others have attempted to listen, align and work with complex stakeholders. What lessons for your B2B situation can you pick up from these nonprofits examples?
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We are loving Lean Bidding. Work in small groups, draft fast, share with others, be open to feedback, iterate quickly.
We have participants in our workshops getting out first draft Win Themes in just 4 minutes!
But Capture #WinStrategy is harder. Conservatism, fear and the status quo, plus a lot of 'sunk-cost' bias can get in the way of diverse ideas and opinions being heard.
As leaders we can be uncomfortable with conflict, and especially challenges from new ideas. Heffernan's great TED talk highlights the gift of disagreement. Well worth a listen if you feel your team may have some shut-down tendencies.