At the time of writing, 2019 has significant uncertainty surrounding it. Thankfully, our experts are adept at dealing with such ambiguity and have provided a fantastic set of articles in Issue 5 of Bidding Quarterly, full of great ideas and suggestions to evolve our profession in 2019.
As Jon Williams article rightly points out, it’s exhilarating working in a profession that’s developing so fast. With so many opportunities to grow individually and develop as teams, it’s essential that your plans are already well formed if you are to ensure 2019 achieves its full potential.
Issue 4 of Bidding Quarterly tackled some very personal issues relating to wellbeing. The outpouring of support our experts have received has been humbling. It obviously served as a catalyst for many people to challenge their current lack of wellbeing. I’m delighted to say that in BQ5, we have sought expert opinion from Robert Stewart – an experienced business psychologist, psychotherapist and coach with over 10 years’ experience in the field of psychology. Robert has provided some practical guidance and suggestions that you can immediately implement within your working day.
I hope you have a fantastic and restful Christmas and a very successful and healthy 2019.
Martin Smith
Managing Director
In this issue
How the best will get better in 2019
So many conversations with my fellow proposal professionals come back to age-old themes. How do we get our organisations to take qualification more seriously? What’s the best way to develop a winning strategy? How do we write inspiring content and make it look fabulous? What tactics can help us to lead proposal teams, especially in a world where ‘virtual’ is now ‘business as usual’?
A professional perspective on well-being
From an outsider’s perspective, and having read with interest all the articles in BQ Issue 4 – The Hidden Costs of Bidding, the bidding world appears an exciting, tempting and sometimes exhilarating world to inhabit.
Proud to be APMP UK? I’d really like to be.
I firmly believe that the UK bid and proposal profession needs a professional body that is 100% focussed on the UK market. There has been a seismic shift in the UK bid and proposal profession over the last 20 years, yet there has been very little direct investment to advance best practice, fund research or champion causes important to those working in the UK.
Breaking Down the Barriers
Being a bid professional can be demoralising. It can feel like the sales team gets all the credit and the bid team’s contribution is overlooked or barely acknowledged. If we are going to evolve our profession, we need to raise our status and get real recognition of the contribution we bring.
In the Spotlight – Chloe Dillon
Chloe Dillon is a Work Winning professional specialising in bids and proposals, with 15 years’ experience working in Consulting, Legal and Construction firms in the UK and Middle East.
Evolving our approach to feedback and reviews
Reviews are a fundamental part of the bid response process and at the heart of them is the delivery of feedback. I’ve been increasingly intrigued by how approaches to feedback in these review stages can be evolved so that it has the most positive impact.
Recruitment of the Fittest
The process of selecting and hiring bid professionals is changing, both in how organisations are attracting candidates, and the selection process itself. The last 5 years have seen significant developments in this regard.
Evolution of the Species
If our profession is to evolve in 2019, then will it be something we instigate or something forced upon us by circumstance? Natural selection is, after all, brutally cruel. It’s born of conditions that test the resilience and adaptability of a species. The strong live; the weak die.
Seller-Led Responses
Requests for Proposals (RFPs) have become increasingly “buyer-led” meaning that the solution and requirements are dictated by the buyer, for easy cost-comparison.
Evolving messages with the benefit of data
Procurement teams are turning increasingly to transparent, real-time, digital data to make the exercise of procuring suppliers more efficient and cost-effective. Automated supplier performance monitoring, for example, relies on data about the supply chain’s work for the procuring supplier and others. The trend is for the use of data to show how value is added from a strategic perspective. The shift is towards evaluating procurement using measures linked to strategy and financial metrics.
