Problems with invitation to tender and being asked to provide your ‘best quotes’

Problems with invitation to tender and being asked to provide your ‘best quotes’: by Jason Li 2012 ©

Many businesses love to have prospects contact them with an enquiry either for an invitation to tender or being asked to provide your ‘best quotes’.

The great thing about this is that your lead generation system or referral system is doing a very good job...

Tell me which business does not want to have incoming leads from people ready to buy?

One of the main reasons sales people like to be asked to provide your ‘best quote’ is that it’s a lot less effort than cold calling, less painful than getting rejection; easier than having to start at a gatekeeper and work your way up the company hierarchy; or even better, save prospecting time as you have the interest of one of the decision makers contact you so you think the prospect is really interested.

So at this point you may be thinking... in order to succeed... all I need to do is know ‘how to tender’.

However, there are many reasons why incoming leads do not convert into orders.

Latent needs

These are needs, problems, pains that the prospect has in the business which they might not know exists.

Or in a lot of cases, the problem is already there, the prospect knows the problem is there, but the prospect has been able for a long time to cope without doing anything about it and put off solving the problem.

Think of a pain like the internet has constant down time or the courier takes ages to book, but just not enough of a pain to do anything in the past...but you do find it bugs you.

In many instances, the prospect is alerted by a business that the latent need is important to sort out, and then it becomes a business problem. But it’s not even at this stage you will get asked by an incoming lead.

Needs analysis and rapport

Your competitor who has contacted the prospect and brought forward the business problem will have been given a lot of consultative time to analyse the need. If they have done this correctly, then your industry competitor will have a very good understanding of the need and built up rapport with the prospect.

At this stage, your competitor will know the decision makers, have a feel about how the prospects’ business operates, and the prospects will start to trust your competitor for their expert advice: they did show the prospect there is a business need after all!

Engineer the vision

Even when your prospect has agreed to a consultation, the prospect is still not contacting you yet. Your competitor will be working on how the prospect wants the results to look like so that they are investing their time and money wisely.

Your competitor with this rapport can help the prospect engineer the vision, to help the prospect see your competitors’ product as the right product to solve their problems and how it works seamlessly in the business successfully

Let’s view the whole of the market

Now that the prospect is pretty happy to go ahead, most professional buyers will check with the whole of the market, just to make sure that what they are about to buy is not out of sync with the market – i.e. they’re not getting ripped off.

So at this stage you FINALLY get asked to tender or ‘asked to quote’, and you get a decision maker from a known company with a decent sized prospective order, and you are feeling really excited.

Only, in reality, your chances are pretty low. Not non-existent, but low.

So what do you do to put the percentages back in your favour?

Big brand

If you are a known brand or a leading player, then use your brand clout and reputation to give yourself a chance. Your aim is to get a fair crack at this, not to just reel off a list of numbers like an order taker; so you want to get commitment to get the decision maker/s to give you time to discuss and consult the prospect properly.

If you are not a big brand or don’t have much reputation in the market, don’t really expect someone to contact you.

You could say:

“As a reputable company we always provide a professional consultation to ensure you get an offer that suits your requirements. What has worked well is for us to provide a consultation regarding your specific needs, just as you might do to provide an exceptional offer to your customers”

Your aim is to create your own way of ensuring that prospects give you a chance to understand their needs so that your offer is a better match than your competitors, and you cannot do this unless you get to know: ‘What is the problem?’

Who is good at blind tenders and converting the ‘best quote’ requests?

Usually very experienced sales people with tender writing skills who have years of experience at both qualifying prospects, gaining commitment, understand the industry and know the competitors who are also likely to pitch to the same prospect. These people have a higher percentage chance of conversation by a blind quote due to understanding from experience what prospects want and what wins the deal.

However, the sales people that have the courage to work on getting decision makers to engage in a proper consultation will usually have a higher conversation rate over the long run... simply because they can tailor an offer that the prospect feels they can see working for them in the discussions.

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Quality, Price, Delivery – What type of customer

Quality, Price, Delivery – What type of customer: by Jason Li 2012 ©

When you have a product or service on offer for your customer, there is a high chance there will be resistance. How can this be when you have an offer which the customer cannot refuse? You’re thinking it’s a no brainer. You would definitely snap it up if you were in their position.

Quality, Price, Delivery (QPD)

So let’s check the offer is right. We’ll use a customer with a shop assistant in a smart phone shop as an example.

When you go to buy a smart phone, what type of person are you. Do you buy based on quality and will choose on the best, no matter the price? Here is a guide to working a customer out quickly:

Quality – functions, benefits, the range of value created: from minimum to maximum a product or service can do.

Price – from the lowest price to most expensive in your range

Delivery – now or in two weeks

Only on the odd occasion does delivery guide the decision. Such as if you have a plumber who needs new taps for a job he is doing and needs it doing by the end of this afternoon – “what taps do you have in that I can take now?”

If there is no urgency, then it is down to quality and price now.

So here you will need to find out what is most important to the customer. You might ask:

“So what are the key features you are looking for?”

“What are the main things you want the phone to do?”

If you get: “not bothered really it’s down to cost”, then this is a cost person.

However, you might get someone giving you a long list of features they want – so you’re confused and wondering if they are really here to buy an item with the most beneficial features, and are in fact a quality person. So to double check you can ask after they have listed the features they want:

“So what budget range is ideal for you?”

“What’s a comfortable amount for you to pay each month?”

Funnelling

Funnelling is choosing a funnel to dig deeper with more questions to understand your customer better. Better let me explain.

Let’s say each criteria of quality or price or delivery is a funnel. What you can do is ask a series of questions on each subject to hear if the customer is willing to talk about it or finds it important – so that you understand a bit more about what suits their needs and wants. Here is an example of a quality funnel:

“If you spend a lot of time on the internet, what do you mainly do? For example reading lots of text/like online newspapers or watch videos?”

“Some customers do a lot of social networking and email and do lots of typing, how about yourself?”

“Let’s say the standard screen is 3.5 inches, tell me what screen size is suitable for you?”

QPD – putting it together

If the customer rambles on about: “as long as the phone does all the features listed and it’s not silly prices”, then they are a quality person, and cost not too sensitive.

If the customer says they only have a certain budget. Then this is potentially more a mix of quality and price person.

If the customer says ideally they want the best phone at £5 a month, then really they are a cost person. You might want to ask a further question to double check which features they would pay for and what they would stretch to. If they want a feature but won’t pay, you know the answer.

Hey, we all want to live for free. There is no point advising a cost person that spending a bit more will get them a feature they want, just leave them be.

QPD Profile

So you can create a profile of a customer each time now. In your head, you can mark each funnel out of ten to work out what type of customer you are dealing with here.

Let’s say out of ten, you can ask a few questions and know that a customer is maybe 6/10 quality, 3/10 price and 1/10 delivery – this is mostly quality. Or the next one is 2/10 quality, 8/10 price and 0/10 delivery – in fact they will walk 20 minutes to the next shop if they can save 50 pence.

You might have three directors in a room and they cannot agree, and are “Still thinking about it.” Well now you can build up a profile for each, then quote so that all three are happy as you make an offer that suits each individually.

Know your customer, tailor an offer

So you see, you might think you have a product or a service that is a no brainer and thousands will pay on the spot – but they don’t.  We are all different, different circumstances, tastes, values, stages in our life, and customers can be just pure baffling to you.

Now you have a way to work out what your customer wants and to offer them what they want to buy. After this, if they buy or don’t buy is up to them. If they don’t there will be possibly ten reasons that you would never have thought of.

The more you can understand your customer and tailor your offers, the better your products and services will be in meeting your customers buying requirements. This will lead to more people accepting your offers and buying from you, which means more profits.

Test the theory

Let’s take McDonalds. They are definitely not the best tasting burgers in the world. But I still go from time-to-time. Why? Well the quality of food is possibly 6/10. I have been to some cafes and spent ages pulling out grizzle and tiny flecks of bone cartilage out of my cheap beef burger. So now I must have decent quality beef due to these chilling experiences. It was just short of chasing down a cow and taking a bit at the knee. Back to McDonalds. The service is a decent 6/10, the restaurant itself is pleasant and better than some cafes so 7/10, and the toilets are always useful at 8/10. Then onto the cost, well it’s easily an 8/10. There are cheaper but then I can never go back to super cheap burgers again. As for delivery, it’s pretty much instant for popular products so 9/10.

So who generally doesn’t go to McDonalds, but would like to eat a burger and have no problems with McDonalds?. It’s likely to be people who want a great quality tasting burger at a nice restaurant, and can afford to spend more. They want more quality value and go elsewhere.

Is McDonalds successfully generating a lot of revenue? Is McDonalds profitable? Does McDonalds create value for a large part of the population? Can you look at your business to see how you create value that is irresistible to your customers?

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