As a bidder you might not feel you get involved in negotiations. Customer negotiation is more often completed by the sales team prior to the bid team writing a proposal that ‘formalises’ what’s already been negotiated, or the negotiation phase after the bid submitted is run by the sales or commercial team.
If that’s the case, you might not think you need to prioritise improving your negotiation skills and confidence, as you’re not likely to be responsible for leading negotiations any time soon.
If so, you might be thinking about ‘negotiation’ too narrowly and missing a real opportunity to improve your bidding.
The Oxford English Dictionary defines negotiation as: ‘Discussion to reach an agreement’. We like this definition because it simplifies what negotiation means, takes some of the mystery away (or even for some people the distaste around how negotiating can feel manipulative), and opens up our understanding of all the times we’re actually negotiating, even if we don’t recognise that’s what we’re doing.
For example, how many times during a bid will you, as a bidder, have ‘a discussion to reach agreement’ on some aspect of the bid process or the bid itself?
The bid-no bid decision is often based on a discussion about the merits of the opportunity. You might think it’s unlikely your organisation will win as no pre-work has been done on it, you don’t know the customer’s requirements, and a competitor does, and you’ve got other more winnable bids to do. However, the salesperson might disagree and want you to bid. What agreement does that discussion usually lead to? How often does your view prevail?
You (or someone on your team) are likely to discuss input to the bid with subject matter experts to agree what input you’ll get and when. How easy are those discussions to reach the agreement you need?
Who will write different bids or answers? What goes into the storyboard? What edits are included in the final submission? What will the price be? These are all discussions you need to reach an agreement on in order to get a winning bid submitted. In fact, they are all negotiations.
Even when you get home, discussing what you’ll eat, watch on TV, do at the weekend (if you’re not finishing off that bid which needs submitting on Monday), and where you’ll go on holiday.
These are all discussions to reach an agreement; they’re all negotiations you might not realise you’re having.
So, what if you had even a slightly better understanding of the processes that help reach an agreement during a discussion? What if you could spot how others are approaching the discussion? What if you better understood the possible options around the agreements you could reach and how to reach them more smoothly? Not just the traditional ‘I win, you lose’ options, or even the ‘haggling-until-we’re-both-not-entirely-happy-but-can-tolerate-what’s-agreed’ options, but real win-win options, or things you hadn’t even thought of before the discussion.
Understanding a bit more about the fundamentals of negotiation can help you with all those, and by having the right type of discussion, you can gain a deeper understanding of the other person’s aims, needs and challenges, and they of yours, which can help build a better relationship, making future discussions even more productive.
So, with all that in mind, how do you feel about your involvement as a bidder in negotiations? Will you prioritise knowledge a little more feeling more confident about negotiating as a route to improving your bidding?
‘Learn to Negotiate Effectively’ is just one of the modules in our ‘Management and Leadership Skills for Bidders’ online course.
The module takes you through the details of what negotiation is, how you can negotiate better and more confidently, and how to put those skills and approaches into action in your bid team and beyond, every day.
Because the course was created by bidders, for bidders, we link the skills and approaches included in the course to what you do every day in bidding. That helps you easily understand the ideas and effectively translate them into action within your bidding role. To find out more, sign up for our newsletter, or sign up for the course here.
Written by Nigel Thacker
Nigel helps organisations retain their current contracts at rebid, build their bidding capabilities, and helps bidders and bid teams develop their skills and careers. He has been leading bids, bid teams and businesses for over two decades, winning £bn’s in contract value and has also created, led and grown training and management development capabilities in large, multinational organisations. Nigel led successful bid teams in multinational FTSE 100, PE owned Healthcare, medium and small businesses and trained managers in bidding across the UK, USA, Australasia, Europe and the Middle East. He is APMP Practitioner certified, and has a Diploma in Company Direction from the Institute of Directors, as well as an MA in Marketing, and is also a mentor on the APMP UK Rapport mentoring programme. He runs the leading bid consultancy Rebidding Solutions and has published two books on rebidding, including The Rebid Guide. Nigel has also just launched www.mybidcareer.co.uk, the first Management and Leadership Skills course helping bidders become better, more successful managers and leaders of bid teams.