9 to 5 in Bids? Avoiding team burnout

The tender deadline is sacrosanct! Irrespective of how onerous the requirements are or how little time the client has allowed for you to respond, missing it simply isn’t an option. But what have we learned over the past 18 months? Over to DAC Beachcroft’s Evan Morgan.

Evan Morgan, Head of Bids – Clients and Markets, DAC Beachcroft LLP

evmorgan@dacbeachcroft.com

In the world of professional services, the job of a bids manager/pitch manager/proposals manager (take your pick!) has never been the standard nine-to-five. Late evenings and, hopefully only the occasional weekend work, are not unusual. The deadline has to be hit and that brings pressure.

Bids management is tiring and stressful but it’s also fun and exhilarating. There is real satisfaction gained from successfully spinning all the different plates, cajoling numerous contributing parties and, ultimately, coming together as a team to ensure your firm puts their best foot forward.

In my experience, good bids managers – the ones that really stick at the role and continually excel - are something of an unusual breed. They are typically senior people with a broad, but sharp, skillset and a wealth of different professional experience behind them. They are good writers able to distil all types of content into a consistent sales narrative.

They are strong project managers with an eye for detail – you might even say that they have a healthy dose of control freak about them. They are constructively critical, effecting changes a tender might demand with people usually more senior than them. They are knowledgeable about what they are selling and have a good commercial awareness – both evidence-based and a reliable gut-feel on pricing.

They also have an instinctive chameleon aspect to their personality – drawing out the traits they need to maximise the engagement from their invariably very busy contributors. They appear calm at all times, even if internally there’s panic ensuing, and they hate losing tenders. Most importantly, whether they admit it or not, they actually enjoy the madness of the tender process!

Another factor to add into the mix is the ever-increasing number and complexity of formal tenders. During my time with DACB, the volume of tenders the firm handles annually has constantly increased. This is, in no small part, due to the sustained success of the firm, but it’s also down to the increased profile of formal procurement.

Fewer and fewer contracts are arranged without recourse to a tender process. And in the last few years, the complexity of those tenders has increased considerably. Unfortunately, the submission timescales haven’t extended to reflect this.

These increasing demands combined with the natural behaviours of good bids managers make for an interesting set of challenges and characteristics to manage effectively. My experience is that a strong bids team has an exceptionally good work ethic and close camaraderie. They have to deliver every time. The minute someone starts to coast is when the win rates start to fall, the essential new ideas stop being generated and the tender offering stops evolving.

Mental fatigue and burnout is amongst the biggest challenges in managing a bids team

There’s nothing unusual about this in any high performing environment but active management of it is vital both to retain good people and to keep winning tenders. You can’t just sit back and hope for a lull.

It’s not unusual to find that good bids managers are great at managing bids but sometimes a bit rubbish at managing their work/life balance. Prior to the pandemic, there were some easy release valves to turn to head off fatigue and burnout – the pint in the pub to say thanks after the two weeks of insane hours and hard graft; telling someone to knock off early and go remind themselves what daylight looks like; simply shaking their hand offering your heartfelt thanks and saying “well done”.

With the exception of the last point (excluding the handshaking!) these release valves have been largely removed thanks to the pandemic. And longer term, how people will look to work post-pandemic will impact how often we see people and how easy it is to proactively manage such issues.

So then, how to manage the threat mental fatigue and burnout when you don’t get to frequently see people in person anymore?

For me, it comes down to three key things:

  1. Team buy-in: Get the team to buy into a virtual way of working that protects their time, but still ensures deadlines are met and quality maintained
  2. Trust them to deliver: you need trust on both sides, line managers will always support their team members and the team members will deliver what’s needed
  3. Maintain communication: Make sure you speak to them regularly and not just about the next tender.

At DACB, we sat down as a bids team and discussed what would help us maintain our enthusiasm, renew our energy and aid collaboration.

“Bids management is tiring and stressful but it’s also fun and exhilarating. There is real satisfaction gained from successfully spinning all the different plates, cajoling numerous contributing parties and, ultimately, coming together as a team to ensure your firm puts their best foot forward.”

What did we need both as a team and as individuals during – and post – the pandemic to keep delivering?

DACB has always been good at “agile” working and our bids team were natural exponents of the concept prior to the pandemic.

The team already operated a hybrid model of home and office working but largely within the traditional structures of a typical working day. We looked at those structures and realised that we regularly shelved them as tender deadlines demanded.

So, we decided to incorporate a working structure that suited each individual team member:

  • Never really one for lunch at 12pm? Fine, have it at 3pm.
  • Easier to do a personal training session 10am? Do it then.
  • Need to split your day for childcare/school-runs? No problem.
  • Worked late the night before to hit the deadline? Recharge the batteries with a late start the next morning.

None of this is ground-breaking in of itself - all are simple straightforward things but Outputs and performance in a bids team are probably easier to measure than anywhere else in a sales and marketing functions because you have hard metrics, tender submission deadlines, win rates, tender evaluation scores, debriefs.

All of these things continued at the high level we expected of the team, but we also started to see ideas and innovations on how to do things better, how to improve and evolve our offering. The team had the energy and the headspace to focus on improvements and new ideas.

What makes this work as a team is a clear understanding of what we need to deliver and how we need to operate as a team

As long as you keep your diary up to date and are transparent, it works really well. Ultimately it’s about trusting your people and encouraging them to always have each other’s backs. We treat people as professionals, trusting them to deliver – and they always do. If you have to micro manage a bids team, then you’re not going to get the best ideas, the best submissions and the best results.

This still leaves us with the challenge of keeping the overall team dynamic working positively whilst maintaining the benefits of actual in-person interactions

Interestingly, no one in the team was keen on working from home on a full-time basis post-pandemic. And with DACB launching a brilliant new working styles initiative, Flex Forward , they definitely want to make greater use of working on a hybrid basis. Flex Forward is about empowering our colleagues to control their time in line with the firm’s ethos of “A life that works”.

In our bids team, all members wanted to be in the office at some point in the week so they can see their colleagues. We also agreed as a team that we would all attend the office on the same day so that positive office buzz is experienced regularly, if nothing else.

Of course, there is still an onus on me as head of bids, to keep regular conversations going with individuals. For me, it’s imperative to know your people and give them the chance to speak to you if they need to, but also to spot anything that might suggest they want help with something. In bids, it’s easy to hide away with the excuse of an all-consuming tender. Checking in regularly is a must.

Has it worked?

It definitely has. We conducted a survey (again that point around open communication!) amongst the team to explore if they felt their work/life balance had improved from last year. The majority answer was yes. Most commented on how good they are finding the flexibility to deliver their working day outside of the traditional structures:

“I feel I have more control over my work life balance now. (Well, as much as bid managers ever have any control over that!)“

“My work/life balance has definitely got better. WFH and not having to commute, and that added flexibility is one of the big things that makes DACB where I want to work.

“The flexibility around your working day has made life easier for dog walks/exercise. It’s also good to know you can take a big break when you need it and around meetings (particularly when evening meetings are needed with partners).”

About the author

Evan Morgan is Head of Bids at international law firm, DAC Beachcroft, where he has been helping them to win tenders for ten years. Prior to that he worked in commercial finance and sales both here in the UK and in his hometown of Dublin.

dacbeachcroft.com