Avoiding bids burnout and getting technical sales content right first time, every time
More visuals! Better graphics! Use of videos! It’s all smoke and mirrors if your sales content isn’t up to scratch. So how do you get your subject matter experts to write better technical content when responding to a client’s invitation to tender? You train them differently, says Paul Taylor
Any marketing and business development (BD) professional who has worked on a formal tender learns hard and fast that getting the right content from your contributors, on time, can feel like capturing rain water in a sieve.
It’s understandable when you put yourself in their shoes; they were trained to be lawyers, accountants and consultants. Most of them will never have anticipated in their training how much time they would need to spend actually selling themselves, either in person or through a formal tender, to clients, in addition to actually doing their day job.
As they move up the ranks their involvement in business development only increases. And inevitably they get an urgent email from a bids manager asking them to provide a CV, case study, answer to a technical question for a bid – within 24 hours. Yikes.
Often as marketing and BD professionals we might receive information back from them that isn’t exactly what we asked for: Bid Manager: Hi Busy Partner. [I am going to ask how you are, but I really just want to know if you can hit my internal deadline]. Can you provide a case study on your recent work with client X, highlighting how you added value, drove efficiencies, saved them money and delivered a brilliant outcome? I need it by COP tomorrow. Oh, and you only have 250 words to write, so don’t worry, it won’t take you long…
Busy partner: Eh?
As frustrating as it can be for us, imagine how it feels to be them.
So how do we get our subject matter experts to write better technical content when responding to a client’s invitation to tender? We train them. But importantly we train them to think differently.
DACB Bid Writers Workshop
This title might sound boring, but it does exactly what it says on the tin.
In 2019, we devised an in-house workshop to upskill our legal population on bids writing. Our objectives were to:
- Improve lawyers’ understanding of the bids process and the key steps involved in any tender (from pre-tender workshops through to post-tender debriefs and actions).
- Put themselves in their clients’ shoes on what it’s like to receive and score a tender from a professional services provider.
- Get them to practice writing better content first time using the Features, Advantages and Benefits approach.
- Help them understand the importance of not bidding for every opportunity, but for the right ones. This will protect their time, avoid bids burnout, drive up our win rate and ultimately bring in profitable revenue for the firm.
So, how did we do it?
We knew it was a big ask – we would need 2.5 hours of time from busy lawyers for each workshop. So, we met with each of our sector heads at DACB and “pitched” our workshop idea to get buy in at a senior/board level.
Our business leaders loved the idea! As is typical with most law firms, the number of lawyers with the right skills to deliver great bid content was smaller than we would have liked. Our goal was to expand and deepen the pool of lawyers, across all grades who could contribute the content we needed.
So, we got to work identifying key contributors to bids across our business. We also looked ahead at our pipeline of activity in the next 12 months and expected retenders.
“One of the best outcomes was that we didn’t need to pay an external training agency to deliver the workshop at £3k per day. It was all done in house by our leading team of 10 bids professionals. We made it relevant and personal and were able to use their expertise to answer questions our lawyers had on bids, BD and wider client issues.”
How did we deliver it?
In 2019, we had high hopes of delivering the workshops face-to-face and travelling across our network of DACB offices from London to Dublin, Madrid to Miami and Singapore.
But then 2020 happened! So, we embraced Zoom and MS Teams. A positive unexpected side effect of the pandemic was that we were able to mix our groups of people across our offices and practice areas; people who hadn’t worked together before and were now thrown into a workshop with our bids team.
So, as well as learning about bids, writing better content and understanding how to sell to clients more effectively, they also learned how to cross-sell themselves to each other internally.
Did our lawyers enjoy the workshop?
Yes. We sought feedback after each session. Many of our lawyers said they had never had sales and BD training like this before.
They loved the hands-on practical nature of it. For example, that we used real bid opportunities in the workshop to make it relevant to their area of law.
Our attendees also commented that it has given them an insight into how to sell more effectively in wider BD opportunities.
One of the best outcomes was that we didn’t need to pay an external training agency to deliver the workshop at £3k per day. It was all done in house by our leading team of 10 bids professionals. We made it relevant and personal and were able to use their expertise to answer questions our lawyers had on bids, BD and wider client issues. They were also able to challenge entrenched thinking on what we could and couldn’t do within a tender to a client.
What was the outcome?
- To date we have trained over 120 lawyers across the DACB network.
- Alongside our other ongoing bid improvement initiatives, our win rate has increased by 8% from the previous year.
- Our lawyers are spending less time on the bids they are working on, as they are following our first draft structure and writing about client specific benefits first time, every time.
- We have refocussed even further on bidding for the right opportunities. Our bid managers are no longer feeling the bid fatigue all such specialists feel at some point in their careers. They are each able to work on other continuous improvement projects to drive more efficiencies within our bids team, and ultimately for our clients, and have some much needed down-time between bids.
- We have retained existing clients and also won a roster of new clients at DACB in the past year, including new panel appointments for Sainsbury’s and easyJet.
What is next?
As bids professionals, we love a continuous improvement process!
So, we are currently working through all of the feedback from our lawyers and crafting Bids Writers Workshop 2.0 for launch later this year. Our bids team is looking forward to the continued evolution of our workshops, to ensure we keep delivering the results we have seen in the last year.
And now that we have better content, we can further capitalise through the use of visuals, graphics and videos mentioned at the top of this article in the right way, for the right opportunities!
Paul Taylor is deputy bids team leader at international law firm, DAC Beachcroft. He previously worked at Eversheds Sutherland where he helped set up their central Pitch Team. He has over 15 years’ experience in formal pitching to win new work, working with clients across the public and private sectors.