Navigating the Pressure
Most bid professionals know that a good bid/no-bid process is vital. Many have those processes in place.
Far fewer are enabled to routinely follow them.
- “We have a really good feeling about this opportunity!”
- “It’s unexpected, but the contract value is so high that we have to go for it!”
- “We need to be seen to throw our hat in the ring!”
It can be hard to push back on leaders who forgo proper qualification processes in favour of the above justifications. The result is that you end up wasting valuable resources on opportunities you’re unlikely to win.
Standing Firm in Bid/No-Bid Decisions at BPC Dublin 2025
At BPC Dublin, we discovered the secrets to standing our ground in bid/no-bid decisions, courtesy of three wonderful speakers:
Leveraging AI for Smarter Decisions
Christina Godfrey Carter told us how to argue our case, using the ‘Deep Research’ function on ChatGPT to create data-backed qualification in minutes.
By anonymizing your CRM data and feeding it to ChatGPT, you can unearth patterns in your wins and losses, figure out how well positioned you really are, and have a strong, well-evidenced argument against pursuing unfit opportunities.
Measuring Readiness
Wouter van Tienhoven CP APMP talked us through the Capability Maturity Model, and explained how more mature organizations may use an approach akin to Advance’s Scotsman method (my favourite for obvious reasons). This involves measuring the strength of your position in eight categories: Solution, Competition, Originality, Time, Size, Money, Authority and Need.
Qualifying to Win
Michael Gerner CF APMP MMIAM broke down the RAW business development checklist for assessing an opportunity:
- Is it real?
- Is it attractive?
- Can we win it?
- Can we bid it?
- Can we deliver it?
"If you want to win, you need to win before you go to war, rather than going to war and looking to win. Qualify in or out early and stick to it!"
Have you ever stood your ground against sales leadership in a bid/no-bid decision?
