The bid room is full of egos. Whether is the production manager locking down the template and refusing to unlock it until after a duel to the death, the graphics artist always knowing best, the subject matter expert that thinks the client is clueless and they shou ld have asked a much better question instead or the bid leaders that pick a position and stick to it until the grim death. The question is, who should have the biggest ego in the...

When explaining a concept, principle, process or anything really, how much does you choice of analogy damage your credibility? We have all been the situation – you are trying to explain something to an individual or group that is potentially complicated to understand or at best, slightly tricky to follow. At this point, we humans draw upon an analogy. Some people seem to pride themselves on inventing what they believe are humorous,...

An important part of every bid is the post bid review. This should happen from two perspectives: Internal – with the bid team to understand what in the process worked well, what made it more difficult and the reasons for that. External – with the customer win or lose, the customer will tell you much more about you and your competition. So, how soon after submission should you hold the internal review? Too early and it will be too...

When working on a bid, the submission deadline is king and drives the schedule of reviews, draft submissions and graphics deadlines. But, what happens if the solution you are developing content about i s not finalised? Or worse, what if it hasn’t even been decided yet? The first question to answer in this situation is: why?  We all search for bidding utopia when a solution is beautifully developed and defined before the bid response...