Consultants in bid management

There are three major reasons why you may need an external bid manager.

You do not normally bid

Some companies do not normally manage bids as a standard process within their business.

This may be because they do not often get involved in competitive bids. This is understandable. These companies may normally sell to their existing clients or they may get additional sales through recommendations from their existing clients. As a result, they may not have to take part in competitive bids except for major new customers that they are keen to work with. It is not surprising that these companies would not have a formal bid process.

It is also not surprising that these companies generally welcome an external bid manager to work with them under contract for the duration of a bid.
You have no bid process

Other companies may be involved in competitive bids regularly, but they may have no formal bid process. This may seem extraordinary, but there is still a belief held by many companies - and especially by their sales staff - that anyone who can sell can also manage a bid. Some companies are not even aware that there is a skill known as "bid management".

These companies need an external bid manager who can bring skills and experience to them.

Sometimes, they need the disciplines of bid management to be introduced as a formal process, with their own staff trained as bid managers.
You need more bid managers

For companies who manage bids as part of their normal routine and who have bid processes in place and who have their own bid managers, there may be a temporary need for an additional bid manager.

For consultants, bid management is a skill that is useful to them, in three ways.

Service for bidding clients

First, it is a service that they can sell to those clients who need to manage bids in order to gain new business.

If the client has never used formal bid management processes before, the best way for you to work with consultants is between bids, so that they can start by setting up your policies and procedures for bid management. When a customer or prospect requests you to bid, the consultant can manage the bid. This gives them an opportunity to adjust the policies and procedures in the light of practical experience within your company.

For subsequent bids, they can gradually hand over responsibility to your trainees bid managers, while continuing to refine the policies and procedures.

Even when the consultant has handed over entirely, you can continue to retain them to provide checks on how the whole process is working.
Process for internal use

Second, it is a skill that consultants continually apply in their own bids.

This is certainly true if they are free-lance consultants. They know the value of convincing prospects of the need for their particular skills and experience. Bid management can help consultants to define ways to influence their clients.

It is also true of many large consulting companies and firms.

Consultants are therefore continually refining their bid management techniques based on their own practical experience. When appointing a consultant, it is useful to get the people who actually do the bid management within their own firms.
Service for acquiring clients

Third, consultants can apply their knowledge of how the bid management process works to help you if you are about to approach the market for products and services. Knowing how the bids will be managed within professional responding suppliers will enable you to build requests for proposals or tender documents that will enable those suppliers to give you the best solutions for your needs.

It will also enable you to understand the objectives of particular suggestions and initiatives from bidders, so that you can adopt them if they help to move the selection process forward or reject them if they are bid management "ploys" for the bidder to seize control.

So, bid management is one of those techniques that you can trust to consultants who bid competitively themselves: you will get the benefit of their experience rather than a set of theories based on arms-length research. It can also be applied when you are issuing requests to bid, to enable you to understand how the people receiving your requests will go about preparing their bids.