We often bid for government work ourselves and have found, over time, that the key to a successful bid process is effective communication, something that can be harder than you anticipate when working across departmental and regional boundaries.

We’ve started using Basecamp (www.basecamp.com) to manage our bids and we thought we’d share how we use the tool and the benefits it brings. Its worth mentioning a little bit about Basecamp, although it is billed as a project management tool, it feels more like a collaborative communication tool to us. What it does best is to centralise all the communications between a team and then channel those communications to the individual tasks in a project. This makes it perfect for managing a bid, especially across teams working in different locations. Basecamp also allows for individuals from different organisations to be included on a project so sub-contractors and lawyers can also get involved in any bid.

Defining tasks
Our first action is to add the key dates to Basecamp’s calendar, giving everyone a clear view of the time constraints involved in the tender. The next thing we do is to break down the whole bid into a series of distinct tasks. Doing this job thoroughly and precisely is the most important part of working with Basecamp, missing out key elements can have severe consequences later on. We usually break down the tasks in four main groupings as follows: Compliance, Response, Sub-contracting,  and Submission.

Compliance covers legals, approvals and any other pieces of attending documentation that are required for the bid, e.g. indemnity insurance certificates or questions to the buyer. Our Response tasks detail each of the questions requiring a response for the tender. Sub-contracting covers any communication or tasks that are specific to working with sub-contractors and finally the Submission list lays out all the tasks relating to compiling, formatting and publishing our tender submission.

Writing good tasks
Recently we’ve been focussing on trying to make our task list as precise as possible, so we’re trying to get away from writing up imprecise tasks like “Indeminity Insurance Certs”. Instead we’re trying to make our communications more effective, so we split the task down “Check indemnity insurance is compliant”, “Check indemnity insurance renewal dates” and “Upload Indemnity Insurance Certs”. This level of precision requires an up-front time investment but it means that we’re much more prepared and always completely aware of what is left in order to get our submission done.

Discussions
Basecamp offers the chance to run discussions against any task, uploaded file or calendar event. It also has the ability to create general discussions for the whole project. We use the general discussions to consider ‘global issues’  such as which lots we will bid for, with task and document discussions for the nitty gritty associated with getting approvals. Task discussions are actually where we do the drafting of our responses, as one person can submit the copy they want to see in a response and then invite others to comment. This prevents a situation where a bid writer or manager is holed up for days writing a full first draft before anyone else reviews or responds on anything. Breaking down each response into a task allows other team members to comment on every bit of copy as soon as it is written. Team members can check and review our submission on a daily or even hourly basis, senior staff are more involved and they can build their reviews into their working days rather than having to carve out time to review a full draft.

Compiling our submission
As individual responses are refined, they are added to a Basecamp text document, again this can be the subject of further discussion if you want, but we prefer to just use this tool as a compiler for the final document. Once we’ve compiled all of the completed material, we can output the text file to a proper word processing package for proofing, formatting and presentation. We’ve consciously decided against using document mark-up at an early stage, that’s because its rubbish if you’re making wholesale changes to a document, we only use it when changes are small and limited (every ten words or so).

Benefits
Working on bids with Basecamp has given us some interesting benefits, firstly its easier to involve more people earlier in the process, so we take fewer wrong turns during our bidding. Secondly, everyone can easily see what needs to be done by when. This puts an end to some of the more unrealistic expectations especially when there are multiple bids to submit over a short timeframe. Finally, everything gets securely held in one place, where it can be accessed by anyone working on the bid.

So, if you’re looking for a bid management tool that covers the basics of getting everyone to input and submit a bid on time, you should definitely look at Basecamp.

Caveats
We should also mention that Basecamp isn’t a complex bid management tool, if your bid is so large and unwieldy that you can’t do the pricing on a spreadsheet, then Basecamp probably isn’t for you. We tend to work on research and professional services bids, so that are usually fairly straightforward, so it is perfect tool that makes managing a bid much, much easier.

Government organisations don’t compete, so there is nothing stopping them sharing information and opinions about their suppliers. This can be difficult if you’re the type of supplier who is inclined to say one thing to one customer and a different thing to another customer.

If this is what you like doing, don’t be surprised if you lose your position of trust as a result.

We’re aware of a large services company that has been less than consistent with their messages in one area of government. Their name is mud.

Their team is viewed not just with mistrust, but contempt.

Their failure to be straight is being reported and shared at the highest levels of procurement profession in government. The repercussions could be far greater than the small amount of business at stake when they decided to be economical with the truth.

It takes no time at all to gather a poor reputation, and there is nothing a public sector procurement professional likes more than handing out a lesson to a supplier who has fallen short.

Probity and openness isn’t something to be costed into your approach when doing business in government, it is utterly essential. If you can’t be consistent, honest and open to scrutiny, don’t do business with government.

If my post here doesn’t put you off, then your next step is to understand how government buys.

There’s plenty of pretty ordinary advice published by government (sorry but they don’t do really useful advice) which you can access.

If you wade through all of this you’ll pick up the intricacies about what rules government has to abide by when spending money.

Yes, it is a pain, but no, there is no shortcut, you have to know how this process works, if you don’t know, the buyer will think you’re not serious, because the process is king.

Did you get that? The process is king, that is the most important thing for you to remember. You can forget how long an OJEU process takes to run, but you can’t ever forget that the process is paramount and you won’t get anywhere by ignoring the process.

For the people who think that there must be some sort of secret way to get around the process and get straight to the top-table, you’re not really thinking this through are you? No one wants to give you business without going through the process. The process is how buyers exercise control, it’s how they make sure that their career doesn’t get panned, it’s how they get good prices.

That’s the reason why the process is king, all the benefits of using the process fall to the buyer, why would they give away their advantage to you?

There’s a procurement regulation that goes something like this: if you can prove that your service cannot be provided by anyone else then it may not be necessary to go to tender and a contract can be awarded straight away.

Usually when suppliers that are new to government find out about this they think “Brilliant, we’ve found our shortcut round the tendering process, because after all, our product is absolutely unique”.

If you think that selling to government like this is a sustainable strategy, then you’re deluded and you need to have a long chat with yourself.

If your buyer thinks this is a good idea, then they need to have an even longer chat with themselves.

If you follow this approach you need to think about three things. Firstly you’re relying on a subjective assessment of your uniqueness, which means that you need each buyer to believe that you’re unique for you to succeed.

Secondly, are you really unique? There’s no one else in the whole of the country, let alone the rest of the world, doing what you do? No one? OK, if you still think you’re unique, is there anyone doing something that delivers a similar outcome to the one you deliver? If that’s the case, can you honestly explain why they shouldn’t have a chance to compete for the business?

Finally, you need to think about probity. How would it look with a journalist writing a story about the way that the contract was awarded? Which is exactly why procurement managers don’t let it happen.

If a public sector buyer is suggesting it, he or she probably doesn’t understand procurement, and they also seem to think that the rules don’t apply to them, which is a pretty good way to upset your seniors and to bring an end to your career in government.

If you’re sensible, you’ll ask for a proper tender sooner rather than later.

“Our service will…”

(liar, liar, liar)

“We have a comprehensive…”

(no you don’t, no you don’t)

If you want someone in government to buy your services, assume that they don’t believe a word you say.

Not one word.

They won’t believe your claims for improved performance, better management, increased efficiency or return on investment.

How did it get like this? Well, too many people have bought too much stuff that simply doesn’t match up to the promise. The result? People in government have begun to mistrust anyone with a profit motive. They’re inclined to think ‘what are they not telling me?’

They don’t trust you, they don’t believe you and they’re right not to.

So what do you do? Well you’ve got two options, if you’ve got a product you can let buyers try your product before they buy but they need to be able to do this in an unhindered and unrestricted manner,
and without you looking over their shoulder.

The other option is to get other people to speak on your behalf. The basic rule of thumb here is to use a reference to evidence every claim you make. Every claim. It will be even better if you can use a public
sector reference to prove your evidence.

So, don’t make claims for your products at all, get others to make claims for your products. Make sure that those claims are either made by the client or made by people who are as much like your target buyer as possible.

Now they’re having a conversation that they can trust.

There’s a simple reason why you can’t sell to government: you can’t go through a process of ‘closing’ a deal without ending up in a tender process, or at very least a process of comparing competing quotes.
Once you’re responding to a tender you’re locked into a bidding process which means using bidding techniques, not sales techniques. Of course you can use sales techniques during a bid if you want, but
you’re likely to be giving your buyer the hump and making it harder from them to buy from you.

The real problem with using sales techniques is that government doesn’t buy anything. I know that doesn’t make sense, but hear me out. Government tenders for things, so prior to the tender if they’re
meeting with you they’re focused on trying to gather the information they need to publish a good tender. If you’re already in the tender process then they’re focused on running a successful tender, which means they’re focused on process, audit trails, scoring and negotiating. Sure, at the end of the process they’ll sign a deal, but they’re concerned with the outcome delivered by the tendering process
and the rules of the tendering process trumps everything else. So whilst most people might think of it as buying, they’re rigidly tendering according to the law and that’s what drives any transaction.

Right now, all the sales professionals who’ve been winning business in government are jumping up and down and saying “this is rubbish, I’ve been successfully selling into government for years and they’ve been buying our services for years”. I’m sorry, but you’re wrong, you’ve been successfully marketing and then bidding into government for years, your attempts at selling into government have been a waste of time and your customers have been thinking that you’re the human equivalent of spam.

Apart from the fact that government tenders rather than buys, it doesn’t help that most public servants are allergic to the sales process, so when they hear a sales pitch all they think is: “she’s lying, she’s lying, she’s lying”. They grit their teeth and try and get through the meeting, because they need information, but they’d be happier if they could spend the time burying forks into their legs.

The only approach that works in government is to build advocacy for your product within the buying organisation.

If you’re used to winning contracts in a corporate environment, but you’ve never sold to government, you might be thinking along these lines:

“The UK government spends around £22.6bn on goods and services. I must be a fool if I can’t find some business from a sector that is worth that much.”

There is some merit to that thought, but it bears closer inspection.If you’re a small or medium business, the market size is probably less than 10% of that work, so in one swoop, we’re talking about £2.26bn.
By the way, that definition of small and medium businesses covers businesses with less than 250 employees, so we’re not talking about bootstrapped start-ups.

If you’re a micro business (less than 5 employees), your market size will shrink by the same factor again, that’s still £226m, but if you think about how many micro businesses are striving for that business across all of government, well you’d better not plan on being a millionaire tomorrow.

Then there’s the fact that there isn’t really a single ‘government market’, its made up of five smaller markets, there’s central government, local government, health, education and justice to consider. They don’t really buy the same things and each area of government will expect you to have understood the challenges they face in their particular sector.

If you manage to build a specialisation in local government, don’t assume you will have any credit in the health market, to the protagonists in each, they are as different from each other as catering and legal services.

So, with a specialisation in one sector, e.g. local government, that means you’ve got £45m distributed between all the micro businesses in that sector.

Let’s add another problem, every part of government is trying to save huge amounts of money. So it is also a shrinking market.

And we haven’t even got to the point where you discover how painful it is to tender for business.

So, unless you really need to sell to government, I would forget it. That doesn’t mean don’t do it, it means only do it if you’ve got a high pain threshold.