Product: RFP response process
Company: Maritz Research Europe (Customer experience research agency)
Clients: Ford, Volvo, Orange, Nissan, Renault, Jaguar Land Rover, Everything Everywhere, Goodyear, Bridgestone, GM Europe, Intercontinental Hotel Group, Nationwide, Whitbread, ITV, Aston Martin, Sky, etc.
Challenge: To change what was, historically, a singular approach to bid responses by creating a team-led approach that resulted in a more comprehensive proposal.
Objective: To re-define our bid process documentation to secure final short list status.
Solution: By engaging with key internal stakeholders to provide time, thought and energy to the process allowed us to create a ‘wow’ factor as soon as our response landed on a prospect’s desk.
Working with different disciplines together in the same room, at the same time, allowed internal team members to see far more clearly how their part of the solution fitted in with the five or six (or more on occasion) other parts of the response. It also allowed a far more comprehensive overview, a new impetus of creativity and quicker decision making. Although not all team members were present for all of the time, because creative ideas had been shared pro-actively a previously unrecognised level of trust and confidence was built up within the team. This level of teamwork became immediately apparent during the stand-ups where we came across as one team, with one goal.
The hard outcome of this approach was a ‘whoomp doc’ that created an immediate wow-factor with our prospects, and more importantly it made us clearly stand out in the eye of the prospect – and from that moment on everyone else was playing catch up. It always led to final shortlist and stand-ups.
I subsequently created an internal resource which made it easier for anyone to collate this information (of over 100 documents) for themselves.
Result: We have won more revenue in the last three year period than in any other in the history of the 110 year old company. The European revenue has more than qudrupled, and we became the clear leader in auto customer experience programmes by winning the largest market share of CE projects available in this space. Other sectors now have an even firmer foundation to build upon. The President of Maritz Research (US based) commented that this new approach led to “the best global pitch presentation that I have seen in nearly thirty years.”