Outbidding the competition

First impressions count - and winning work these days involves a lot more than a dry and dusty tender document, writes Carolyn Roberson

Law firms are taking the process of bid management more seriously than ever before.

The days when the response to an invitation to tender (ITT) was a dry and uninspiring document merely listing the attributes of a firm are long gone.

Proposals based on past glories will not impress anyone.

Today, they need to combine the skills of presentation, innovation and motivation.

The most successful practices recognise that the proposal process is the first opportunity that prospective clients have to see you at work, and to measure the quality of your thinking and of your understanding of their business and its requirements.

How you approach the process gives prospective clients a sense of how they would be treated as clients.

Every action, or lack of action, makes an impression.

A positive response to any ITT must be based on an affirmative answer to three questions: is it the kind of work the firm wants? Will it be profitable? Do we have the people and skills to run it?

The basic requirement is for a universal bid management process.

It should be simple, effective and consistent.

It should start with the initial response to the ITT and end with the final debrief, win or lose.

Once the decision has been made to respond, then it is essential that the right team is assembled under the most appropriate leader to formulate the proposal.

The leader's role is not simply to be a technical lawyer.

Composition of the team must take into account the 'softer skills' as well as legal specialisms.

Many people omit the vital opportunity to request a 'scoping' discussion with the client where real needs are often uncovered and, equally importantly, relationships begin to develop.

The most successful firms are preparing propositions that focus on the client's business and not their own.

This requires a willingness to commit time and resource to research, to understanding the client's area of activity.

Without a scoping discussion, partner-led research and team brainstorming, it is impossible to develop a solution-oriented approach.

A document alone is never enough.

An ITT offers an opportunity to develop a relationship with a prospective client before the work is won.

The method with which a firm approaches the process provides a chance to demonstrate how it would work for the prospective client.

The bid team must dedicate time for blue-sky thinking.

What is this business looking for by reviewing its legal advisers? What can your firm do to make a difference? Then, how do you show that difference in a meaningful way? One important tip: nominate a 'client's champion' within the firm who can act as an informed, effective sounding board to the ideas developing out of the proposal process.

A refined bid management process should make heavy demands on partners and fee- earners.

No one individual has a monopoly of good ideas and it is important to create a culture where every member of the team has the confidence to contribute.

Whether or not you changed the way the prospective client has thought about the project or need is the acid test for success.

If so, you will be respected for creating some value.

If you have not, someone else will have done.

If the prospective client aims to reduce costs or increase profitability or enter new markets, to increase or decrease staffing or develop new brands - have you shown how you can help them achieve that?

Carolyn Roberson is national director of client and business development at Leeds and Manchester-based Addleshaw Booth & Co