Innovative bid submissions to retain business critical contracts
Background
Our customer is a global logistics business, employing more than 60,000 people worldwide.
The Challenge
The business provides complete logistics support to several of the biggest Food Service businesses in the UK. Deals are worth millions of pounds and run for ten years at a time, representing one of the company’s central sources of income.
Our services supported bids for two of their most significant existing contracts, which were due to renew in the same year. Securing this business was vital as the foundation for all their UK business. As the known incumbent, they couldn’t use a ‘promise the earth’ approach, often employed by new suppliers. They needed to demonstrate a continuity of high-quality delivery and bring innovation and creativity into their customers’ quest for improvement.
Our role was to tell these stories in two compelling and must-win bids.
£600m+ of contracts won
The Solution
The Sales Engine team, supported by the design talents of our sister company, Eyeful Presentations, developed an engagement strategy to learn about the audience, test key messages and refine our approach. This was rolled out before the bid process started to inform the basis of the submission.
Working with the sales and marketing teams, we created Thought Leadership content that discussed the future of food services logistics and, within this, positioned unique elements that we knew would be differentiators in the final bid.
The objective was to use this process to ‘seed’ the final tender brief with several requirements, knowing this would give our customer an advantage. We did this by monitoring engagement with content and conducting discussions with specific individuals to help guide and steer the direction of the tender.
When the final bid document was released, there were now several requirements in the specification which we knew would not be expected by the other bidders, thus giving our customer a clear advantage.
For the final submission, we harnessed the same solution platform, which the customer had now grown familiar with, and used it to deliver not just the response document
(beautifully done in InDesign) but also animated video explainers and an executive summary as a video –all to show that even an incumbent can innovate and change the game.
The Result
We’re delighted to say that they retained both contracts.
One for seven years’ worth circa £210m and the other for ten years at a value of circa £400m.
In both cases, the company awarding the contracts commented on the thoroughness of the bid submission and the outstanding efforts invested in demonstrating the value and impact they could deliver. Our customer had positioned themselves as future industry pioneers and deemed the best fit for the job.
This is an excellent example of the comprehensive Sales Engine approach. We use strategic planning, strong messaging and knowing when to use the right tools and technology at the right time to successfully streamline and integrate People, Processes and Tools, delivering remarkable results.
Two contracts generating
7-10 years of income
