Three Ways Proposals are Like Building a House
I know I’ve been on a bit of a hiatus from this blog for the
last two months or so—it’s been a busy end of the year! For those of you who
don’t know, Kevin and I are in the process of building our dream home. It wasn’t
something we set out on this year planning to do—we just kind of…fell into it.
As you know, safe, socially distanced activities have been limited during the
pandemic, so Kevin and I got creative in June. We decided to pretend
we were house hunting and set up an appointment to see an extravagant, overdone
home about 20 minutes outside the city. Harmless fun, right? The problem is
that we actually fell in love with the neighborhood and decided to start
meeting with the different builders to find out more about the process.
Fast-forward five months, and we are getting ready to break
ground on our new home next month. We couldn’t be more excited. However, as I
look back on the process, and can’t help but draw some parallels between the home
building process and proposals. So here goes!
#1 It Really Is Important to Understand the Customer
If there is one thing you should know about Kevin, he likes
to go big. So of course, through this process, we have decided to build a fully
custom home. The good news is that we have an amazing builder with a great architect.
The bad news is that the architect didn’t understand our priorities when he
developed his first design, and Kevin was ready to walk away! The architect
focused on our square footage limitations and our ideal budget, and in doing
so, sacrificed key features that were more important to us than budget (or
square footage). As customers, we had put out there our ideal world situation—but
the architect picked the wrong parameters to focus on. Before the initial
design, the architect didn’t ask us the right questions to understand where we were
willing to budge to get what we wanted—and so we almost walked away!
It’s the exact same way with proposals. It’s so critical to
really understand where the customer’s pain point are! If you develop a
solution that focuses on the parameters that are less important to the customer
and sacrifice the features that they really care about, you’re not likely to
win. That’s why the capture process is so critical. The capture team should
really work to ask the customers questions to dig into their key drivers and
pain points. Then the team should develop and vet with the customer potential
solutions before the RFP is released. This way the team can iterate with the customer
and really develop a solution that they’re happy with.
#2 Know the Decision Makers
Another thing that this experience highlighted for me is the
importance of understanding who on the customer’s end holds the most weight
when it comes to decision making. Going into the process, Kevin and I had very
different priorities. I tend to be more budget conscious and am willing to make
concessions to stay within a budget, while Kevin cares more about getting all
of the features that he wants. And despite the anxiety it causes me, Kevin
usually wins that battle. It is the same way with your customers. Different
stakeholders have different priorities; however, one typically has the final
say when it comes to decisions (the Source Selection Authority). It’s so
critical to understand your decision makers and what will make them happy with
your proposed solution.
#3 Not Everyone on the Team Should Be Customer Facing
Overall, we’ve really had a great experience with the home
building process to date. However, there is one person on the builder’s team
who is generally negative and tends to overstate costs, seemingly to deter
upgraded selections. Often what he quotes us on the fly doesn’t align with the
information we receive from others on the team, and so this becomes extremely
frustrating on our end. We dread interactions with him, and he generally decreases
our overall satisfaction with the process. If we could eliminate any direct
interaction with him, we’d probably enjoy the process much more overall.
The lesson from this: it really is true that one bad apple can spoil
the bin. This negative person really is critical to our builder’s team (I
believe he’s their Estimator)—but he tends to ruin our mood every time we
interact with him. We could be the outlier in terms of his interactions, but if
I were our builder, I’d think twice about having that individual interact with
customers. It’s no different with your capture team. For example, your Pricing
Manager is a certainly a critical member of the team. However, if your Pricing
Manager isn’t particularly great with people (or could have the tendency to rub
people the wrong way)—don’t push that customer interaction. Leave the customer interaction
to the sales team.
Final Thoughts
This truly has been an interesting year. I hope you’ve
enjoyed this little article that ties some fun corollaries between building a
home and the capture and proposal process. What this home building process has
really highlighted for me is that understanding the customer really is so, so
important. Not only do you have to understand the pain points of the different
stakeholders, but you have to understand each stakeholder’s role, including the
ultimate decision maker. But remember—all these activities take time! Start the
capture process early so you have time to get it all right before the RFP is
released. This will enable you to develop a proposal and solution that the
customer loves—which really is the best way to increase your overall
probability of win!
Written by Ashley Kayes, CP APMP
Senior Proposal Consultant, AOC Key Solutions, Inc. (KSI)
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