From time to time, some of our clients see their “strike rates” heading downward: Spending more time and money to win fewer projects. Often, this is the catalyst for firms to re-examine their Proposal Strategies.
Your “strike rate” is the ratio of successful proposals to total proposals submitted.
There can be many reasons for a decline in strike rates. Sometimes the reasons are not obvious to firm leaders, simply because they are too close to the problem to have perspective on it.
In these situations, PSMJ helps practice leaders step back and look at their strategies from an external, rather than internal, point of view. That exercise typically results in a hard re-assessment of approach – and a new, more market-responsive and successful methodology.
You Asked...
Click a question to see the answer
-
Why is our strike rate declining?
Often we find that architects and engineers are having strike rate declines because of their proposal-writing approach. Sometimes there are other reasons; for example:
- The firm is going after projects that are “wired” e.g. the tender process is a sham, and the winning designer has already been selected. The tender process is really only there to comply with tendering rules or to “price check” the preferred tenderer. It is usually difficult to determine if a project is “wired”, but there are some strategies you can use.
- The client’s tender review people have changed their priorities; e.g. may be placing more emphasis on “ticking every box” than previously, or other factors have become more important in selection priorities
- The project is unfunded; the tender process is just sending up a trial balloon to test the market.
- Interactions on past projects have left a “bad taste”; there are people in the client group that don’t want to use you again, for whatever reason.
- Clients feel that your project experience isn’t what they want.
Whatever the reason, regardless of how difficult it might be to find out the real reasons, tendering where your chance of success is low is a waste of money. It’s worth at least trying to find out why.