As mentioned in many previous installments, the decision on whether to bid on a project is critical to success. Poor decisions will drain your company of its expensive, precious proposal resources and you will end up in a downward, losing spiral. Losing proposals produce staff burnout. You can ask your staff to miss their child's soccer game only so many times. Furthermore, countless billable hours are lost - never to be regained - when you devote your staff resources to proposals that have no chance of success.

General Guidelines for Making the Bid/No Bid Decision Are as Follows:

Do not bid if:

• Customer relationships are nonexistent or weak.
• There is an incumbent and you do not know if the customer wants them back or not.
• You know the customer prefers another company.
• You do not have a solution to the customer's problem (note - not the one in the RFP, but the real problem which you have smoked out during sales calls).
• You have any doubts about your chances of success.

Lean toward a no bid if:

• Your customer relationships are solid but (i) you know the government is talking with others, and (ii) you are not sure what they think of your company or the competition
• You do not know who wrote the RFP and who is on the evaluation committee.

Strong indicators that you shouldn't bid:

• You are unsure of or fear a competitor.
• You think the sales staff may not be as tight with the customer as they say.
• You have any doubts about your chances of success.

Bid if:

• Your customer relationships are strong.
• You know the customer's hot buttons and you have the solution they want.
• There is an incumbent contractor, you know the end user does not want them back, and you have a relationship with the customer.
• You can significantly lessen their fears (by reducing the end user's risk).

An article by Jay Herther, in the Spring/Summer 2006 issue of the Journal of the Association of Proposal Management Professionals, says it all (APMP.org). Mr.Herther says, in closing, "If you use the concepts and tools in this article, you can avoid a dreaded customer debriefing quote, 'Sure, I'll tell you why you lost, if you tell me why you bid!'"