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My Competition Gave Up Today

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I was on the hot seat.  I’d already burned through $50,000 in overhead budget.  The Executive Vice President had flown 1500 miles to question me face-to-face because I had asked him for another $50,000.  He asked, “Are you going to win this?”  I answered, “Sir, it’s already won.”

Confidence and Risk

He gave me the $50,000.

We Had Already Won

My mind was saying: “…because our competition gave up today.”  The Air Force had issued the Request for Proposal (RFP) months before; the three-volume proposal writing was already wearing everybody down.   The prize was a $35-million-dollar five-year contract to provide engineering services to the Air Force.

The Air Force was not making it easy on the bidders.  The Air Force procurement office had just released the third RFP “amendment”.  In government contracting “RFP amendment” means “drop everything and get ready to change your 300-page proposal”.  The Air Force had shown signs there would  be more amendments.  We needed more overhead budget to keep going.

Was I Going To Give Up?

I believed “my competition gave up today”.  Either that day or sometime soon during what would turn out to be eight amendments over eight more months, I believed my competition would give up.  If they didn’t give up publicly and withdraw, I knew that one or more of them would at least give up mentally.  They’d become less diligent responding to the amendments.  Or they would not have the guts to ask for more overhead budget to keep going this long.  Or they’d be unsuccessful at getting more budget, since they couldn’t be convincing to themselves or their bosses that they could win the $35 million.

Not like I could be.  Because our evidence told us we’d already won.

You Need Endurance and Grit

We could endure because we’d already won.  But we’d already won because we’d already endured.  We had already done the longest, hardest work of the project:  knowing the deep, often unspoken, needs of the client, and satisfying that need.  Even when it was hard to do and required endurance and grit.  (You’ll enjoy what the latest research has to say about grit.)  We had endured and already done the hardest work.

Because Endurance Makes the Risk Less Risky

As the months passed, we kept looking for unspoken needs.  We kept satisfying the client.  We endured.  But we knew we were well thought of by the clients, both the user buyer and the purse-strings buyer, so it made enduring easier and the risk less risky.  [The technical buyer stayed a wild card; you can hear about “Dan the Contracts Man” in my TEDx Talk of 2014!]

It was all a humongous effort, but it was worth it because…

My Competition Gave Up Today

You’re not going to give up, are you?  You won’t give up just because the process got more uncertain, will you?  It was always uncertain, but you worked your plan to obtain more data and act on the data.  Are you still doing that?   Still working your plan?  Still satisfying the deepest needs?

You won’t give up just because the process got longer, will you?  Don’t be silly.  Either you’ve won this thing already, or you have a plan to close all the gaps, knock down all the red flags, and satisfy the clients’ deepest needs.  In which case, you’ve already won.

Don’t give up.

And by the way…

We won.

Click “comment” above and tell us about a time you didn’t give up. 

Or about a time you did give up but you remember the lesson you learned.   I look forward to the chat.

 

Which Emotion Does Your Company Sell?

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A plumber sells family peace and quiet and a lack of embarrassment.

A hairdresser sells that winning feeling of gliding into a room knowing that your.  hair.  is.  shining.

A t-shirt printer sells the emotion of free speech.

What Emotion Does An Eco Company Sell?

A maker of green products would say he’s selling you a smaller ecological footprint.  I say he’s selling you the emotion that you’re helping, that you’re part of something larger than yourself, something you can be proud of.  He might then say he’s selling you the emotion that you’ve discovered a new partner to join you in the fight to protect the planet.

Writing these is fun; which ones can you add?  Let’s see…

What Emotion Does Apple Sell?

Apple sells minds gone wild with the power of searching and seeing and choice.

Nike sells hope.

Go Deep

Financial planners say they sell “peace of mind”.  That’s a good start.  I’d like to suggest that what they sell is the look on your face when they tell you you have enough stashed away to quit your job and start your own company.

As of Aug 2014 I’m not selling anything on this site, but through my words I sell successful days at work for business developers and risk takers.  I strive to fulfill a brand promise where my readers, at the end of the day at work, take a breath, offer up a slight smile, and have this emotion:  “I took that risk and I did well.  This was a successful day.”

What Emotion Does Your Company Sell?

What emotion does your company sell?  You might answer “peace of mind” or “confidence (in their refrigerator)”.  That’s a good start.  But “peace of mind” and “confidence” are everyone’s answer.  So take a moment and dig deeper.

What emotion does your company sell?  The answer is wrapped up in an emotional way with your company’s brand and your brand promise.

Or an easy way to pin down the emotion your company sells is that it’s the same as your brand.  Have you ever thought of it that way?  Some people may not respond well to the statement that your brand is “that winning feeling of gliding into a room”, but phrases exactly like that are what we can build a brand experience on.

Can You Sell Her More Time?

If you’re at an engineering firm, you sell your client not just engineering solutions at a fair price.  I hope you sell her the feeling of a worry-free, easy day at work with more time to work on her other projects.  How do you do that?  Because your solutions always work and are always on time and on budget.  Because you submit your reports as a few slides, already in the style she likes to use for her presentations.   (All details, calculations, etc are in separate brief attachments on stick drives she can pass out.)

Sell Her An Easy Day

You make her day easy and give her the emotion of free time when your solutions are easily implementable, when you send along a highly usable, extremely brief training program without being asked and whenever it’s needed, complete with webinar slides with a few bullets each waiting for her in the cloud  (it didn’t cut into your profits much because it’s THAT short, which is how the client wants it anyway).

You give her the feeling of an easy day when her coworkers compliment you to her saying that your team gives prompt, concise, easily understood answers and that you’re a pleasure to work with.  She feels good because she chose you.

By the way, this exercise applies just as much to non-profits as it does to any other firm, just as much to bloggers as to architects.

What emotion does your company sell?  An easy day?  A feel-good day?

Please comment.  Please add to our list of what emotions people sell to you.  What emotion does your company sell?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Do This To Make The Big Risks Smaller

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When you face risk, one way to go forward is to work to get more data that will let you reduce the risk in your mind and gain comfort.

It Comes Whether You Want It or Not

Another way to look at a risky situation is that, in an uncertain terrain, more and more data will be coming at you.  You can’t stop it from coming.  You CAN watch for it, take it in, reject nothing, compile it, assemble it, deduce from it, learn from it.  Risk = more data inbound.  Always.  If you’re watching.

What If The Risk Is Still Too High?

If the risk remains intolerably high, it might mean you don’t have enough data.  You may be at the point of needing the last data, and they’re hard to come by.  Your competitors probably don’t have the last data either.  What will you do to win the project?

You Win

When you’re smart enough to isolate the last data you need and obtain it, your risk falls.  But your competitors’ risk stays the same, and they may decide not to play.

If they play, they will make untenable claims in the proposal because they don’t know how else to address the risk.  Your client might see through their claims.  Use your meeting time with the client before the decision is made to point out the “risky” areas in the scope of work, point out how you solved the problem in your proposal, and how others might not have.   In the end, you win because you knew that risk is just data.

Does this help how you think about risk?  How can you make your next proposal easier and make it more likely to win?  Please join the discussion.

 

Why Won’t The Client Call Back?

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Has this happened to you?  You’re in the midst of an important project, and the client just refuses to call you back.  Provokes a lot of anxiety in you, doesn’t it?

In the midst of projects when clients seem to refuse to call back, I say to my teams and my coaching clients: “Don’t worry.  When you’re as good at this as you are, and work as hard as you do, it’s not going to turn out that you were the problem.”

It’s Not You

I mean it’s not going to turn out to be their fault that the client didn’t call back this week.  It’s going to turn out that the client’s time was preempted by a dozen other things, or the client was sick, or on vacation, or wasn’t able to call back for a hundred other reasons.

But Notice The Facts

Notice the facts here: “When you’re as good at this as you are, and work as hard as you do”.  When all that is true, it won’t turn out that you were the problem.

But…

But if you could be better at technical or managerial skills, or better at your people skills and client skills, if perhaps you haven’t been working that hard to keep this client satisfied, then maybe it IS you.  Maybe you ARE the reason they didn’t call back.

But…

But when you are skilled, you work smart, you work hard, you’ve been proactive, you’ve announced problems and work-around plans early on, and you keep answering questions and needs from the client’s point-of-view, you are not going to be the reason they didn’t call back.

I hope this helps your morale.  It’s certainly helped me and my teams.  Can you see yourself using this technique when the client won’t call back?  Please comment and join the discussion.

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