This is why sales people spend a lot of time and energy on them, with unfortunately very low success rates in most cases.
So what are the secrets of success for publishers who win their tenders?
1. They have a privileged relationship with their key accounts
The first key to success in responding to calls for tenders is to initiate and maintain a quality relationship with your key account prospects.
If you have worked - as we hope you have! - on your business modelyou know who your gold, silver and bronze customers are. And you've thought about allocating your sales resources (time allocation and account assignment) according to this ranking, i.e. by prioritising your gold, then silver, and finally bronze targets. From then on, your sales people began to identify the key contacts within these accounts and to establish long-term relationships with them.
Objective: to create and establish trust in order to gather valuable information on the internal organisation and the current strategic issues for the company.
Marketing can effectively support them in this task, by producing "tailor-made" content to nurture a personalised "value-added" relationship with their interlocutors (articles or infographics corresponding to their interests, for example).
It's also a good way to stay top of mind and ensure that you are "on their radar" when they choose which companies to consult for a new project!
2. They are familiar with the "playing field" of the tender
It is this long-term relationship of trust that enables sales representatives to work on another decisive point for improving their conversion rate with key accounts: the "mapping" of the account. This is one of the key elements of the Method of 1, and an essential point when you want to control your sales process and stop making your sales results depend mainly on the "luck" factor or on external factors that are not under control, as Caroline Jurado, CEO and founder of the start-up Linkky, points out in her testimony about our collaboration.
Internal organisation, influencers and decision-makers within the account, apparent and invisible relationships, specific or collective internal issues, priority objectives, sectoral constraints and market context
These are all elements of detailed knowledge of a prospect that make it possible to identify his or her expectations (whether conscious or not) and to target the offers that best correspond to them.
And also, as we shall see later, to construct the discourse to which he will be most sensitive.
This is a step that should not be neglected, with one point to bear in mind: the mapping of an account is never "fixed ". It evolves not only over time and according to internal movements, but also differs for each case. It should therefore be reconsidered for each new call for tenders: the sales director may have been your best internal promoter when a CRM solution was set up, but may turn out to be a fierce opponent when new marketing tools are implemented, if the latter calls into question the working habits of his team, for example!
3. They make sure they are always one step ahead
Another decisive element in any key account sale, but even more so when it is part of a call for tenders: having privileged and priority access to information!
The legal framework for calls for tender is extremely regulated, and once the consultation has been launched, many constraints "restrict" the action of sales representatives: a single contact person is imposed, a duty of confidentiality concerning the other companies consulted and their position, a ban on contacting the decision-makers directly, extreme formalism of the call for proposals and responses, etc.
In fact, the only effective way to influence the outcome of a tender by refining the relevance of your commercial response is before it is officially published!
Consider that if you discover the call for tenders the day you receive it in your mailbox, you are already at a serious disadvantage, because you have very few commercial levers to act on, and they are not the most pleasing ones (price...).
Those who understand this devote a lot of attention and energy to points 1 and 2 above, partly because of this. If there is a relationship of trust and regular communication, chances are you will hear about a consultation when it is still in the planning stage. - that you will be able to get key information from the various internal contacts who are most familiar with the issue.
4. They know how to make a difference...
If you have integrated the first three points into your sales methods and your commercial organisation, then you have the tools that will enable you to differentiate yourself from your competitors: you have an idea of the budget envisaged, the internal organisational constraints that will have an impact on the project's implementation, the key contacts and their expectations, the arguments of the project's internal "opponents
From then on, you will be able to "play your cards right" and determine in a relevant way: the offers and services to put forward, the type of support to offer the customer, your price positioning, and more generally, your commercial tactics for this business.
Last but not least:
you are able to construct the speech that will strike a chord with your interlocutors.
Presenting an offer that matches the client's expectations has certainly enabled you to get past the pre-selection stage. This is good. But it's no use if you're not the best afterwards at the oral presentation stage!
It is during this last stage, the one that decides the final result of the consultation, that the sales approach patiently put in place from the beginning takes on its full meaning and bears fruit: the detailed knowledge of the account and its key contacts that your sales representatives have acquired over the previous months will enable you to develop an original discourse around your solutions and todirect the spotlight towards the points that will resonate most with your contacts.
Armed with your knowledge of their personal issues, you may even have the luxury of making your interlocutors "allies" during your presentation, by inviting them to express themselves, to give their opinions and to "co-construct" the choice of solution with you during your presentation.
What better way to make them want to work with you than to involve them in the choice of options and to get them to plan the rest of the project with you?
It is an approach that has enabled many of our clients to significantly improve their conversion rates and the amount of business they win!
Time is a precious resource. Are your sales people short of it? In this webinar, Kestio explains how to save 50% of their time:
