What makes a great Executive Summary?

The purpose of an Executive Summary is to convince the buyer to say “yes” to your proposal. Unfortunately, many fall far short of this aim.

Here’s what an Executive Summary is not:

·      It’s not an “introduction” to the proposal.

·      It’s not a summary of the technical solution.

·      And it’s definitely not all about you – and nothing about the buyer.

A good Executive Summary sets out your commercial argument for the business in a clear and confident tone. A great executive summary does even more than this; it connects the buyer emotionally with your offering and your vision, and sets out an exciting future that they couldn’t possibly say no to.

Here’s how to distinguish an average Executive Summary from really great ones that will win you business:

Average Executive Summaries…	Great Executive Summaries…
Show how you will do the job	Show how you will deliver value
Talk about you and your credentials	Talk about them and their future
Make you sound like every other supplier	Make you sound like the only people they would want to work with
Are professional, detached, and a bit of a dull read	Are conversational, enthusiastic and interesting to read
Look like the one that was in the last proposal	Look fresh and exciting; are written specifically for each new opportunity
Sound like they are talking to no one in particular	Are a conversation at the highest level; as if your CEO was talking directly to the buyer

Next time, try writing your Executive Summary before you write your proposal. This will help you to get clear on your strategy, identify gaps and holes in the evidence you have to support the strategy, and build your team’s connection to the vision.

Robyn Haydon is a business development consultant specialising in business that is won through competitive bids and tenders. Her clients have won and retained hundreds of millions of dollars worth of business with many of Australia’s largest corporate and government buyers. Re-Engage is my training and coaching program for organisations with multiple major accounts. It will give your people the framework, skills, and confidence to lead contract renewals with your existing customers. Email info@robynhaydon.com or call 03 9557 4585 to find out more.

How to use testimonials in a proposal

Customer testimonials bring your proposal to life. They show how you have approached a similar contract or project in the past, and the results you achieved. And because they come from a third party, they also provide independent verification of the value of what you’re offering.

A customer testimonial is simply a statement in the client's own words, describing how you helped them.  This is valuable, because a customer can boast of your successes in a way that is simply not possible when making the same claims yourself.

Consider this example. An organisation was tendering for a contract to run a large event. They had recently acquired a trade show previously operated by the governing body in the same industry, and their success in running this show was a key selling point in the proposal. 

In this extract from their proposal, notice how the tenderer’s more modest description of the success of the event is magnified by the client’s enthusiastic praise:

Two years ago, Total Events acquired the (Industry) Expo previously owned by (Industry Governing Body). Expo 2015 was the first show run by Total Events and record numbers of delegates, visitors and exhibitors were achieved.

“Total Events has taken an already–successful show and improved it beyond what we dreamed possible. Expo 2015 broke all previous records for delegates, visitors and exhibitors by almost 20%.  We couldn’t be happier.” Simon Schraeder, CEO, (Industry Governing Body)

We have always trusted the recommendation of people who are like us over anything that a company might want to sell to us, and now it seems we are willing to extend this trust to total strangers too. 

A study by Socialnomics showed that 90% of people using social media trust peer recommendations, but only 14% trust advertisements. Another study, by Social Media Week, showed that we trust the recommendations of website reviews (54%) almost as much as the opinion of professionals (58%) – both of whom are likely to be total strangers.

The ideal way to use testimonials in a proposal is to seed them throughout, wherever they will best support your claims.  A page of general testimonial letters at the back is far less effective.

For an important pitch, it is a good idea to go back to your clients or referees for new testimonials that are tailored to your Purchaser Value Topics (win themes). If you are using the client as a referee, make sure you include their testimonial alongside the referee’s contact details in your proposal. This will give the buyer some context and background when they call the referee, and be more likely to result in a positive first impression.

Robyn Haydon is a business development consultant specialising in business that is won through competitive bids and tenders. Her clients have won and retained hundreds of millions of dollars worth of business with many of Australia’s largest corporate and government buyers. Re-Engage is my training and coaching program for organisations with multiple major accounts. It will give your people the framework, skills, and confidence to lead contract renewals with your existing customers. Email info@robynhaydon.com or call 03 9557 4585 to find out more.

Would your proposal get a standing ovation?

When we're pitching something new to a customer, our main task is to convince them that will be better off with us than they would be without us. This means transporting them to a brighter, bolder future that they never knew existed; something that too many proposals simply fail to do.

Recently, I saw the stage show Velvet, a disco mash-up featuring burlesque, circus performers and one of Australia’s most enduring pop stars, Marcia Hines.

In the real world, the show ran 90 minutes. In the Velvet world, this felt like only 90 seconds. It was that good.

From the opening bars of the disco classic If You Could Read My Mind to Craig Read’s exuberant, pink and yellow lycra-clad hula-hoop act set to the thumping beat of Shake Your Groove Thing, Velvet was like being transported straight to Studio 54 circa 1974. By the end of the show, DJ Joe Accaria had every single person in the Malthouse Theatre on their feet clapping, cheering and dancing to Earth, Wind and Fire's September – one of my favourite songs of all time. As a pitch for the life-changing power of disco, you’ll never see anything better.

When was the last time you could honestly say that a pitch or proposal you worked on got that kind of reaction - from you, from your team, or from the customer?

Instead of offering a tantalising glimpse into a better future, many proposals feel like a slow descent into purgatory.

Something important gets lost in the translation between the vision in our heads and the words that come out on paper. That’s a real shame, because the picture in your head is often a lot more enticing and transformative than the pitch on the page.

A study of 418 executive-level buyers at companies with more than 100 employees by Forrester Research found that 74% of buyers chose vendors who have worked with them to turn a vision into a clear path to value, compared to those who simply respond to a request.

Next time you’re working on an important pitch or proposal, picture a magical place – the place that you know exists – and take your customers there, instead. Then they’ll be clapping and cheering; at least, on the inside.

Robyn Haydon is a business development consultant specialising in business that is won through competitive bids and tenders. Her clients have won and retained hundreds of millions of dollars worth of business with many of Australia’s largest corporate and government buyers. Re-Engage is my training and coaching program for organisations with multiple major accounts. It will give your people the framework, skills, and confidence to lead contract renewals with your existing customers. Email info@robynhaydon.com or call 03 9557 4585 to find out more.

What’s in it for me?

When you're the incumbent supplier seeking to retain a customer or contract, big-noting yourself is almost impossible. The customer has experienced how you work, heard about everything you’ve already done (good and bad) and seen you warts and all. Good performance is just an expectation; it’s what you are being paid for. The customer isn’t going to give you a gold star for meeting your KPIs. That’s why relying on your track record when it comes to competing for business you already have is never a successful strategy for incumbents.

Culturally, at least here in Australia, our aversion to other people big-noting their achievements begins early. This year, my son started Year Four, and he and his friends have been learning all about leadership. This culminated in each of the kids campaigning for a junior school leadership position, like Sports Leader, Arts Leader, Environment Leader, Social Responsibility Leader or membership of Student Representative Council.

On the day the kids had to make their pitch to each other, I asked my son how it had gone. His first reaction was one of disdain. "Some people are just show-offs," he said, clearly unimpressed by students who had spent most of their time telling the kids about their own achievements. I asked if there were any pitches he had liked. He told me about a few who had outlined their plans to make things better for others, through imaginative fundraising campaigns, looking after the school grounds, and the inevitable vote-grabber; campaigning for TVs and cushions in the boys’ restrooms. (Apparently, “the girls have them”.)

What’s in it for me? Every buyer (or voter) asks this question, whether they already know and work with us, or not.

When you're pitching again for business you already have, resist the urge to talk only about what you’ve already done, or risk sounding like a know-it-all that no one wants to vote for. Spend at least half of your time outlining your plan to build the customer’s future; this immediately switches the focus from pitching to helping, and you’ll find it comes as a relief both to you and to your audience.

Robyn Haydon is a business development consultant specialising in business that is won through competitive bids and tenders. Her clients have won and retained hundreds of millions of dollars worth of business with many of Australia’s largest corporate and government buyers. Re-Engage is my training and coaching program for organisations with multiple major accounts. It will give your people the framework, skills, and confidence to lead contract renewals with your existing customers. Email info@robynhaydon.com or call 03 9557 4585 to find out more.

Five ways to give your clients’ customers an outstanding service experience

The people who engage and pay you (your clients) might be different to the people you provide a service to (the client’s customers).

Acting as an extension of the client’s business is different to acting for yourself.

No matter how much commercial sense it makes on paper, giving over any part of their business to a supplier to manage – especially when it involves their customers – will make your clients nervous at best. At worst, it can make them feel like they’re being operated on without an anaesthetic.

Recently, the Commonwealth Bank’s insurance arm, CommInsure, has been the focus of a Fairfax Media/Four Corners investigation which alleges that CommInsure has pressured doctors to alter or delete medical records and opinions so it can avoid paying claims. CommInsure covers nearly 3 million people through its contracts to offer life and total permanent disability policies to members of nine industry and two public sector super funds. Since the investigation, several of these funds have publicly demanded assurances from CommInsure regarding the treatment of their members, and it has been reported that CommInsure risks the loss of contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars as a result.

“Your customer is my customer.” It’s an easy thing to say, but not so easy to get right. Here are five ways to deliver exemplary service to your clients’ customers, and to make sure that your good intentions in doing so are always on show.

1. Survey customers frequently, and provide honest feedback to the client about what they say about you.
2. Commit to improving your service, follow through and explain what you did and why you did it.
3. When contemplating a course of action with an individual customer, ask: "is this what our client would want us to do?"
4. Get out in front of problems. Own up, show up, and fix it up - fast.
5. Provide a narrative stream of good news in your regular performance reports. This will counteract any negative news, which often gets a disproportionate amount of airtime (and shouting).

Robyn Haydon is a business development consultant specialising in business that is won through competitive bids and tenders. Her clients have won and retained hundreds of millions of dollars worth of business with many of Australia’s largest corporate and government buyers. Re-Engage is my training and coaching program for organisations with multiple major accounts. It will give your people the framework, skills, and confidence to lead contract renewals with your existing customers. Email info@robynhaydon.com or call 03 9557 4585 to find out more.

The problem with “customer obsession”

Management guru Peter Drucker once said that the purpose of a business is to create and keep a customer. Whether a business is for-profit or not-for-profit, we need customers to invest in us, to choose us, to buy from us, and to keep doing so over time.

For most organisations, the first step in this journey – customer focus – simply means to observe what the customer does, to serve their needs, and to put their satisfaction above everything else.

So far, so good. But customer focus is a bit like bird-watching; it’s a one-way activity.

Progressive organisations realised that we needed to do more than this, so we became customer-centric. Essentially, this means putting the customer at the heart of the decisions we make; understanding how they come into contact with us; and how our internal processes help (or hinder) our relationship. This evolution has largely been a positive one, and for many is still underway.

Now, however, I'm starting to see another change in the way that we talk about customers – customer obsession. This, however, is not a change for the better.

When we are obsessed with something, it’s usually because it is something we cannot have. The term 'obsession' is associated with repetitive negative thinking – fear, compulsion and addiction – and behaviours like stalking and harassment. That doesn’t sound fun or desirable. It sounds like something that will get you a date with a magistrate.

Why then, are commentators starting to tell us we need a “customer obsession”?

What's really going on here is that suppliers feel as though we have lost our power in relationship to customers. But this is not true. Any time we have something that someone wants, we have power too. What our customers really have is choice. And so do we.

We can choose to think in terms of customer engagement, not customer obsession. Instead of coming from a place of fear, engagement comes from a place of conviction and belief; that we can help our customers build their future. And that’s a change for the better.

Robyn Haydon is a business development consultant specialising in business that is won through competitive bids and tenders. Her clients have won and retained hundreds of millions of dollars worth of business with many of Australia’s largest corporate and government buyers. Re-Engage is my training and coaching program for organisations with multiple major accounts. It will give your people the framework, skills, and confidence to lead contract renewals with your existing customers. Email info@robynhaydon.com or call 03 9557 4585 to find out more.

What’s your re-engagement strategy?

On the weekend I was talking to friend of mine, Tim, who nine months ago landed a seven-figure deal with one Australia’s major government buyers. In three months’ time, the business comes up for renewal, so of course we were talking about his strategy to retain it.

It was a short conversation, but I was pretty impressed. Tim had thought of everything; he knew exactly how he was going to influence the customer not only to stay with his firm, but to improve and expand on its program of work over the next 12 months of the contract.

Most of the people I talk to are not like Tim.

Tim begins this game with three advantages:

1.     He is a partner in a small consulting firm, and he gets to do pretty much what he likes.

2.     This customer is Tim's only account, and he has the luxury of seeing to their every whim – full time – while a team of his staff take care of day-to-day delivery.

3.     The program of work his firm is doing is expected to take years (possibly decades). It’s very unlikely that the customer will go anywhere else in the short to medium term.

In contrast, most of the customer relationship managers, contract managers and account managers that I know manage multiple customers, many of whom are on very short contracts. A question I get asked a lot is, "How do I give my customers the attention that I want to give them, and that they deserve, without sacrificing everything else that I need to do?"

That's why I'm so excited to introduce my Re-Engage Program.

Re-Engage is designed for businesses who have teams running multiple customer accounts, and who need to drive renewal strategy for all of them – at the same time.

Doing this is a lot like juggling plates.

You need to be able to give one customer your best thinking in a way that's quick and easy to achieve. Once you’ve got that plate up and spinning, you need to be able to get another plate up in the air quickly – for another customer. And so on.

On their own, each of your accounts may be small, but together they probably add up to a lot of revenue that could be at risk if there is no re-engagement strategy. That’s a lot of crashing plates.

If you think you might have a need for this kind of program, please contact me to get a copy of the white paper. Or maybe get a job like Tim’s.

Robyn Haydon is a business development consultant specialising in business that is won through competitive bids and tenders. Her clients have won and retained hundreds of millions of dollars worth of business with many of Australia’s largest corporate and government buyers. Re-Engage is my training and coaching program for organisations with multiple major accounts. It will give your people the framework, skills, and confidence to lead contract renewals with your existing customers. Email info@robynhaydon.com or call 03 9557 4585 to find out more.

The power of visualisation in winning again

Having to compete again for business we already have is pretty intense – a lot like the pressure faced by elite athletes. High-achieving sportspeople not only need to train, but they need a game plan that helps them visualise success. Once we have a plan like this too, success is just a matter of following the plan.

In elite sports, emotional conditioning is critical. Once you get to the Olympics, everyone is pretty equal physically. The athletes who can handle noise, stress, pressure, and distraction are often the ones that win.

Legendary American swimmer Michael Phelps is a good example. Over his career, Phelps won 18 gold medals - double the number of the second highest record holder - and credits his success to his practice of pre-race visualisation.

When Phelps started swimming at the age of 7, he admits that he was a tense and moody kind of kid. To counter this, his coach taught him to imagine himself swimming a perfect race- making smooth strokes, touching the edges of the pool, and ripping off his goggles at the finish to check his winning time. Throughout his career he pictured all of this regularly, with his eyes closed. He called it “watching his videotape."

Phelps believes that this pre-race preparation is what helped him set a gold record at the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games in the 200m butterfly, despite the fact that his goggles were filled with water at the time. When asked what it felt like to swim blind he simply said, "It felt like I imagined it would."

How great would it be to be this confident the next time you have to compete again for business you already have, and can’t afford to lose? And to stay confident, even when you’re facing noise, distractions, and the equivalent of a face full of water?

We can still squeeze you in at next week’s public workshop in Melbourne – or book for the next one in June. Or,  this program is also available in-house for your team. Contact me to find out more.

I’d love to help you visualise how you can achieve success. 

Robyn Haydon is a business development consultant specialising in business that is won through competitive bids and tenders. Her clients have won and retained hundreds of millions of dollars worth of business with many of Australia’s largest corporate and government buyers. Do you have ambitious growth targets this year? Keen to win the business you REALLY want, at the margins you want, and have more fun doing it? Let me help you to design and build an offer that is so commercially valuable, your target customers would be crazy not to buy it. For a copy of the white paper Pole Position - How to Achieve New Business Success, email info@robynhaydon.com or call 03 9557 4585 to find out more.

Be the choice you want your customers to make

In deciding to do business with us, customers have to make a choice. To decide actually means to “kill off choice”. While that choice can seem like a good one in the beginning, over time, doubts and worries can start to creep in, which eventually can result in the customer making another choice; to move their business somewhere else.

Last week, I had the pleasure of traveling into Melbourne CBD on public transport three days in a row, which is not something I normally do. While the morning trips were okay, two of the evening trips back home were an absolute nightmare.

On the first evening, the trip home went of without a hitch. On the second, the screen on the platform showed my train, stopping all stations, just about to arrive, so I got on it. At the first stop, the train started to reverse a little. I thought it had just overshot the station, but no. The doors closed and it sped back towards Southern Cross, the station I had just come from. Wondering what the hell was going on, I got out and took a look at the screen. Lucky I did. Suddenly this train was headed somewhere else and not at all where it said it was going originally. Hastily, I grabbed my gear and got off again. Eventually, another train arrived and I made it home without an unplanned detour to the outer southeast.

The third and final night was the worst. Standing again on the platform at Southern Cross, the screens promised a Frankston train coming in three minutes. When those three minutes had expired, the screen changed, and that train became a Flinders Street train. This switch on the screen happened three times in a row. No announcements, no explanation. Stuck in the city, without other options to get home, I stood there without a clue of what to do.

Half an hour passed without a train arriving, and finally I was forced to ask for help. Raelene, a friendly-looking woman who had just arrived on the platform, explained that I should go to Flinders Street and wait for a Frankston train there. Grateful for the advice, I asked my new transport buddy about my train-reversing problem from the previous night, keen to see if I was in fact going crazy. Apparently not. “That kind of thing happens all the time,” Raelene said. “Last week, I was on a train that said it was going to Frankston and actually ended up in North Melbourne (completely the opposite direction). I’d had a long day at work, and with my head buried in my Kindle, just didn’t notice the wrong stations whizzing by until it was too late.”

So, our train system is unpredictable. This in itself is probably not that surprising.

What really got me, though, is that the regular commuters on the platform that day didn’t seem shocked, like I was; they were just putting up with the bad service and working around it as best they could.

Eventually though, when it comes time for the government to renew the public transport contracts, I reckon these very same people will rise up like an army to voice their dissatisfaction.

Within every long-term customer relationship, there are niggles that everyone gets used to. People stop complaining about them, but that doesn't mean they're not there, and they can seriously derail your chances of winning the business for a second time.

If you'd like to explore this issue in your business, there are still a few places left in my one-day workshop How To Retain Your Most Important Contracts and Customers in two weeks’ time. Hope to see you there.

Robyn Haydon is a business development consultant specialising in business that is won through competitive bids and tenders. Her clients have won and retained hundreds of millions of dollars worth of business with many of Australia’s largest corporate and government buyers. Do you have ambitious growth targets this year? Keen to win the business you REALLY want, at the margins you want, and have more fun doing it? Let me help you to design and build an offer that is so commercially valuable, your target customers would be crazy not to buy it. For a copy of the white paper Pole Position - How to Achieve New Business Success, email info@robynhaydon.com or call 03 9557 4585 to find out more.

Who moved our cheese?

It takes time and effort to build new products and services, and to position for new business – all without a guarantee of return. So when times are good and the work is flowing in, it’s tempting to push this down the list of priorities. But fortunes can change quickly. And when they do, having a solid backup plan can mean the difference between hope and devastation.

During the week, the business press announced that supermarket giant Coles was replacing Bega, its current private label supplier for cheese, with a new supplier, Murray Goulburn, in a five year deal worth $130 million.

Loss of a contract this size isn’t great news for any company, especially a publicly listed one. However, Bega's CEO Aidan Coleman was on the front foot quickly with an explanation to the market about how Bega planned to replace the loss of revenue.

Supermarket private label contracts typically have low margins, although the contracts may be longer than usual (five or ten years).

In announcing the change, Coleman explained that Bega had been preparing for the loss of the Coles business, and was driving its brand towards higher margin and higher value added products.

For example, in late October, Bega announced a joint venture with Blackmores to produce infant formula. If you've been following the news recently, you will have seen that retailers have had to ration the sale of infant formula in Australian stores due to high demand from people buying to export back to China, following health scares in China with locally-produced formula.

Infant formula generates substantially higher margins and value add than private-label cheese products. Bega thinks it will be able to divert about $60 million worth of cheese inventory into the infant formula business, potentially compensating for the loss of the Coles contract. And although losses always hurt, at the same time, you can feel how excited Coleman is about the future of his business entering into this new market.

Only work you love and want more of is going to grow your margins.

Good, solid bread and butter work – although I’m sure you appreciate it – probably doesn’t fire your imagination any more.

And “marginal” work, like this private-label example, often doesn’t generate a good enough return compared to the productive capacity that is expended in delivering it.

We can’t control everything in business, but we can chart a course for where we want to go. 

Robyn Haydon is a business development consultant specialising in business that is won through competitive bids and tenders. Her clients have won and retained hundreds of millions of dollars worth of business with many of Australia’s largest corporate and government buyers. Do you have ambitious growth targets this year? Keen to win the business you REALLY want, at the margins you want, and have more fun doing it? Let me help you to design and build an offer that is so commercially valuable, your target customers would be crazy not to buy it. For a copy of the white paper Pole Position - How to Achieve New Business Success, email info@robynhaydon.com or call 03 9557 4585 to find out more.

Bridging the confidence gap

In the past few weeks, we’ve been talking about our own internal barriers to business development (as opposed to the barriers that customers and the market throw at us).

Practical barriers are the things we think we "need" in order to get out there and talk to people about what we offer (product information, marketing collateral, competitor research). Structural barriers are the systems that we create – for what seem like sensible reasons at the time – and that actually end up holding us back.

Psychological barriers, however, come from several places; lack of confidence, too many comparisons to others, and the experience of loss and rejection.

Let’s look at confidence first. Confidence can be a barrier, because in other people’s eyes, confidence equates to competence. This, in turn, has a huge effect on our ability to turn opportunities into sales.

In The Confidence Gap, Katty Kay and Claire Shipman point to a growing body of evidence that shows just how devastating a lack of confidence can be. Success, they found, correlates just as closely with confidence as it does with competence.

While Kay and Shipman’s research related specifically to confidence issues affecting women, lack of confidence is a problem for anyone working in a profession where public performance and scrutiny are a regular part of the job – like business development and sales. 

To overcome a lack of confidence, we might try to “fake it until we make it.” Unfortunately, this doesn’t work too well.

According to Cameron Anderson, a psychologist at UCLA (Berkeley), extremely confident people genuinely believe they are good, and it’s this self-belief that is attractive to others. “Fake confidence just doesn’t work in the same way,” he says. No matter how much bravado we muster, Anderson explains, others will pick up on our shifting eyes, rising voice and other giveaways.

In 2009, Anderson undertook a study to find out why confidence leads to a perception of competence. He gave a group of 242 students a list of historical names and events - including some that sounded plausible, but were actually completely made up - and asked them to tick off the ones they knew. Some students ticked off the fakes as well as the real events, implying that they thought they knew more than they actually did. Afterwards, Anderson also asked the students to rate one another according to their social standing within the group. The students who had picked the most fakes also achieved the best ratings – in other words, those who had the strongest confidence in their abilities also had the highest social standing.

Real confidence only really comes from self-belief: from understanding our true value. When you have done the work to establish the worth of what you’re doing and saying, it’s much harder to shake your confidence.

Robyn Haydon is a business development consultant specialising in business that is won through competitive bids and tenders. Her clients have won and retained hundreds of millions of dollars worth of business with many of Australia’s largest corporate and government buyers. Had a tough year? Missed out on business you really wanted? Let’s make sure 2016 is different. The Pole Position program will position you to win the opportunities on your radar for next year. Email info@robynhaydon.com or call 03 9557 4585 to find out more.

Structural barriers to business development

Legendary management guru Peter Drucker said that the purpose of a business is to create a customer. But in practice, what many of us spend our time doing seems to run contrary to this purpose.

Last week we considered the idea that there are thee primary internal barriers to business development – practical, structural and psychological – and looked at the practical barriers. These include lack of access to product information, marketing collateral, competitor research, or any one of a number of other things that we think we "need" in order to get out there and talk to people about what we offer.

This week, let’s look at the structural barriers. These are things that we have created - usually for what seemed like a sensible reason at the time - that actually end up getting in the way of our business development success. Here are a few examples:

·      Treating business development as a function, rather than a goal. This is what happens when we employ a salesperson or business development person and expect them to carry everything, while the rest of the business sees their responsibilities as simply to “deliver” on what they sell. This just doesn't work anymore (if it ever did). The most successful businesses are those where everybody is responsible in some way for business development. There’s no way that one person, or even a small group of people, can do everything that's necessary to create, present and deliver value for a customer.

·      Process for the sake of process.  Particularly in larger and older businesses, it’s common to see processes that have been set up to suit the business, and not the customer.  When someone says "this is the way we've always done things", it's a sign that this is an area that has become internally focused and is probably detrimental to delivering value for a customer. Processes should make things easier, but in fact often make them damned difficult.

·      The way we spend our time. Most of us spend way too much time on things that actually aren't very important, and not enough time on things that are. How much of your day is spent answering email? In meetings? Completing reports? Resolving problems for other people? Now, how much of your time do you get to spend on actually building new things, and creating value for customers? When we spend all our time reacting to things, we’re not creating anything new. And when we’re not creating anything new, we are not building anything valuable for customers to buy.

Is your structure holding you back from achieving the success you deserve? Peel back some layers and ask whether they are creating, or inhibiting, value for customers.

Robyn Haydon is a business development consultant specialising in business that is won through competitive bids and tenders. Her clients have won and retained hundreds of millions of dollars worth of business with many of Australia’s largest corporate and government buyers. Had a tough year? Missed out on business you really wanted? Let’s make sure 2016 is different. The Pole Position program will position you to win the opportunities on your radar for next year. Email info@robynhaydon.com or call 03 9557 4585 to find out more.

Get out there and get on with it!

When it comes to new business development, there are a number of barriers that we will all face from time to time.

These can be internal barriers –the barriers that we make ourselves, or that come from within us – or external barriers, which come from outside of ourselves, including the barriers put up for us by customers and competitors.

One of the internal barriers is what I call “practical barriers”. This includes lack of access to product information, marketing collateral, competitor research, or any one of a number of other things that we think we "need" in order to get out there and talk to people about what we do and offer.

It can be hard to argue with practical barriers. After all, a thing either exists or it doesn’t.

However, when our reluctance to “do” business development is primarily about our lack of brochures, slide decks, white papers, and those sorts of things, what this really means is that we’re not yet sold on what we are supposed to be selling.

The first sale is always to yourself. If you aren’t sold, no one else will be.

In their book Conviction, Peter Cook, Matt Church and Michael Henderson explain that it is more likely to be the person who is doing the selling who has objections – ‘too pricey, don’t need it, not now’ – instead of the customer.

In place of “objections”, they say, what customers really have is questions, considerations, alternative options and time. These are all things that we need to manage when educating ourselves about what are selling, and all of it comes before we try to educate a customer.

According to a study conducted by B2B research and advisory firm Sirius Decisions, up to 70% of content and collateral created marketing departments in business-to-business organisations sits unused anyway.

Practical barriers aren’t really barriers – they are more like “objections” we have to the idea of getting out there and talking to people about what we do.

Worry less about how good your PowerPoint slides are and think more about the value in what you’re selling.

Robyn Haydon is a business development consultant specialising in business that is won through competitive bids and tenders. Her clients have won and retained hundreds of millions of dollars worth of business with many of Australia’s largest corporate and government buyers. Had a tough year? Missed out on business you really wanted? Let’s make sure 2016 is different. The Pole Position program will position you to win the opportunities on your radar for next year. Email info@robynhaydon.com or call 03 9557 4585 to find out more.

What do customers really want?

What do customers really want? It’s a tantalising question, and the central mission of business development. Get it right, every time, and you'll have more business than you know what to do with.

But like the Holy Grail, the answer to this question can be frustratingly elusive. There are many reasons why this is the case. Here are just a few of them:

Personal differences. Like you and I, customers are complex beings. They don't all want the same thing. It doesn't matter if they have the same problems, are in the same industry, or work for the same company.

Changing priorities. Even the exact same buyer may want one thing one day, but something else the next.

Invisible forces. We can never possibly hope to know everything there is to know about another human being. We can't see everything that's going on inside their world or their head.

People have tried many things to overcome these problems; asking customers what they want, poring over a customer’s mission and vision statements, and telling them what other customers have done in similar situations. Some of this can be useful, to a point. But it is not without its problems. 

For example, have you ever bought a present for a friend who admired something in a shop window, only to find that when you give it to them, six months later, they have no recollection of it and it’s pretty clear that they don’t really want it?

Market research can be a bit like this. It turns out that market research (asking customers what they want) is a poor predictor of what they will actually buy. According to AcuPoll, as many as 95% of new products introduced each year fail. Time Magazine lists the top 3 product failures of all time as the Ford Edsell (1957), which cost $2.9 billion in today’s terms; the Hewlett Touch Pad (2011), which was discontinued almost immediately at a cost of $885m in assets and $755m in wind-down costs; and Crystal Pepsi (1992). All were backed by expensive market research and extensive marketing campaigns.

One useful way to figure out what customers really want is to watch what they do, not what they say.

Yesterday, The Age reported that Spotless Group lost a 31-year contract at Suncorp Stadium to the much smaller O'Brien Group (which employs 6,000 people to Spotless' 30,000) as part of an international tender. Suncorp said that the winning O'Brien bid "best met all key criteria" and described them as innovators, with a bid that included a plan to redevelop Suncorp's 70 bars and restaurants. It can be inferred from this that Suncorp valued the winner’s investment of time and thinking about how to revamp their hospitality suites and overall customer experience.

What are your customers spending their time on? Their energy? Their money?  This tells you what they are valuing right now, and give you clues as to how to frame your own offer. 

Robyn Haydon is a business development consultant specialising in business that is won through competitive bids and tenders. Her clients have won and retained hundreds of millions of dollars worth of business with many of Australia’s largest corporate and government buyers. Had a tough year? Missed out on business you really wanted? Let’s make sure 2016 is different. The Pole Position program will position you to win the opportunities on your radar for next year. Email info@robynhaydon.com or call 03 9557 4585 to find out more.

How to avoid becoming a commodity

Buyers don’t commoditise suppliers. We do that to ourselves, by not giving them the criteria to make a better choice.

Warren Buffet once said that “price is what you pay, value is what you get”. While it’s a simple idea on the surface, there’s a lot to this concept of value.

Price is easy to understand, which is probably why we default to it so often. “Value” is much harder.  Value is both a subjective and objective concept. It exists in tangible and intangible form.

Value is like a snowflake – no two people see value in exactly the same way.

What creates value for me probably won’t represent value for you. That’s because we have different hopes, dreams, goals and problems to solve.

Acccording to the Harvard Business Review, value in business markets is the worth in monetary terms of the technical, economic, service, and social benefits a (business) customer receives in exchange for the price it pays for (your) market offering. The HBR authors, James C. Anderson and James A. Narus, point out that these same customers are increasingly looking to their purchasing or procurement departments as a way to increase profits, and therefore will pressure suppliers to reduce prices. (No surprises there).

So, they argue, if we are to have any hope of getting our customers to think about total costs rather than simply the cost of acquisition, it’s essential to have an accurate understanding of what our customers value now, and would value in the future. 

Because of this, I reckon the way we run new business pursuits is completely wrong. We wait until customers tell us what they want, and then, like everyone else, try to give it to them – for the lowest price. And all the while, we know there is a better solution for the customer – if only we could crack the commercial value that will make them sit up and take notice.

A recent study on sales execution trends by Qvidian found that only 63% of salespeople actually make their targets, with pursuits ending in “no decision” the major reason for the shortfall. While four in 10 salespeople thought that an “inability to effectively communicate value” might be behind their lack of success, only half of them also chose this as a skill they needed to work on.

Understanding what customers truly value is the only way to combat price pressure, and to avoid becoming a commodity.

There is thought and work involved – certainly more than sitting and waiting for a tender to cross your desk – but it’s the most worthwhile work you will ever do.

Robyn Haydon is a business development consultant specialising in business that is won through competitive bids and tenders. Her clients have won and retained hundreds of millions of dollars worth of business with many of Australia’s largest corporate and government buyers. Had a tough year? Missed out on business you really wanted? Let’s make sure 2016 is different. The Pole Position program will position you to win the opportunities on your radar for next year. Email info@robynhaydon.com or call 03 9557 4585 to find out more.

Top 5 summer reads on business development and sales

The summer break is a great time to get inspired by new ideas. And it’s often the only time we have all year to read a book straight through without interruptions.

Here are my top 5 business development reads for the summer break.

All are bestsellers in their own genre, so if you haven’t had a chance to check them out yet, now is the perfect time:

·      Start with Why – A modern classic by Simon Sinek that tells us that customers don’t buy WHAT we do, they buy WHY we do it. This book will spark ideas about the context of what you’re selling.

·      The Challenger Sale – Dixon and Adamson present compelling research that explains why customers prefer suppliers who don’t just give them what they think they want, but instead “teach” them new ways to compete better and do business better. This book will help you think about the content of your offer.

·      Selling To Big Companies – Jill Konrath’s practical, easy to read guide on how to navigate large organisations and sell more successfully. This book gives helpful tips to re-think how you’re selling.

·      To Sell Is Human – An engaging and approachable read from Dan Pink about persuading, convincing and influencing others. This book provides a useful re-frame for experts and technical professionals about why what we do is actually “selling”.

·      Hooked – Gabrielle Dolan and Yamini Naidu have written the definitive text on how leaders connect, engage and inspire with storytelling. This book will expand your right-brain communication skills and help you connect emotionally, as well as rationally, with customers.

Wishing you a safe and happy festive season and the best of success in 2016.

Robyn Haydon is a business development consultant specialising in business that is won through competitive bids and tenders. Her clients have won and retained hundreds of millions of dollars worth of business with many of Australia’s largest corporate and government buyers. Had a tough year? Missed out on business you really wanted? Let’s make sure 2016 is different. The Pole Position program will position you to win the opportunities on your radar for next year. Email info@robynhaydon.com or call 03 9557 4585 to find out more.

What is the legacy of short-term thinking?

Short-term targets and short-term thinking are stifling the growth of too many businesses that should be doing much better than they are.

Last week, SmartCompany reported the results of MYOB’s most recent Business Monitor survey, revealing the top 5 pressure points for small and medium enterprises. The top two were “attracting new customers” and “pressure from competitive activity”. Not surprisingly, pressure on profitability and price also rate highly among businesses that have experienced a decline in revenue this year.

There’s no doubt that conditions are challenging, and probably will be for some time. According to Deloitte Access Economics, economic growth here in Australia is expected to remain below its long-term average until 2017.

But short-term thinking is not the answer. There are opportunities out there, as long as we are prepared to do the work and planning it takes to land them.

Remember The Young Ones on TV in the 1980s, with everyone’s favourite hippie Neil earnestly explaining that “We SOW the seed, nature GROWS the seed, then we EAT the seed”?

It’s funny because it’s so obvious, and as it turns out, much easier to say than to do.

Pressure to attract new customers, coupled with increased competition and fewer market opportunities create the perfect environment for a game of chase-your-tail.

It’s one thing to be powerfully motivated to move away from what we DON’T want. But until we have a clear idea of what we DO want, we may see a lot of activity, but also a great deal of fear and confusion that will hamper results.

This year, the stock value of Amazon.com ($248b) overtook the stock value of America’s largest bricks-and-mortar retailer, Walmart ($233b) for the first time. Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com, doesn’t take this for granted. “If we have a good quarter, it’s because of work we did 3, 4, 5 years ago. It’s not because we did a good job this quarter,” he says.

The work we do today on our business model, products, services and customers may not bear fruit immediately, but without it, there will be little to harvest in the long term.

The downtime over Christmas and New Year is the ideal opportunity to reflect on the rewards you’d like to reap next year, and what you can sow now to make it happen.

Robyn Haydon is a business development consultant specialising in business that is won through competitive bids and tenders. Her clients have won and retained hundreds of millions of dollars worth of business with many of Australia’s largest corporate and government buyers. Had a tough year? Missed out on business you really wanted? Let’s make sure 2016 is different. The Pole Position program will position you to win the opportunities on your radar for next year. Email info@robynhaydon.com or call 03 9557 4585 to find out more.

How to get more of the work you REALLY want

When I talk to people in professional services firms, and organisations who compete through bids and tenders, something I hear often is that they are flat out just keeping up with the opportunities they need to respond to.

It's a struggle to get time to think about the work they really want, and they are frustrated that opportunities they know would be perfect for them are passing them by.

What many are hesitant to say, but know is an issue, is that they are operating in an environment that is designed to commoditise, and to force prices down, and that doesn’t play to their strengths or vision.

Because of this, shrinking margins are a problem in most services businesses.

According to CSIMarket.com, the professional services industry is achieving net margins of only 11.24%, while construction services are at 7.31% and transport and logistics are at a meagre 4.55%.

At the moment, within your business, there are probably four different kinds of work that you are doing:

1.     Work you love, and want more of

2.     Good, solid work that pays the bills and keeps the lights on

3.     Marginal or painful work, and

4.     Work that’s sending you out of business.

Unfortunately, most of us spend way too much time on the last three, and not nearly enough on the first.

That’s because the way we run new business pursuits is completely wrong. It delivers more of the work we DON’T want, without any of what we really do want.

If this is an issue for you, contact me and I’ll send you a copy of my new white paper Pole Position – How To Achieve New Business Success.

In it, you’ll learn why the future belongs to the “makers”, and how you can become one.

Robyn Haydon is a business development consultant specialising in business that is won through competitive bids and tenders. Her clients have won and retained hundreds of millions of dollars worth of business with many of Australia’s largest corporate and government buyers. Had a tough year? Missed out on business you really wanted? Let’s make sure 2016 is different. The Pole Position program will position you to win the opportunities on your radar for next year. Email info@robynhaydon.com or call 03 9557 4585 to find out more.

Time to re-set your sales plan for 2016!

How has your year been? Brilliant? Pretty good? Not so good? Terrible?

As we hit December, we are already calling time on 2015 and making a mental checklist of what happened, what didn’t happen, and what we can do differently and better next year.

·       If you had a brilliant year, how will you make next year just as brilliant?

·       If you had a pretty good year, how can you make next year really rock?

·       If you had an average year, how do you break through patterns that are getting you less-than-ideal results?

·       If you had a terrible year, how will you get a lock on what’s going wrong, and come up with a plan to fix it?

The beauty of a new year is that we get a fresh start. 

In The Power of Focus, Jack Canfield says that we make our own luck through great preparation, good strategy, and focusing our time and energy doing the things we are truly brilliant at.

So what’s on your new business wish list for 2016? There are lots of opportunities out there. These can be yours if you really want them, know why you want them, have a strategy to go out and get them.

This is easier said than done, when most of us are so crazy-busy. And it’s heartbreaking to see opportunities pass by that you know you would be perfect for.

Let’s make 2016 your best year ever. My new program, Pole Position, will help you to design and package an offer that is so commercially valuable, your customers would be crazy not to buy it. I have only three places available in this extraordinary program over the December/January period. Contact me if you'd like to know more.

Robyn Haydon is a business development consultant specialising in business that is won through competitive bids and tenders. Her clients have won and retained hundreds of millions of dollars worth of business with many of Australia’s largest corporate and government buyers. Had a tough year? Missed out on business you really wanted? Let’s make sure 2016 is different. The Pole Position program will position you to win the opportunities on your radar for next year. Email info@robynhaydon.com or call 03 9557 4585 to find out more.

How to make smarter new business decisions

When I talk to people who have been in business for a while, most are nostalgic for the “golden” age of selling. Back then, business was done on a handshake, relationships were king and suppliers had a lot of power. Fast-forward to today, and business of any size and scale is done through bids and tenders, procurement is king, and suppliers don’t seem to know what to do any more.

What’s really going on is that the world of sales has fundamentally changed. And in this upheaval, those on the “supply” side feel that they have lost their power.

It’s true that not everything we would like to control is within our control. We can’t control how customers buy. We can’t control what competitors do and say. And we can’t control how we feel about any of these things. But we CAN control how we exercise our choice, and we need to start by making smarter decisions about the business we choose to go after.

According to a recent study by TEC (The Executive Connection), a global network of company CEOs, one of the five issues keeping CEOs up at night is the perennial need to make good decisions. In this study, they say: “Good decisions are made when CEOs equally weigh the pros and cons, rewards versus risks, and probability of success versus failure. Out-of-the box decisions can sometimes be a recipe for disaster.”

There is a lot at stake when we go after new business. Every meeting we have, every tender that we write, every proposal that we submit creates an opportunity cost of things that we could be doing elsewhere that might be a better use of our time and effort.  

Most importantly, every pursuit requires “mojo”. It needs our energy and enthusiasm to fuel it. And we only have so much of that to go around.

There's no shortage of checklists you can find to help you make pursuit decisions. Most of these, however, are based on the perspective that this is a rational process; follow a flow chart, and out pops a decision at the other end.

In fact, business development is not a rational process. It’s human, and complex, with many factors to consider. So the reason to have a new business pursuit process in your business is not just to make the right decision; it’s to understand WHY you are making the decision in the first place.

My new program From Chance to Choice is designed to help you make smarter decisions about what new business you should go after. It looks at the human factors, as well as the commercial ones. It’s totally online, so you can access it from anywhere. It will help you build your win rates – and your mojo.

Because what we contribute is what we get in return.

Robyn Haydon is a business development consultant who helps helps service-based businesses that compete through bids and tenders to articulate the value in what they do, command a price premium, and build an offer that buyers can’t refuse. Don’t let others dictate how far and how fast your business can grow – take your power back! Email robyn@robynhaydon.com to request the white paper for the Beyond Ticking Boxes program.