7 Proven factors to raise your company’s win rate (survey results)

These survey results (7 Proven Factors to Raise You Company’s Win Rate (Survey Results) March 2012-Lohfeld Consulting Group) show how proposal managers from 36 companies rated their individual company’s performance in the 28 factors that we use to predict a company’s overall win rate.  You can see from the survey that there is room for improvement in all of the areas surveyed. Areas where most companies need immediate improvement are:

• Capture and Proposal Training – this training is only provided by 52% of the companies surveyed. Every company should have a career development training program and make capture and proposal training available to appropriate employees.
• Business Acquisition Process – only 54% of the companies surveyed have documented their business acquisition processes. If you are going to have a defined, repeatable, and managed process, the first step is to document the process.
• Process Management – only one company in three reviews their capture and proposal progress and makes decisions about bidding or continuing to bid based on these reviews. This is an essential step in managing, measuring, and optimizing your business acquisition processes.
• Gate Reviews – only 45% of the companies surveyed have gate reviews as part of their business acquisition process. The purpose of gate reviews is to coach participants in how to raise their win probability and to control spending on new business opportunities.
• Proposal Outlines – 70% of proposal writers begin writing before their outlines are reviewed and approved. No wonder there is so much rework needed to complete proposal sections.
• Error Free Proposals – 37% of the companies surveyed said their proposals suffer from errors that could cause them to lose bids. Looks like major improvements are still need in proposal quality control.

By Bob Lohfeld

E-mail your comments to RLohfeld@LohfeldConsulting.com.