You read that right. Bid managers deliver more profitable bids for their organisations. That’s not an opinion but one of the more pleasing findings from my global survey, Best Practices in Bid Management.

One of the pivotal questions in the survey asked respondents to describe the commercial outcomes of their successful bids. And by commercial outcomes I meant how well did their organisations manage to meet their profit forecasts?

When I cross-tabbed the responses to the commercial outcomes with the responses to who led the bids I got this breakdown.

This shows a clear bias with more profitable bids more usually being led by bid managers while less profitable bids more usually being led by other roles, such as sales.

Many reasons could explain this. For myself, I think it is because professional bid managers understand all the tasks, checks and balances that an organisation requires when bidding for multi-$million bids and tenders. We focus on the needs of all stakeholders and manage the complete process so that commercial risk and delivery risk are balanced.

When you understand that bidding is not just about winning, but also about delivering, then you  can achieve positive outcomes for your organisation.

I found many more intriguing results from the survey, so follow me and get my next post in a week or three.