Winning contracts by understanding—and leveraging—the competitor's approach

Abstract

AbstractSuccessful bidding for contract awards requires not only a detailed knowledge of competitor strengths and weaknesses but the ability to use this information to fortify your offering and neutralize competing bids. The author presents an approach for crafting a winning strategy that differentiates your firm from the competition on those attributes most important to the customer; clearly communicates why your offering best meets the customer's needs; explains why your analysis led you to reject the competition's approach in favor of your own; and otherwise identifies and discredits the competitor's strengths while exploiting every weakness. In addition, developing a competitive assessment in which your management has confidence will help your firm make more decisive competitive‐bidding investment decisions. If you are clearly going to win, additional prototypes and expensive promotion can be avoided. If headed for certain defeat, management can terminate the pursuit and cut its losses. Finally, competitive intelligence is vital to determining the “price‐to‐win” figure at which the maximum acceptable price can be bid. © 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.