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Instead of having someone call to simply tell you, “We picked another vendor’s bid, but thank you for your time.”, be prepared to start asking some questions. You have spent time and money on a bid so find out why you lost. Right now, start questioning where you are going wrong so you do not continue to make the same mistakes.
Winners learn nothing; losers learn a lot. Winners really do not learn much; losers learn a lot if they are smart, but only if they ask and find out immediately. Everyone would like to be a habitual winner, but not the kind that wins constantly with the lowest bid, has problems paying bills because their bids are constantly too low, and ultimately quietly go out of business.
Standardize your questions for lost bids. Develop a call sheet to get valuable data at the moment you find out why you did not get a contract. Ask now while you have the customer’s decision maker on the telephone. Get some information about this loss to your company. If you lost a bid for some reasons, you may be repeatedly making the same mistakes. Find out why. While the buyer is more vulnerable and somewhat sympathetic to the losing vendor, be patient, and courteous, but do not give up when getting a full understanding of what caused your bid to fail in the marketplace. Here are a few things you might consider asking when calling to inquire about the status of a losing bid.
Questions to consider asking the buyer’s agent at the time the bid is deemed a losing bid:
- Did we win? If we did not win, which company did win? Even if you know the buyer might not want to discuss the winning bid, find out now who won because you may want to speak to the winning company.
Note: You many want to call the winner and offer to do subcontract work. Keep this in mind. Turn a loss into a win if you can. The worst the winning firm can say now is “no”. That is only for today. That does not mean they will continue to say ‘no’ after you have been persistent in the marketplace and have offered your great services or product numerous times. If you are smart and want to work with this company, call them up and give them work to show you are interested in a relationship. Yes, hire them to work for you. It will give you another vendor to evaluate. You also will know your competitor better in the future, plus, remember this: All competitors are potential customers and future clients if only you look for the opportunity. - If your company did not win the bid, how far off were you on the dollar amount? Was it 5%, 10%, 50%? Even if the buyer is tight-lipped, get some guess or close approximation from the person on the telephone – ask and press him until you get some type of answer? If you cannot get the buyer to tell you a number, get him to say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to your series of questions nailing down the range of pricing so he does not tell you the specific number. Examples: “Was the winning bid higher than $25,000? Higher than $22,500? Higher than $23,000? Was my company’s bid off more than $4,700? Were we higher by less than $2,000? Tell me so we can do a better job the next time for you on the next project. Your giving me some information will make us better at bidding and we greatly appreciate this. We want very much to do work for you in the future so your help is greatly appreciated.”
- Was the decision strictly on price? If not, what were the other criteria? On what criteria did we score poorly enough to lose the contract? What was negative on our company’s behalf… if that can be disclosed? Is it something we can change or alter or fix? (i.e. Inadequate insurance liability limits, inadequate company equipment, lack of certified laboratory, lack of patent experience, lack of legal documentation, lack of large project experience, lackluster ideas or design, lagging experience on staff, etc.).
- How many other bidders were there? Can the person disclose the names? Were they all local? Were they all in-state? Were they all using licensed personnel or was just one of the gentlemen licensed and they all share that license? Did they have the required insurance or was that considered?
- Was there anything negative about our company’s bid, other than that the price was too high? Were there other issues that turned the buyers off concerning our bid? Did it seem poorly prepared? Did it answer the questions of the bid proposal? How was it deficient?
- Are there going to be more projects or bids going out soon, next few weeks, next few months, when? Find out a date, follow up, tell the person you want to work for their company and that you are very interested in bidding with them the next time. When you say, you are interested and you get a future date for the next project to be bid, follow up and do so enthusiastically. Ignore your loss in the future; tell the buyer you want to work for him and will do what needs to be done to win a contract. Note: Press the person about future bids being taken because most buyers need multiple bids and at some point, they’ll feel compelled to give you a contract along the way.
