How to create value add services for tenders, bids & proposals
Value add services have become de rigueur for B2B services relationships and can be a positive, indeed tender-winning differentiator for your business. ‘Free of charge’ is music to clients’ ears given in the 21st century we’re all being expected to do more with less. And as we know, you have to give in order to […]
Continue ReadingCo-opetition: if you can’t beat them, should you join them?
Co-opetition or ‘competitive collaborations’ are alliances formed between direct and sometimes indirect competitors. The term co-opetition is used by management academics and economists to describe the phenomenon of ‘competing without having to kill the opposition and co-operating without having to ignore self-interest’. You can think of co-opetition as a sort of ‘if you can’t beat […]
Continue ReadingSame-same, but different – Best practice for recycling boilerplate tender, bid & proposal content
I once had a client say he wanted to do ‘fresh writing’ for the entirety of content in every single tender, bid and proposal response. That’s right…every time…every bid…100% written from scratch. Unsurprisingly the ‘fresh writing’ diktat put considerable extra pressure on his already frazzled team and didn’t help his firm’s win rate. When it […]
Continue ReadingStanding out from the crowd
It’s tough to stand out from your competition and keep great clients plus attract new ones. And it doesn’t help when professionals so often put their marketing communication efforts – and dollars – into making themselves part of the crowd rather than standing out. Does your firm stand out? Our recently released benchmarking research found […]
Continue ReadingCan a full service law firm survive in a digital age?
Our guest blogger is Jim Thompson, digital marketing expert and Director of One Rabbit. Imagine that you are a full service law firm offering the standard gamut of services to a broad spectrum of market segments and industries. You are made up of a number of partners and people who are experts in their particular fields. You […]
Continue ReadingJust another undifferentiated fish in the sea: What you don’t want your firm to be!
In our recent research study into the state of business development and marketing in Australasian law firms, we invited respondents to describe the biggest marketing or business development challenge faced by their firm. Many respondents identified the struggle to positively differentiate from competitors as their biggest challenge. Several respondents elaborated: “we are undifferentiated generalists in […]
Continue ReadingPosition your firm or die!
Just like those panel beaters who “specialise” in ALL makes and ALL models, the generalist service provider will struggle, particularly as technology and off-shoring continue to commoditise and consolidate previously profitable areas.
Continue ReadingMeaningful differentiators of professional services firms
Too many professional services firms spend far too long trying looking for one out-of-the-box differentiator to beat all the rest. Only rarely is it possible. Some professional services firms make the lame claim that their differentiation is their people. Let’s face it, all people are different, but good and great and kind and generous and […]
Continue ReadingHow to develop perceived advantage over competitors
Maybe you’re one of those fortunate professionals who has such a stand out service to offer that it’s clearly technically superior, demonstrably better, and so reported by objective analysts and high-profile “industry authorities”. More likely, the professional services you offer – while better than many – are neck-and-neck with alternatives. If you belong to the […]
Continue ReadingKeys to differentiation
We all know how difficult it can be to differentiate ourselves from our (often very) successful competitors. However, differentiation is critical to a winning proposal – without it, you will simply be one of the pack. Four keys to effective differentiation are: focus on what your client thinks is important – not only on what […]
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Feature article
Tender readability – tips to improve your tender presentation and some tender presentation no-nos
Tender readability remains a problem for some in the 21st century. I still see submission documents that cling to a handful of really old hat tender presentation and formatting techniques. I suspect this is because some of these ‘rules’ are viewed as being more appropriate to a ‘formal’ style of document such as a tender. […]
