Secure Additional C-Level Sales Post Contract, Win or Lose

Win or lose, post contract is a very opportune time to learn and to get more business. You now have access and know people you didn’t before. You can learn why you won or why you lost the project which are data points for your ideal profiles. Win or lose, you now have relationships and if you don’t use them, you’ll really lose.

Characteristics of the Proposal and Project

After the presentation, and again after the award of the contract, get your team together and review. What was it about this project that will cause or caused the win or loss? Be as specific as possible so that you can compare and integrate these characteristics into your ideal customer profile and your ideal opportunity profile. If it's tough to get everybody together, set up a conference call to review it. But don't wait, do both reviews as soon as possible. Both reviews will be very enlightening and team’s feedback may be very different between the two briefings. You'll need an objective observer to sort through the characteristics.

Review Your Proposal and Presentation with the Client

Again, win or lose, you should meet with client’s voters and bosses if possible to go over what things you did well and what things you could improve for the future. What did you lack, what was overdone, what was unnecessary? Try to decide who was impressed with what. All this information will help you with future projects and help you build or establish relationships with the committee and their bosses. These people will be on future committees.

If You Lose

Use this as an opportunity to discover new projects coming up and the issues and concerns these people have as they relate to these new projects. There will be a little sympathy, so use it to pick-up information. Get to as many of the committee and their bosses as you can. It’s a great time to talk casually with someone, so use the time to learn about issues and concerns they have with areas that impact your world. Don’t try to talk about your company or justify what you did. They learned all about you in the bid process. However, you didn’t get all their interests and concerns about other areas and future projects.

Unfortunately you’ll now have an incumbent (the winner or the project), and the best way to unseat an incumbent is to become the number two vendor or contractor. So in these post award meetings ask each person, what will it take to become number two in their minds. You want to get selected for the next contract and keep it from being competitively bid? I know you’re doubtful, but it is possible.

If You Win,

Do everything mentioned above and then take it to the next level. After winning most people meet with the client's team and start preparing for the project. They ignore the hierarchy. But as the selected vendor, you now have a great opportunity to start building or enhancing relationships with not only the customer’s team, but with all the bosses and others in the organization and related agencies. The main contacts will set up meetings. Tell them you want to me all the bosses so that you can, "Learn the expectations of each of these key individuals as it relates to this project so that we don’t disappoint them."

If they say it’s not necessary, you have to insist or keep working it until you get to them. The beginning is the best time for these meetings. This is the critical first step for building top level relationships that can lead eventually to preferred supplier status and more business.

At these bosses meetings ask for their expectations and any issues or concerns they might have as they relate to the project. Don’t assume to know. Trust is built when they mouth the words to you. Without that they don’t know that you know.

Ask how they will measure your organization and/or performance. Each person will measure you against something different and you want to know without doubt what it is. Ask if you can have progress reviews with him or her. You want to keep them tuned into status and corrective actions. Otherwise they will think the project was easy and anyone could have done it.

When the project is finished, you're going to want access to these people to gage their feelings about your performance. If you haven't set up the ability to have these meetings, from the beginning it may be difficult to get them after the project is completed. These post project meetings are critical for future business. Without them the senior managers will think that the project was simple. It was performed appropriately, anybody could have done it, and it’s what we paid for - nothing special.

However, if the bosses are happy with the outcome, this is your time to suck-in the credit. You want to be associated with the solution, and the only way, is to let them know what you did to make success happen. Otherwise they feel you’re one-of-a bunch of qualified vendors - nothing special.

Many times vendors are called to meet with senior staffers when there are problems. These get you associated with problems. And who wants to do future business with those associated with problems. Therefore, you need progress reviews that bring out the good stuff, as well as the bad during the project.

Words of Caution

How you feel you performed is not important. It’s how well the top managers feel you performed based on each of their metrics. If their expectations were met, that’s what’s important for getting future business. Therefore, you have to probe to understand each senior manager’s feelings about the outcome. Again, don’t assume. Also, don’t accept it from the subordinates. You need to have it spoken to you or else it doesn’t exist.

Another word of caution is, do not depend on the subordinates to sing your praises to the managers. If they're smart, they will be telling these senior managers what they had to do to keep the project from failing. The best strategy is for you to tell the senior managers what you had to do for the project success, and you did it with the help of the subordinates. This way everyone looks good.

Summary

So, after all the high-fives and congratulations for winning the project, it is crucial to set-up the framework for more and more business. It's a great opportunity to meet with senior level people. Otherwise it will be difficult to meet with again.

As a result of these initial meetings, you’ll be able to set-up other meetings to learn more and more about upcoming projects and other needs of their organizations. It's a great opportunity. But as mentioned in a previous article, most incumbents do not use their credibility or access to get-to and develop relationships with all the key decision-makers. These top relationships are you assets to generate follow-on business. But without maintenance, they’ll dissolve. So get to the leaders and stay there. Keep working them until they give you your own office in their executive suite.

And now I invite you to learn more.

Bonus Tip: FREE Video Series “40 Winning Strategies for Proposals and Presentations”. Just click this Sales Management Training Proposal Link . Sam Manfer makes it easy for any sales person to become a 70% closer and feel comfortable selling to C-Level leaders.

Sam Manfer delivers key note speeches and in-depth selling work shops for those anxious to increase sales. His hands-on coaching turns individuals and sales organizations into selling whirlwinds. Sam’s selling awards and $ Million sales recognitions support his methods. His book, TAKE ME TO YOUR LEADER$ along with his Matching Chemistry’s CD and sales seminars replace selling myths and clichés that frustrate decision makers with a proven approach that captures their attention. Follow Sam’s C-Level Selling Blog for more insights. Sign-up for his free Selling E-Zine.

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