2017 Business Excellence Awards

Acquisition International - Business Excellence Awards 2017 73 Best Bid Agency 2017 - UK Get Serious Ltd Founded by Francesca Ayers and Anna Hutton- North whose backgrounds span bids and business development, Get Serious is all about winning bids. Having worked in-house running bid teams and as external bid consultants, they were aware of the lack of quality bid support available to those organisations who had their own bid teams, but needed occasional support. In response to this gap in the market, they set up Get Serious, providing flexible cost-effective bid support to existing bids and proposal teams. The business provides bid writers, bid managers/reviewers and specialistproposalandpitchtrainerswhoseexperience, knowledge and skill helps clients to improve their win rate and have a successful bid team. Since inception the firm has cultivated a strong client base spanning medium to large organisations across law, accountancy, real estate and construction, healthcare and IT. Although the majority of the work is within the UK, there is an increasing demand from overseas clients who are either looking to bid for work in the UK or who need to submit their proposal in English. The types of work vary client by client however the approach is always the same. The team often has to work to tight deadlines, which means that quickly getting a good understanding of what is available, the client’s bid process and meeting the key members of the team are essential. From this the team are able to develop compelling value propositions, build a robust bid schedule, act as critical reviewer and ensure both the bid document and bid pitch and presentation are powerful and persuasive. This often means taking the pitch team out of their comfort zone, particularly around major opportunities, to produce an outstanding bid that isn’t the usual run-of- the-mill. One of the important elements to achieve this shift is to establish trust; clients need to have confidence in Get Serious before they think about adopting a new approach to bidding. Those that are taking a bolder approach are seeing results; clients are increasing their winning bids whether it is Government frameworks, invitations to tender, new opportunity proposals, panels or preferred supplier lists. This is one of the reasons why Get Serious is growing. The marketplace approach to bids and proposals is changing though; no longer do the smart organisations employ large teams of people who solely write and produce templated bid documents. The bid teams now have a much wider skill mix and go from trusted bid adviser and critical bid reviewers through to bid executives and specialist document producers. This move is reflected in the skillsets available within Get Serious, giving them a competitive edge over firms who Get Serious Ltd is a London based bid agency dedicated to helping clients to win more bids in order to win more work. We profile the firm to explore the techniques it employs in order to achieve this. Company: Get Serious Ltd Contact Email: [email protected] Address: 207 Regent Street, London, W1B 3HH, UK +44 (0)20 7305 7472 Web Address: getseriousbids.co.uk BE170138 only employ bid writers. One example of where the team helped a professional organisation to deliver a series of lower-value bids with key clients which needed quick turnaround on to ensure qualification for next stage, showed Get Serious’ flexibility. The client’s bid team were already dealing with larger value bids so they called upon Get Serious as their bid partner. By using their bid writers the team were able to provide a round-the-clock bid writing service. Having a dedicated team for the client meant that it was possible to handle multiple bids at the same time, which meant that the client was able to view bids concurrently rather than having to work through one after the other. This meant the client had both a rapid turnaround of the bids and a consistency in style and format across all the bid responses. Keeping close to the market and understanding what is happening at a procurement level is essential; this was why Ayers and Hutton-North set up the annual Bid Trends Survey. By measuring levels of confidence, volumes and values of bids available and the size of bid teams and budgets year on year, it gives an insight into the market conditions unavailable elsewhere. Sharing these insights with clients also helps individual bid teams with their own best practice; by sharing what good looks like, bid professionals continue to raise the bar. Consistency and confidentiality are big priorities. To ensure clients have consistency in quality all team members attend Get Serious induction days, learning about the company’s policies and procedures; establishing best practice. The team use a central secure document system when working on client bids to ensure client confidentiality, after all bid information is commercially sensitive. Overall, bids are such a critical part of any B2B organisation, so anyone providing support needs to be providing value from day one. The Get Serious team have all headed up a major bid team, so they instinctively know what Bid Directors are going to need support on. Their bid knowledge means they become a seamless part of the bid team immediately. Looking to the future, the strategy for Get Serious is to continue to being the leading bid agency, growing the business so it can provide high quality bid services to more organisations within their key sectors. “Winning this award means a lot to us,” Francesca Ayers explained. “We have worked hard to create a high-quality bid agency. Being awarded the ‘2017 Best Bid Agency of the Year’ lets us showcase our success. As the bid market is changing more and more firms are seeing the financial benefit in having a bid agency to call upon when they need it.”