Three questions to answer before you pitch

Before you dive head-first into your next pitch or RFP response, here are three questions to ask:

1. Do you want it?

2. Can you win it?

3. Should you chase it?

The first question is about whether it’s an attractive opportunity for you.

The next question deals with your ability to compete for the work.

And the final question considers the time and resources required to respond to a brief – as well as your capacity to service it if you are successful.

Taking a moment to ask these three questions will stop you from wasting time chasing business you are unlikely to win.

Interpreting your answers will put you in a stronger position to win the opportunities you decide to pursue.

To get more details on this qualifying process, listen to episode 65 of the podcast now.

Episode transcript:

Can you win it? Do you want it? Should you chase it?

Let's answer those questions.

Hi, and welcome to episode 65 of the show. I'm Darren Krakowiak. I help commercial real estate professionals save time earn more and the top performers in their market.

Fantastic to have your company. As always, this episode is brought to you by Re-Leased, a cloud based commercial property management platform, which centralizes portfolio data automates workflows and provides real time reporting for landlords and property managers.

Because you here with us today, I do have a small gift for you.

It's a free eBook called 'The 5 Ps of Commercial Real Estate Success.'

This is an eBook which identifies the attributes, which are most commonly possessed by the top 1% of performers in commercial real estate.

You can grab that free book by going to cresuccess.co/ebook.

Now last week, I talked to you on the podcast in Episode 65, about 'What to do when you don't win work?'

And I made a comment about making sure that you qualify opportunities.

And one of our listeners, Gab, contacted me and said, "Hey, I want to know more about the idea of qualifying opportunities. So, I said, "Sure."

Let's follow up last week's episode with another episode talking specifically about that topic.

And I know, when I was working in commercial real estate, I didn't always properly qualify opportunities.

I didn't spend time after receiving an RFP or when I hear about an opportunity in the market.

I actually stopping and thinking, "Am I in a good position to win this work?"

Now qualifying an opportunity; there are two ways to sort of look at it or two perspectives.

There's the perspective of are you actually in a good position to win it?

But there's also about qualifying the prospect and understanding, are you speaking to the right person, and is there a real opportunity there?

And I'm not going to deal with that second pot today. But if you do want to know more about that.

If you think that you're talking to somebody who is maybe a time waster or you're chasing an opportunity that doesn't really exist, there is a simple method called BANT, which is a word that stands for 'budget authority, need and timeline'

And you want to try and identify those four things, when you're speaking to somebody.

And if they don't all exist, it doesn't mean that there's not an opportunity there. But they probably do those things do need to exist in order for a deal to happen.

So 'budget, authority, need, timeline. You can have a bit more of a look into that.

And maybe I'll do an episode on that later on.

I'm kind of assuming that there is a real opportunity, and we're just trying to understand how likely you are to win it.

But today, I want to talk about the things that you should be looking at in terms of your capacity, in terms of your ability to actually win the work.

We want to know how much that you actually wanted, and how much effort you should put in to winning it.

So, let's go through and answer those questions.

The first thing that we want to know is, do you want it? Because we don't want every opportunity that comes across our desk.

Are they an attractive client to work with? If you've worked with them before, and you didn't enjoy it, then maybe you don't want to work with them again.

Isn't an attractive project? So, if you're doing jobs, which are 1000 square meters, or 10,000 square feet.

And something comes across your desk for 100 square meters or 1000 square feet, then that's probably not an attractive project for you to do.

Also isn't in an attractive market? So, is it a long way away and would take you a long time to service that requirement?

Is it not even in the right sector, and you've been spending time specializing in retail, and then you get an office requirement come across your desk?

Is that something that you really want to spend your time doing?

So, these are some basic things that you can ask yourself in terms of, 'Do you actually want to do this work?'

The next thing to ask yourself is, can you win it?

And if you are in a position to win it, then I think you've got a higher likelihood of winning the work.

If we're chasing work that we don't have any business winning, then we're going to have a lower win rate.

And this one's a bit more complicated than the do you want it. So, let's go into a little bit more detail about this.

One thing I would want to know is, when did you hear about the opportunity?

So, if you just heard about the opportunity when you received the RFP (request for proposal), and that's the first you knew that this requirement was coming up, then that would possibly be a red flag.

You want to know that you're not just making up the numbers, that there isn't already a preferred vendor and you've been selected just to, you know, because procurement wants for proposals, and you're one of those other ones that are just there to satisfy some procurement requirements.

One thing that you can do if you receive a request for proposal, or if you're invited to bid and you don't know anything about the opportunity is to ask for a meeting and to see if they will give you some of their time.

Because even if you're not in a good position to win the work, you could change that through getting some time with that prospect.

And it's opening up a relationship that perhaps wasn't that strong in the first place if you didn't know about the opportunity.

Now, if the prospect tells you, "No. We don't have time to meet with you. We just want to receive your proposal, by Friday at 5 o'clock."

Then I think you're actually standing on pretty strong ground to say, "Well, I'm sorry, we're not able to respond by that time, because we don't have all the information, we need to provide a quality and a satisfactory into our required standards proposal."

So, we're going to have to decline on this occasion. Nothing wrong with doing that.

If they're not even willing to give you 30 minutes to talk about the proposal, then I would be questioning if they're serious about your proposal being reviewed fairly.

If it is, of course, that you don't have much of a relationship, and you've never heard about that opportunity before.

Another thing to have to think about is who are your competitors when you're thinking about if you can win it?

And how are your competitors positioned in the market relative to you in the eyes of the prospect?

And I think there are four main criteria that I would want to understand about my position relative to competitors, who are being reviewed as part of this process.

And that is the relationship or the strength of the relationship that you have with the prospect.

I'd want to know about the relative position in the marketplace.

So, for example, if my competitors were very much seen as market leaders, and I wasn't very experienced in that particular segment of the market, that would not be a good sign.

I want to know about my ability to respond to the specifics of the brief.

So can I actually put forward something which is a quality response based on for example, the asset or some understanding I have of the market.

And also, the pricing, not just being the cheapest, but understanding the pricing structure, being able to put forward something compelling in that area.

Now, if I'm not strong in any of those areas, and I can't see the opportunity for me to neutralize any weaknesses by augmenting some strengths in those areas, then I wouldn't feel that I was in a very good position to win the work.

And I guess related to this is getting an understanding of what is the criteria for the selection process? Are they willing to share?

These are the sorts of things that we'll be looking at. Is there a balanced scorecard? Who are the decision makers?

These are all things that I would want to know when it comes to if I was in a good position to win the work.

Let's now talk about should you chase it? Because it takes time and resources to respond to a brief.

And whether you should actually pursue an opportunity is a function of if you want it, and can you win it?

Now, if you want it, but you can't win it, are there things that you can do to change that?

And we talked about just before about some of the criteria to see if you're in a position to improve your relative position, relative to your competitors in those areas.

And if you don't want it, but you can win it, I think the question to ask yourself is, "Well, can you service the requirement somehow? Can you refer it on to a colleague?"

Because if it's work that's there that you can, when it's just that it's not work that you particularly want to do, then it's still an opportunity that can be done.

It's just a matter of, is there somebody else who could do it?

Now, sometimes you may want the work and you could win it, but you just don't have the capacity to service the requirement if you do win it.

So, the question here is, should you be declining? And just saying we don't have the capacity right now?

Or is there an opportunity for you to refer on the work to somebody else in the business?

Now, if you find this is happening a bit, I think it is time for you to perhaps grow your team.

If you find yourself knocking back lots of work because you just don't have the capacity to service that work. That's a good problem to have.

But it is time possibly to expand your team, or at least to create more capacity for yourself to do work.

And I encourage you to go back and listen to episode 60 which is 'That's below my Paygrade.'

Because if you're doing tasks that are below your paygrade, that is taking up time, and it's reducing your ability to do work that is there for the taking if it is work that you can win, but you just don't have the capacity to do it.

And another question about should you chase it is, we want to make sure that not only that we have the capacity to do the work if we win it, but that we've got the capacity to put forward a quality submission without dropping the ball on our existing workload.

Because if putting together submission means that we dropped the ball on our existing work, that's obviously not good.

But also, if we just put together a half-hearted submission, that can poorly reflect on you, and it can impact your ability to do future work with that prospect.

So, I would be careful about submitting a mediocre proposal.

I once got the advice that if we believe in opportunity's real, but we just don't want to do it, we should put in kind of like a dummy proposal, which is just sort of like a template.

And then with a not a very competitive price, just to sort of give that prospect the respect of us, not bidding it.

But I think actually, it's better off just to not better if you can't offer a good quality proposal. A poor-quality proposal will reflect poorly on you.

And sometimes I think that your honesty will be respected more than if you put forward a mediocre proposal.

So, when you are chasing work, when you're considering work before you chase it, we want to know if you can win it if you want it. And also, then if you should chase it.

And I believe that if you ask yourself the questions that we've gone through in this episode, not only will you be spending less time chasing work, that you are not in a good position to win.

But also, by asking those questions and going through the process and analyzing the marketplace and your own position.

And also, the requirements of the prospective client a little bit more, you'll be putting yourself in a much better position to actually win the work that you do go after.

Well, time is up. But before you go, I'd like to invite you to recommend this content to a friend.

The Christmas New Year break is coming up. And that means people are going to have time to relax, to reflect.

But also, perhaps a little bit more time than they usually have to consume content.

And this podcast is probably more education than entertainment.

But I don't think it's that heavy that it's something that you would not be able to listen to and still be relaxed.

Hopefully it's not content, which really riles you up and, and gets you all agitated.

So, it's something that I'd like to invite you to tell a colleague about or tell a peer about because I keep hearing from people that there isn't a lot of stuff out there, which deals with commercial real estate.

And that's why I've created this podcast to fill that gap.

So, if you can help me spread the word, I would be much appreciated.

It has been great spending some time with you. Once again, thank you so much for listening, and I will speak to you soon.