The Wrong Stuff!

This is the first in a series of items about some of the marketing actions A/E/P/CM/Environmental firms take that are most often a waste of staff time and other resources.

No "Go/No Go"?

Do your senior folks say "yes" to every solicitation they find in the newspaper or online, or to every potential project they hear about?

I hope all marketers know that, while every solicitation is an opportunity for some firm, NOT every solicitation is an opportunity for your firm. Do your senior folks get this? Do you?

A Rocky Mountain States engineering firm recently went through a "Go/No Go" process regarding an opportunity with their State Department of Transportation. The first few questions were answered as follows:

Do we have a current or recent relationship with this client? -- NO

Has the firm done this kind of work before? -- NO - not as a prime

Did we know about the RFP before its release? -- NO

To top this off, while refusing to visit or call to get the RFP, the office manager insisted that they could turn this DOT into a strategic client of that office.

In another instance, a department manager answered these questions:

Do we have a current or recent relationship with this client? -- NO

Did we know about the RFP before its release? -- NO

Is there adequate budget to build the project -- NO

Can we make money on this project? -- NO

If we can't make a profit, is there a strategic reason to pursue this? -- NO

But the department manager had an ethical dilemma with a "No Go" decision. He interpreted it as "choosing not to help someone." Therefore, no matter how many times he answered "NO" on the form, he said "yes" to every RFP he heard about.

The real purpose of a "Go/No Go" process is to assemble all the information you need to make a good decision, and to then help you say "No" when "No" is the appropriate answer.

In both cases presented above, the wrong person was making the "Go/No Go" decision. And in both cases, the bottom line is, "why should a firm take the time to develop processes if nobody has to implement them?"

Comments

[Matt]

I can't specifically speak to environmental firms. But I struggle with this go/no go process stuff, because i think its more complicated than people would have you believe.

Although the proposal process can often be somewhat unfair. The restrictions placed on government agencies are different than those of private clients (like pharmaceutical companies). Therefore from my experience, you have to approach the go/no go decision a bit differently for different clients. For government projects, there is more of a question about what the selection criteria is and whether the project is already awarded in someone's mind. I don't know if you can make a go/no go decision without seeing an rfp on a government job. As I go through this first example,

Do we have a current or recent relationship with this client? -- NO (For a state DOT, I don't know if this is a huge deal unless the selection criteria is weighted heavier towards those who have worked for the client before. Its usually a committe of people that make the decision, not just one. Therefore you would have to have multiple relationships. Brand recognition and industry reputation is probably more important when talking about state agencies. In one instance, an Army Corps of Engineers job was awarded to a Contractor based on one sentence. "We never submitted a claim to the Army Corps of Engineers." Sometimes not doing a lot of work for the client helps you out.

Has the firm done this kind of work before? -- NO - not as a prime (This is probably a deal breaker unless your firm is brand spanking new or if you hired people for a new area of business. If you have the best people for the job, I don't know how big a deal it is that your firm hasn't primed something like this before. Again, unless that would kill you in the selection criteria.)

Did we know about the RFP before its release? -- NO (Usually you have a month or three weeks to create the proposal. So knowledge before hand would not affect the quality of your proposal. With government agencies, i feel the bigger issue is did someone else "know" about the rfp almost in the biblical sense (and by know I mean did that firm write said RFP). Knowing about the RFP does not help you if your competitor wrote it. And that happens more that you might think and much more than people would like to admit.

In the second example, this may be a design job. Many designers will tell you that the" best design job is one that is not built!" If your firm is out of work and this is a huge design project, then you might make a business decision to take it on and break even. Because break even may mean you cover the salaries of those doing the proposal as part of your overhead. Or you can lay people off and pursue more profitable work. But is your business about people or is it about profit?

The bottom line is that the go/no go decision is a complicated one. And sometimes business factors should play into that.