Writing Legal Proposals: 5 Key Tips from the Frontline
As a highly experienced legal advisor, Aideen has been involved in many successful bids, both in her previous role at one of the larger legal firms, and in her current role with HOS Partners. Aideen outlines five critical considerations for any legal firm that wants to increase competitiveness and revenues through tendering.
As a highly experienced legal advisor, Aideen has been involved in many successful bids, both in her previous role at one of the larger legal firms, and in her current role with HOS Partners. Aideen outlines five critical considerations for any legal firm that wants to increase competitiveness and revenues through tendering.
1. Qualify the Bids You Want and Can Compete For.
Carefully consider and select only those tenders you can actually deliver on. You need to take your time to read each part of the tender document to ensure that the requirements of the buyer match your own offering in terms of service delivery, expertise and cost. It is incredibly expensive and time consuming to compete for business that doesn’t fit with your ICP and may potentially end up damaging your brand. A qualifying tool such as Orbidal’s Bid/No-Bid functionality is a great place to start this process, and can reduce the cost of tendering by up to 25%.
2. Ensure the Entire Firm is Invested in Tendering as a Business Development Channel.
While it is critical to have one point person responsible to coordinate and manage the proposal, it is as important to ensure that there is buy-in amongst all members of the firm in tendering as a revenue channel. More often than not, the tender response is left to the last minute, with one person scrambling to complete the document and populate the CVs of solicitors, hours before the deadline. This results in a sub-optimal process, lower quality tender responses and stressed staff!
Once there is involvement and input from each required team member across the firm, it empowers the Bid Manager to collate and craft a much stronger response.
3. Spend Time Reading the Questions Upfront to Ensure You Are Aligned With the Requirements of the Buyer.
Once you and the team have agreed to compete for this particular business, it is vital that you dedicate time at the start of the process to consider the key requirements and nuances of the tender documentation. This is the time to really build a picture of the buyer, their needs, what is driving the decision to go to tender, your potential competitors and the particular unique value that only your legal firm can deliver.
Orbidal’s Opportunity Planner tool is a powerful support in this part of the process and helps pinpoint exactly what your win themes are when responding to the tender. Orbidal clients that commit time to this part of the process can increase revenue predictability by up to 25%.
4. Invest Time and Resources in Content Development and Management.
Once you’ve completed the above steps, it’s now time to get stuck in to the actual content generation. As solicitors, CVs are usually written in a purely transactional format e.g. here is a list of transactionsI have been involved in and here is a list of other clients I have worked with. This type of CV will only result in a satisfactory mark. Use your work from Opportunity Planning stage to really bring to life your experience that has made a tangible impact to the client. Crafting this type of CV and case study takes time to ensure it is aligned with the needs of the buyer, but this level of investment will deliver results in terms of tender scoring. Once the CV has been proofed and submitted, it should be stored in a central, accessible and secure location. This ensures that the next time you compete for a tender, there is a considerable time saving by getting your hands on the content quickly.
5. Tendering for Contracts Can be an Impactful Segment of Your Business Development Strategy.
Business development and brand building of a law firm is usually conducted through relationships and referrals. However, as more and more businesses are moving to a more formal buying process, responding to RFTs and RFPs is becoming an increasingly frequent feature in any firm’s quest for growth. Building an efficient process and repository for your reusable content is critical if you want to be in a strong position to respond to the right tenders for your law firm. A tender win can not only bring increased revenue, but it offers another opportunity to showcase client delivery success in future tenders. However, it can only have a positive impact if your firm is committed to, and strategic about your tendering process as a channel for growth.
Businesses increase their competitiveness when bidding by adopting a growth roadmap that embeds Orbidal’s unique proposal tools, best-practice strategies and library of high-scoring templates. Book a Discovery Call today and start your journey to tender success with Orbidal.
In a nutshell
- Qualify the Bids You Want and Can Compete For.
- Ensure the Entire Firm is Invested in Tendering as a Business Development Channel.
- Spend Time Reading the Questions Upfront to Ensure You Are Aligned With the Requirements of the Buyer.
- Invest Time and Resources in Content Development and Management.
- Tendering for Contracts Can be an Impactful Segment of Your Business Development Strategy.
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