Strategic Win Rates: The Value of a Go/No-Go Process
An evaluation that can get everyone on the same page about business development
The larger the projects, the longer they take your project team to complete. The longer they take, the more business development you can do on the front end of a pursuit. The more business development, the better your chances are to win even larger projects.
About 85% of FortisOBM clients are from referrals. Our clients and partners in the industry know that we identify and solve pain points and challenges for firms of all sizes by developing a strategic plan. This plan provides a customized solution, and because of our high success with repeat client work, we learned to apply principles learned from the industry to run our business.
We have a very high win rate because we are strategic, applying Account Based Marketing (ABM) best practices to how we educate our clients on marketing and communication activities. We not only teach them, but we practice with them from discovery call to project closeout. FortisOBM tracks data to help us make more thoughtful decisions in the future.
We also know we are not the best fit for everyone. There are many talented marketers and communications professionals. However, we are confident in our mission to be a valued partner to our clients – proactively solving issues before they become too big to deal with. Clients choose us over and over, because of our commitment to partnership, transparency, and flexibility, coupled with our decades of experience and proven results. We know that how we deliver is different and unique from our competitors. And that is what makes us more enticing to our ideal client.
As your company establishes goals and initiatives to dominate markets and win the hearts of your clients, we implore you to be thoughtful about the pre-planning phase of your business development. What works for another company may not work for yours. Realize that your company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats differ from season to season. How you measure your success will depend on the goals you set.
As a professional marketing and communications agency, we want to provide you with the knowledge you need to utilize tools to improve your business development and marketing efforts.
The Go/No-Go process has been used in the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC)) industry for years. It originally stemmed from the engineering sector, specifically mechanics, where engineers had to confirm whether the rocket and all its functions were prepared to leave orbit. In addition to engineering, military and psychology professionals have adopted its basic principles to evaluate sustainability and proficiency.
The Go/No-Go process helps separate logic from an emotional subjective response. Your firm may be eager to respond to a Request for Proposal (RFP) advertisement on DemandStar without any knowledge of the funding source, but is that the right choice for many hours worked to deliver that response? How will your response impact your company’s reputation (brand)? These are some of the many questions with which business developers are plagued.
FortisOBM’s intent is to educate you and your firm. The more prepared we are to submit, the better chances the results are in our favor. However, we know there are exceptions to the rule. This is the AEC industry, one of the fastest human-driven industries in the world. Decisions sometimes must be made in a split moment.
A simplified Go/No-Go review can happen in as little as 30 minutes with the appropriate members of your company involved, making it applicable to even the shortest fused proposal response decisions. The process is what identifies your company’s relationship to the specific project and the ultimate client.
Here’s a Quick Case Study
We helped one of our clients increase their win rate from 34% in 2020 to 54% in 2021. Within one calendar year, we nearly doubled their hit rate due to our intention to work on more aligned projects with more aligned clients. The Go/No-Go process helped us do that and educate our client to think of evaluators when they have an inkling to submit. This small mindset change resulted in fewer proposals submitted and more introductions made with new clients, which led to new work with those new clients. They are now aligned with their ideal client, they have validated the project's success with the client, and they are educated about their response to the project. That client’s win rate increased again in 2022 to 68%.
Fewer proposals. More clients. More projects won.
Why Should You Use a Go/No-Go Process as a Standard Business Development Practice?
If that didn’t sink in quite enough, we have a math problem for you:
Say your company, on average, submits three proposals per month, totaling thirty-six proposals at the end of the year. If each proposal is valued at approximately $100,000, then the total project value is $3.6 million.
Now, let’s apply the industry average of a 34%-win rate to this equation. Your company now projects $1.2 million total project value, about 1-2 proposals a month. But to achieve $1.2 million, your company still needs to submit three proposals a month.
When we share this with a new client, they say, “Yes, exactly. We must submit more proposals!” To which we respond, “What if your company proposes on larger projects valued at more than $100,000? And what if those opportunities are directly aligned with your company’s strengths and values?”
The purpose of this math exercise is to help you and your company think bigger. To think bigger and more strategically, we suggest using ABM principles in your business development marketing efforts to attract, engage, and convert more clients to do more business with you.
The larger the projects, the longer your project team takes to complete them. The longer they take, the more business development you can do on the front end of a pursuit. The more business development, the better your chances are to win even larger projects.
There is one caveat: we suggest balancing your backlog of work with smaller projects to lessen the pressure and strain it might have on focusing on a few projects with a lot riding on them. Those smaller projects can be the introductions your company makes in new markets.
But all this success starts with the Go/No-Go process. Spend time on an evaluation of what makes sense for your firm to submit proposals on so that you can focus more time on strategy.
FortisOBM is a client-centric, results-driven marketing agency focused on delivering tailored solutions to meet the diverse needs of businesses in the built environment. We offer strategic planning, proposal development, digital marketing, and branding services to help architecture, engineering, and construction firms achieve their strategic marketing goals in alignment with their business plans, while driving growth and brand presence. To learn more about our on-demand or retainer services, schedule a complimentary 30-minute consultation today.
