Does your company adopt the A-B-C approach? An astute potential client asked this question during a final presentation for new business a colleague and I were delivering a few years ago. Attempting to buy some time, I replied “I’m not sure if I’m familiar with the concept”. “It’s very simple,” he said, “the proposal is sold by the A team, mobilised by the B team and operated by the C team.” The inference drawn by such a statement, regardless from which of the areas one views it from, is not particularly palatable but let me ask you, how close to reality is this and what can we do to allay the perception, even if it is not true, in our industry?
The sell
We have to remove the perception of a sales/business development (BD) team managing the process up to mobilisation. This starts at the “bid/no bid?” stage — a decision that often can be taken by the BD team in isolation of operations — but perhaps one should consider having an operational representative as one of the formal evaluators of potential net new business.
The site visit stage of the process is a key milestone, whereby the bid team can gain a first look at the site and likewise, if present, the client can gain a first impression of the face and personality of the tendering company.
The customer, for practical and operational reasons, will allocate for site visits a smaller number of ‘tickets’ than is ideal from the tenderer’s viewpoint and can limit attendance at the visits. It is essential that any allocation is used wisely and should not comprise solely of BD personnel but, and this is important, operational staff should be fully briefed prior to the visit and should engage with the customer’s representatives, eg through technical questioning.
The proposal must have buy-in from everyone such that all involved feel it is their proposal and not one that came out of a detached BD process. This buy-in becomes apparent when all of the team refer to the bid as ‘our bid’ as the project gathers momentum. Despite the temptation to overload the presentation party with BD representatives all keen to close the sale, it is preferable to have a balanced team with operations staff presenting as well — in particular the senior service delivery manager nominated in the proposal.
Anyone from your organisation who communicates with a prospective customer has a chance to win or to lose potential business. Heavyweight presentation skills courses shouldn’t be a prerequisite solely for BD/sales team members.
Mobilisation
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The challenge here is to ensure there is no disconnect between developing and gaining approval to the solution and preparing it for day one (and beyond) with the whole process seen as seamless. Ideally, the mobilisation manager will have been part of the final presentation team or, if this was not possible, will have hosted one of the reference site visits to an existing client thus gaining valuable exposure to personnel from the new customer’s organisation.
Business development staff should not be allowed to move on to the next opportunity without providing a valuable continuity link between the agreed proposal and the mobilisation programme.
Providing resilience to the mobilisation team, via other members of the organisation is essential — the perception that the team facing the customer has shrunk overnight from a BD team to a mobilisation manager ‘flying solo’ does nothing save potentially generating the confirmation that an ‘A-B-C approach’ is evident.
Subject experts need not only to be introduced to mobilise their specific sub-programme(s) but also to be identified as faces who will be involved with the contract once it is fully operational through reviews, audits and specialist assistance to the service delivery team, ie they are in the relationship for the long haul.
Generally, the mobilisation manager will be an experienced member of the team with an operational background so the forward view of day one and beyond will be one with which they are familiar. As indicated before, their involvement with the proposal precontract award is essential if continuity is to be achieved.
A solution preferred by many customers, and one that most providers hope to achieve, is to have the senior service delivery manager fulfil the role of mobilisation manager thus ensuring that required continuity, but as we all know life is not always that easy.
Put simply, the requirement to demonstrate to the customer that the BD team play a valuable and integral part during mobilisation and that the people who manage the journey up to day one and into full operations have a detailed knowledge of the agreed proposal is essential to avoid the ‘A-B-C approach’.
Operations
Post-day one euphoria is behind us and the daily delivery of the services continues apace but what do we need to do to ensure continued and appropriate involvement of colleagues who have been associated with the development of the contract?
Business development could have an ongoing relationship with the customer through assistance to the operations with organic growth activity, jointly hosting reference site visits by prospective customers and finally, supporting the overall delivery of the proposal, ie delivering on the promise. One way of achieving this could be through the BD person fulfilling a mentoring role in support of the senior service delivery manager.
The mobilisation manager, if not remaining in an operational role, should provide sufficient presence post day one to give the customer confidence that continuity has been achieved eg there should be several mobilisation progress meetings in that period to tidy up the inevitable loose ends and a formal project sign off is worthwhile considering.
Validation of the commercial aspects of the contract is essential – what’s worse than finding that the first invoice you sent to the customer was not accurate? The mobilisation manager should provide a set of billing/contract rules to the operations team.
Contractual items are often buried in the details, for instance, a commitment to provide a detailed inventory within the first three months of contract, and can be easily overlooked. If missed it will frustrate the customer.
By working to a clear, structured project plan during mobilisation all of these details can be captured and actioned. Once completed, we can look at a formal customer sign off.
The service delivery manager and key team members therefore must have a clear understanding of the contract and should have had sight of the formal proposal documentation in order to gain that knowledge. The BD manager may implement a series of contract workshops or tutorials to ensure continuity of this knowledge with a formal acceptance and sign off from the operations team.
Fundamental as this last point may seem, there are some operational teams that just do not take the time to make themselves cognisant of the contract and it is a situation that can lead to missed financial opportunities and from the customer’s perspective there has been a disconnect from the committed proposal.
Simplicity
The above situations may or may not be in evidence in your or your supplier’s organisation but there is a real possibility that the perception of the A-B-C approach could become a reality and it needs to be seriously considered by the FM providers.
Addressing this does not require huge changes in procedures, processes or organisations.
All it requires is a seamless approach – from proposal through to full operations and throughout the life of the contract with everyone recognising the implications of it not being seen as such by the customer.
Simple really, as easy as A B C.
