Know Your Market: Three Free Ways to Gain Market Insights for Proposal Professionals

Business is all about knowing your markets. You need to know who you are selling to, and be able to identify and understanding your competition. Failure to do so can seriously impact businesses of all types, but especially start-ups and businesses just getting their footing.

Business reality television shows us this regularly. On the current season of Dragons’ Den, a wetsuit company called Funky Seal Wetsuits came onto the show seeking an investment. Their major stumbling block was they did not know the overall size of the wetsuit market in the UK, or how that market is divided amongst their competitors. On Bar Rescue, host Jon Taffer always examines the demographics of the local area and the competitive landscape when developing his concept for rehabilitation.

In proposal development, we rely on our capture teams to provide a clear picture of both the client and the competition. Client information allows us to address their needs, hot buttons, and concerns in order to enable their success. Knowing our competition allows us to hone our themes by highlighting our strengths (especially if they align to a competitor’s weakness).

However, many times that information is hard to come by. The bid may be a pop-up without much pre-work done. It may not be a priority effort, meaning capture resources have not been allocated. How do we overcome these deficiencies? This post identifies three simple, free resource types for the enterprising proposal professional to use to strategically focus bids and writers.

what has the client been saying?

To identify the needs of a client, there is no better source than its own words. You may not be able to schedule a meeting with a client’s key decision makers, but you can certainly research what they have said in public.

First, identify the client’s key decision makers. Without proper capture, you may not know exactly who will be evaluating your proposal. However, by looking at what senior people in the client have said you can get insight into the overall direction they are going in.

Second, conduct multiple searches on those individuals. I use both Google News and a general Google search to identify public talks, articles, interviews, and other resources to analyze. Also, search industry-specific publications. For example, if you are in the Federal Government contracting sphere, sites like NextGov and Washington Technology provide great sources of information. You can read what they have said and written in the field, which allows you to identify their key interests and areas of focus.

Third, see if the individuals have social media profiles. What do they post or like on LinkedIn? What do they tweet or retweet on Twitter? You can get a sense of what is important to them through these platforms.

Finally, summarize the information. Create a short profile for each individual. Use that information to construct a basic framework of key ideas you need to highlight throughout your work. This provides a level of intimacy and gives you a starting point for incorporating key ideas.

strategic documents from the competition

Most Government agencies have multiple strategic plans that focus on key interests and direction. Many times you can find a general strategic plan and a IT-focused version. These documents, available publicly on agency websites, provide great insight into their areas of investment and concern in the coming years. Even if you are at the end of the document’s anticipated life cycle, you can still gain valuable insights into an agency. It can also give you a source to help your other research. You can do targeted news searches around those key initiatives to see what progress, and missteps, have occurred.

For any public company (either as a competitor or a client), comb through their public reports. For example, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) requires publicly traded firms to file a Form 10-K, a comprehensive summary of a company’s financial performance. When you make your way through the legally required information you can find some great nuggets on corporate priorities, strategic direction and investments, and areas of concern.

extra! extra!

Finally, look at what potential clients (and competitors) say about themselves. Most companies and agencies have a public news portion of their site. They release press releases and other key information. You can learn a lot by going through those resources. Sometimes, you might even find opportunities to chase, either from a competitor’s release or something posted on a client’s site about what they anticipate to do in the coming months or years.

conclusion

Knowing who our buyer is, and who else is attempting to sell to them, is critical to corporate success. In business reality television, you cannot expect to get an investment without knowing who you’re selling to and competitors in the same space. It creates too much risk. In proposal development, we need to know the same information so we can make the proposal about the client. By using the tips above, we can add another layer of understanding and insight into our bids, even without strong capture.