“Must win” or “will win”?
Ever worked on a “must win” deal?
Yep, I thought so. And what’s the difference between “must win” and “nice to win”? Generally, in practice, often not a lot. A little more involvement (interference?) from senior executives; perhaps a few more review meetings; lots more stress; those on high taking the glory if you capture the business (and preparing to point fingers if you don’t)?
I was chatting about this to a team recently, and recalled a lovely phrase used by Gerard Houllier, when he was manager of my beloved Liverpool. (That’s a soccer club, for American readers).
He was asked in an interview:
“Is it reasonable to say that Saturday’s match is a must-win game?”
His reply?
“It’s not a must win game. It’s a will win game.”
I think bids should be like that. “Must win” isn’t good enough, if it merely means that senior folks take a little more interest and bring greater pressure to bear on the proposal team. “Will win” implies serious commitment and support from those on high, with a corresponding focus on providing the right resources to do what’s necessary to produce a first-class proposal in an efficient way.
So, next time you’re told a deal’s a “must win”, why not stop and ask whether it really is – or whether it’s actually a “will win”, and what’s going to be done to make it so.
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This seems to be topic of the month in Proposals circles at the moment.
I was recently at a Proposal writing course where it was suggested that the “Kick-off meeting” be retitled the “Win meeting”.
Keeping the football analogy going, Sven-Goran Eriksson (I think) once said that one of the England team’s weaknesses was that they saw penalty shoot-outs as just that – a series of penalty shots against their opponents. Other countries train their players to visualise penalty shots as goals, apparently.
Hi, Anorak
We started using “win meeting” back back in about 2000/1; I do like it – it sets the scene for what everyone’s there to achieve. Sadly the APMP competency list sticks with the more conventional “kick off”!
Love the Sven analogy!
Jon