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“Must win” or “will win”?

11/18/2010

2 Comments

 
Posted by Jon
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.
2 Comments
Anorak
3/25/2016 03:58:38 pm

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.

Reply
Jon
3/25/2016 03:58:49 pm

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

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