Defending a Weak Position in Late Middle Game

In The Complete Book of Chess Strategy, international chess master Jeremy Silman says, “At times a blunder will immediately be fatal, but often it will deprive you of a hard-earned edge and will force you to start the beginning process (i.e., building up an advantage) all over again.”¹ Whether or not you have blundered, you will occasionally find yourself in a weak position going into late middle game—you may be facing a competitor with a strong incumbent position, or competitors with well-placed customer sponsors, or a smart competitor who has played an excellent middle game and outfoxed you to this point. Beyond prayer, what can you do to recover from a weak late middle game position? Fourth-quarter come-from-behind victories do happen. Joe Montana pulled it off many times as quarterback of the San Francisco ’49ers, but to accomplish what he did, you need enough time on the clock, supporting players as good as wide receiver Jerry Rice, and a lot of luck. In business development, this usually means having a solid technical offering, customers who are open-minded enough to give you a fair hearing, competitors who have become complacent, and enough time before endgame begins for you to work some magic. Here are some thoughts on how you can behaviorally differentiate yourself in these circumstances and perhaps find victory. As in football, the best defense is a good offense:

First, do a candid and realistic assessment of the situation. Is it hopeless or just bad? If it’s hopeless, what do you stand to gain by pursuing this opportunity? Is that gain worth the investment? If so, you should be clear about what you’re trying to achieve (it could be positioning for future opportunities rather than winning this contract) and shoot for that. If the situation is simply bad, then, like army doctors treating casualties during war, you should perform triage on the survivors: Ignore the customers you cannot save and focus on those who are most likely to respond well to treatment. You may be able to build enough support to generate serious interest among the customer representatives who were neutral or antagonistic toward you earlier.

Look for technical or behavioral blunders by your opponents. Are there any openings for you? As Jeremy Silman so eloquently notes, “Everyone blunders.”² An opponent’s misstep can open the door for you, but your response should be timely and professional—respectfully silent toward competitors and immediately helpful to the customer.

Look for changes in customers’ needs or expectations that you may be able to exploit. Competitive bidding situations tend to be fluid in middle game and fixed in endgame. Customers’ requirements may change as they learn more, explore more, and syndicate their views among themselves. Changes in their needs or their expectations of the supplier they choose may suddenly favor you, and you should be poised to take advantage of such changes.

Intensify your efforts. If you want to win the contract, you can’t be fainthearted; this is a time to be bold. You may need to take risks you are not used to taking and do things you are not used to doing.

Look for ways to pleasantly surprise customers and get their attention. If, for instance, you can introduce a new technology, process, product, or innovation of some kind that dramatically increases the value to customers, you may get their attention in a way that changes their mind about what they want. When you start from behind, you generally must do something dramatic to get people to notice, something your competitors cannot quickly or easily copy.

Intensify your efforts at the top. If you can engage your C-level executives with their counterparts in the customer’s organization—and mirror their intensity with contacts of your own at the working levels of the customer’s opportunity decision process—you may be able to recover lost ground. The danger is that customers will be suspicious about your sudden high level of interest and dig in their heels against you. So your best option is to be candid and explain why you were not more active earlier. Being human and candid about your mistakes can be disarming if it is genuine. As Thoreau said, “Nothing so amazes a man as plain speaking and honest dealing.”

Finally, you can roll up your sleeves and work hard to make up for lost ground. It’s been done, generally when none of the competitors has successfully presold their solution and established a strong position earlier in middle game. If none of you has behaviorally differentiated yourselves to date, then that opportunity may still exist in late middle game.

We offer one final caution. If you are in a strong position coming into late middle game, don’t presume that it’s in the bag. In The Middle Game in Chess, Russian chess master Eugene A. Znosko-Borovsky advises players to attack opponents who have foolishly dropped their guard: “The player who, after sustained effort, has won some material, is naturally inclined to relax; having realized his intentions, he is not in the best condition for the immediate conception of another plan requiring further efforts. This is the moment when we should try to assume the initiative and create as many difficulties for him as possible. Passive acceptance of the situation almost certainly leads to disaster.”³

CHALLENGES FOR READERS

1. In your industry and purchasing environment, how much latitude do you have to communicate with customers during late middle game after formal purchasing begins? How do the rules change once your customers initiate formal purchasing?

2. If you are permitted to do so, do you routinely maintain a strong presence in your customer’s hallways and offices during late middle game? Do you maintain your intensity as RFP release nears? If not, why not? In your estimation, do you do a good job of impressing management as endgame approaches?

3. To what extent do you rehearse your solution, differentiators, and selling messages with customers during late middle game? Do you consciously test your customers’ responses to each of the elements of your offer?

4. Do you behaviorally differentiate yourself in late middle game? If so, how? In what ways does your behavior demonstrate more understanding of customers’ needs, more awareness of their hidden issues and concerns, more commitment to serving them, and greater alignment with their goals?

5. How effective are you at defending a weak late middle game position? What could you do to increase your behavioral differentiation during these difficult circumstances?

*This story has another interesting lesson about middle game. In November 2001, after Lockheed Martin had won the award, Vago Muradian, reporting for Defense Daily International, revealed, “Lockheed Martin two years ago emerged as the frontrunner in the multibillion dollar Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) competition on the performance of its proposed jets, particularly after rival Boeing (BA) was forced to comprehensively redesign its aircraft, but senior Pentagon officials concluded that the contest between the two must continue to ensure against Lockheed becoming complacent and drive the companies to deliver better proposals, according to former government officials.” Later in this article, Muradian claimed, “Although some senior Pentagon officials saw the competition as imbalanced, they wanted to ensure continued competition and so in public consistently maintained that the two teams were equally matched and that the outcome of the contest was uncertain.” What’s fascinating in this story is the difference between the public and private positions the customer took. Middle game is often won by one of the competitors, but the customer—for legal, political, or public relations reasons—will assert that the contest is still open, the winner undecided. In fact, Lockheed Martin won this contest in middle game; the rest was window dressing, including two years of continued effort by Boeing at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars. For further details, see Vago Muradian, “Lockheed Seen as JSF Leader Two Years Ago, but DoD Kept Competition Going,” Defense Daily International 3, no. 1 (November 2, 2001): 2.