Clearly, behavioral differentiation does not end once you receive a contract. The possibility for behavioral differentiation exists at every customer touch point, so throughout the process of executing work, delivering and installing equipment, performing maintenance, providing services, conducting postsales support, or doing whatever else you do for customers, you should be looking for ways to behave toward your customers that distinguish you from your competitors. In all you do to serve your customers you should find ways to remain customer focused; encourage your employees to act with purpose while performing their functions; and communicate more, measure more, and request feedback more often than your competitors do. Even if you lose a contract award, you can differentiate yourself in next game and position yourself for future opportunities because of your behavioral differentiation. Deke Lincoln of BE&K tells us how:
We received an opportunity to bid on a project for a company I’ll call Global Oil Refining. The project was for NOx emission reduction in the powerhouse. It was a pretty substantial job with some major work to be done later. We had targeted Global as a priority customer because of the hundreds of millions of dollars in capital to be spent there over the next few years. This opportunity was our first with this customer. We had some early communication with them and had done some marketing, but we had not spent enough middle game time with the customer prior to bidding on this project.
Our competition on this job was fierce, including Competitors X, Y, and Z. All had substantially more experience and better résumés than we did when it came to refineries and power. In fact, one of the boilers to be modified on this project was a Competitor X boiler. Few in my organization gave us a chance in hell of winning this job. The pessimism was quite amazing, in fact. It was difficult to not be affected by it, but we were determined not to give up or give in to the naysayers who believed that experience and price meant everything. Most importantly, we were determined to be good sports in defeat—if we lost—and to build on the relationship if we felt the customer had good future potential.
Anyway, we ended up losing this job to Competitor X. After a couple of weeks of going back and forth with the customer after they announced the winner, I thought we had an awesome chance. We had put together a really nice proposal that addressed all of Global’s key issues, and it came very close to winning. In fact, the project manager, Jim Smith, told me that it was one of the hardest decisions he’d had to make. But he went with Competitor X because they had also turned in a good proposal, and they could self-perform the boiler modeling, something we could not do.
We were disappointed at losing the job, and the internal pessimists made it even more difficult, saying that we shouldn’t waste any more time with this customer. Despite the fact that we really improved our relationship with these guys, people were willing to throw in the towel. But we didn’t do that. We were sincere in wishing Jim luck and fed him information (articles, vendor information, and technical reports) to help him on the project, despite the fact that we had not been selected. We also continued to develop our relationship with Jim and other key decision-makers at the plant and continued to show our interest in helping them with their problems.
A few months later, we received several more project opportunities, which we won, and we were single sourced on three more projects (two were from Jim Smith!). Later, we proposed on an $80 million project for Global. We did several things in that bid to try to differentiate ourselves. First, we submitted a really nice, to-the-point, executive summary to the people reading the proposal and others who would be involved in the decision. We were the only company to do this, and they really liked it. We also tried to help them find a supplier of caustic because they expected it to be a problem and were worried about the costs associated with higher demand. Finding a supplier of caustic is not a typical scope item for a firm like ours, but we had contacts and used them to help Global. Finally, we tried to help them improve their relationships with the public and with local regulatory authorities.
We had not performed any projects of this magnitude in the oil refinery industry, and our competition included every heavy hitter in our industry. As the decision came down to the wire, it was between us and Competitor A, which had the edge because of their involvement with the front-end engineering. According to Global, Competitor A thought they had it in the bag. But we won. Afterward, Global told us we won this work because we wanted it more and because they trust us and like us and believe we can execute projects successfully for them. It took a lot of effort to develop that trust, but in the end it is what won us the work.⁸
In the end, as Deke Lincoln’s story illustrates, very few buying decisions are purely rational. When customers have equally qualified alternatives, they will go with the supplier they prefer on emotional grounds. BE&K won because the customer felt the company’s people “wanted it more,” and because the customer trusted them and liked them and believed they would do the job. Credibility is clearly fundamental. You must be able to do the work successfully, but many companies can do that. In the end, the difference is desire, commitment, trust, and liking—and those impressions are formed based on your behaviors.
1. How effective is your company at managing endgame? Candidly, do you tend to let down then or push ahead harder? How much senior presence do you typically have during endgame?
2. How professional is your proposal management process? Do you assign knowledgeable, qualified proposal managers? Or whoever is on the bench at the moment? Do you develop proposal win strategies? Do you use tools like the kickoff meeting? Storyboarding? Pink and red team reviews? Proposal management checklists?
3. Do you produce customer-oriented proposals with strong and repeated themes and visuals? Do your proposals consistently and effectively answer the four key questions: Why us? Why not them? So what? and How so? Do you routinely use compelling, brochure-type executive summaries?
4. What do you do to differentiate yourself during your presentations? Do you always rehearse your presentations? Do you rehearse the questions and answers? Do you create good summaries of your key points to leave behind? What do you do during your presentations to symbolize your understanding of the customer’s needs and demonstrate your commitment?