Understanding Buyer Behaviour – How to Win Tenders and Influence...

Understanding Buyer Behaviour – How to Win Tenders and Influence Prospects
Why does understanding buying behaviour
and key drivers keep businesses ahead of
competition?
Why use external support to understand
these challenges?
Many debrief meetings are attended by bid teams or a
representative who has supported the engagement
process. As a result client prospects can be reticent to
reveal their true feelings towards the group. How then
can you gain further understanding of the decision
process and overcome situations where procurement
teams hide behind their hard scoring criteria?
Deploying an independent third party to undertake
independent research in this area amongst your clients
and prospective clients can provide valuable
understanding, reducing abortive bid preparation costs
and improving your chances of success in future
tenders.
Specific examples of outcomes emerging from this
type of research include better understanding of:
The economic climate we are operating in today
places all kinds of pressures on business; the order
book being the key area of focus. Our Buying
Behaviour research solution provides insight and
understanding of customer/prospect motivations and
enables organisations to achieve better value from
business development and tendering activities.
Organisations seeking to work either in the Public
Sector or when tendering for high value contracts will
typically be required to respond via a formal tender
process. Gaining understanding of your prospects soft
relationship expectations, formal engagement
requirements, drivers of trust and the hidden factors
which influence contract awards is highly desirable.
Uncovering these areas enables development of high
quality tender responses and effective relationship
building from early engagement.
Post tender debrief sessions are frequently driven by
responses to hard criteria set out in invitation to tender
documents and do not reveal the real background –
seldom do these reveal the realistic picture of why a
prospect has chosen not to work with you. We can
help uncover the decision making not included in the
award criteria and provide greater depth of insight.

Partnership behaviours (sharing information,
dealing and managing change)

Quality of social relationships (supportive
behaviours)

Co-operation around unforeseen issues
(listening to both sides)

Compromise (give and take)

Citizenship (tolerance and going the extra
mile)

Staff behaviour (uninterested, unenthusiastic,
argumentative)
Developing a more comprehensive understanding of
how your client prospects regard your organisation and
your front-line business development teams approach
to winning business from them is significantly valuable.
Independent research using contemporary techniques
to analyse results can provide this. Outputs can
determine which areas in your business development
and bid response process are underperforming,
providing clear guidance on where and how to improve
your business win success rate.
TTi (Europe) Ltd – Registered in England no: 06691266 – VAT number: 947 0187 10
Registered Office: 6 Olympus Court, Olympus Avenue, Tachbrook Park, Warwick, CV34 6RZ, UK
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How does TTi Global support the process?
What is the return on investment?
TTi Global has supported businesses and
organisations in the Construction, Business Services,
Automotive and Financial Sectors to better understand
buying behaviours and motivators.
Ultimately the investment in conducting research of
this type can be assessed through the improvement
actions an organisation takes to support future
tendering and selling activity. The ability of an
organisation to act on identified deficiencies and make
changes quickly are the key drivers of ROI.
Our research solutions are scalable according to the
number of tenders submitted, sector and size of
organisation.
Some common themes we reveal are:
How well customer
needs are listened to
and reflected in bid /
proposal response
The importance of
gender mix in a bid
team
Attitude and
enthusiasm
demonstrated by the
team
Organisational
strengths and
weaknesses
How reliable a
business is perceived
to be in the market
place
Expected areas of
partnering such as
trust, honesty and
integrity
Your reputation in the
market place
Comparison with
competition
(providing
competitive
advantage)
The research is not prescriptive and is appropriately
designed to meet business objectives and support
understanding from different customer types.
One-to-one business interviews are conducted by
senior staff with appropriate commercial knowledge,
sector understanding and business management
experience to elicit understanding of challenges and
issues that can be effectively interpreted, actioned and
incrementally improved.
Improved win rates, higher referrals from customers
and greater client retention/loyalty are all metrics which
can give clear evidence of organisational
improvement.
Next Steps
If you would like to find out more about the research
approaches we can deploy to achieve more from your
business development and tendering activities please
contact:
Glyn Luckett
Account Development Director
gluckett@tti-global.com
+44 (0) 1753 214038
TTi (Europe) Ltd – Registered in England no: 06691266 – VAT number: 947 0187 10
Registered Office: 6 Olympus Court, Olympus Avenue, Tachbrook Park, Warwick, CV34 6RZ, UK
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