5 things billion dollar companies do differently to win their proposals

Instead of being well-oiled intimidating machines, most large companies are a collection of political territories that often don’t know what resources are available to them and don’t cooperate very well anyway. They don’t have an abundance of staff because all those bodies are all already committed and their proposals are just as understaffed as the ones at small companies. And even though they have billions in revenue, they can only spend what’s in their budget on the proposal. But they do have some advantages over small businesses, they just aren’t what you think.

1. Large companies have more patience. They target bids they know are coming up for recompete years in advance. They may not do much more than track them, but they are patient, and know where most of their future business will come from. If they want to win a big RFP years from now, they'll get into position by winning smaller bids over the next couple of years and get to know the customer. IF they have their act together, they’ll go into it with an advantage in preparation. If they don’t have their act together (which happens far more often than you would think) they may still have at least a little advantage in customer awareness.
2. Large companies use more senior staff and specialists. Large companies usually don’t have an advantage in the number of people they can throw at their bids. The difference is they have more experienced managers and more business development, capture, and proposal specialists. Their proposal manager usually isn't also their administrative assistant. Also, because they're more hierarchical, the people doing the proposals at large companies usually have more authority to get things done.
3. Large companies budget according to metrics and not according to cash flow. If they think they need to spend 2% of award value to win a bid, they spend it. If they think the proposal will require 8 hours a page over 200 pages, they will be prepared to cover the cost of 1,600 hours to write the proposal. It’s not that they have more money to spend. It’s that they can wait to recover it when they win, even after taking their win rate into account (you don’t win them all). A small business might think spending $30,000 is a lot of money to win a $3 million dollar bid, even though it may generate up to ten times that amount in profit, because they’re concerned about cash flow now. A large business will spend that much or more on ten bids in a row, knowing the profit from winning a few will cover that cost several times over. It may take a couple of years just to break even, but they can ride it out.
4. Large companies hire more consultants. See the item above about budgets. If they need outside expertise and they’ve got the budget to cover it, they get it. They don’t hesitate like they’re taking money out of their own pocket. If they don't have the staff they need to work the proposal at the standards needed to achieve a high win probability and the size of the proposal justifies it, they do what it takes.
5. Large companies have more mature processes. They’ve done it before. Many times. So even if they are a bit dysfunctional or have processes that are outdated or otherwise aren’t the most effective (which is usually the case), they’ve got more to work with and are more used to working as a team than a company with limited or no institutional knowledge.

The advantages that large companies have come down to experience, patience, and willingness to invest. Small companies that want to beat larger companies need to use smart processes, discipline, and customer awareness to overcome the experience and budget advantages of their larger competitors. It also helps to have the financing needed to take a long-term view of your proposal investments. But even without that, you can submit better bids with fewer people if you are smarter about how you go about it.

Large companies waste more effort than small ones. A well thought through process applied with discipline that produces solid, differentiated win strategies while eliminating unnecessary rewriting cycles will improve your win rate while reducing waste. And that's just what you need to take on much larger companies and win.