Avoid competitive tendering - growth through renewal

I show your business how to avoid excess competitive tendering and how to be more successful when you need to enter into tendering cases: instead of trying to survive in price competition, you will be focusing on renewal, growth and profitability.
 
All of us have seen in our businesses the change in customer buying behavior, brought by digitalisation, Internet enabled direct connections between seller and buyer, and globalisation of competition. Thus all firms face continuous change that affects the business landscape. 

The change often means stricter and stricter competition, characterised by tightly defined requests for proposals (RFPs) sent by buyers. This severely limits possible competitive strategies and options available for sellers. It can be seen in daily operations:

• Significance of pricing is easily emphasised in RFPs, which heavily affects business margins and profitability
  
• Detailed buyer requirements lead sellers to develop very similar kind of solutions, which correspondingly creates a barrier to differentiate against competitors
  
• Continuous development of operations and cost reduction become the core of the business strategy
  

Thus we face a vicious cycle: a firm cannot renew, its profits go down and growth stalls. 

But a better reality could be achievable: Satisfied customers that are willing to pay a reasonable price. Innovation of new products, services and business models with successful go-to-market. Continuous operational development balancing renewal, growth and cost-consciousness. This already sounds like a much brighter future.

Required changes are not necessarily easy - also I, among others, have bitter experiences:

• Increase of sales and marketing efforts led to rising fixed costs and growing number of lost deals, instead of anticipated revenue growth
  
• Customers found new services of a firm very interesting, but raised interest did not lead to growth in competitiveness nor winning deals
  
• The margins in the new export markets were even lower than in the current ones, which more than destroyed all the benefits of achieved revenue growth 

Standing still and preserving status quo are a path to failure. Numerous firms, however, have been able to break the vicious cycle of competitive tendering, for instance:

• A technology company revitalised growth by enhancing sales and marketing operations to better support customer business targets
  
• A services company developed a new business model that made it possible to very profitably commercialise its offerings also to markets not achievable before
  
• A company selling systems significantly expanded its international operations by creating a new way-of-working that made it possible to avoid RFPs in most of the customer cases
  

I have a long and extensive experience in developing and implementing actions required for the change – both as an entrepreneur in my own businesses and as a leader responsible for P/L, as well as an accelerator of other companies´ businesses. More information about this and about how to avoid competitive tendering can be found from the Services section. The sub-sections also cover needs to:

• Improve sales and marketing operations
  
• Internationalisation and expansion to new market areas
  
• Development of new products, services and business models
  
• Successful commercialisation and go-to-market
  
• Market entry to Finnish markets or establishing business operations in Finland
  

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In your service, personally: Raimo Malila

I have renewed and grown businesses both in SME and enterprises and as an entrepreneur. Renewal has included building new businesses and business models, as well as their commercialisation. In addition, I have generated growth by improving sales and marketing operations, as well as by entering new, international markets.

My services are built on personal and often very tough business experience in various companies. And in most of these cases, I have had the responsibility of profit and loss or even carried entrepreneurial risk – this gives the experience a little bit different flavour compared with just giving advice from back seat. You can find more examples about my doings from the Services section. 

When I assist your company, whether it is more hard work to reach agreed objectives or competence transfer, I am personally not only agreeing on the cooperation but doing the actual work. In other words, you are not going to cooperate with an expert from a resource pool that happens to be available, or you are not constantly briefing new experts to get them up to speed.  If we jointly see that extra expertise in some specific areas will be needed, also my extensive partner network will be available. 

It is vital for me that we genuinely share the view that business and customer operations renewal are the keys to business growth. You can discuss more with me about your business situation and challenges. Please call me, +358 40 559 7010, or send an email, [email protected] .

See more detailed profile on my key qualifications and professional experience here. 

You can read more about my views on growth and renewal in my blog. 

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