How To Win More Construction RFP Projects
(Without Having The Lowest Bid)
How To Win More Construction RFP Projects
Like many construction companies, your firm probably spends an awful lot of time and money trying to win new construction projects through an RFP process.
When your bid falls at the final hurdle, it hurts.
The project interview is crucial but it’s where many construction companies fall over and it’s costing you a lot of time, money, and morale.
This article will explain how you can turn this situation around and make the interview your secret weapon rather than the banana peel that trips you up.
Interested in learning more about how your company can start winning more RFPs? Let’s talk (click here).
Watch The Interview
Our CEO, Reggie Pearse was recently interviewed on the A Better HR Business Podcast.
Reggie was asked to share his thoughts and advice on how construction companies can win more RFP projects without having go in with the lowest bid.
How Do Failed Project Interviews Affect Your Company?
Let’s examine how your team’s performance in project interviews can affect your company.
You’re missing out on revenue
Let’s start with the most important effect – every RFP you lose is lost revenue.
Gone through weeks/months of an RFP process only to lose so – lost revenue and expended costs.
You’re wasting money
Every RFP process costs money. You may need to pay for flights, admin costs, design work, and more. And that’s not including your direct labor costs for all the hours spent by your various team members at their various salary levels.
Downward pressure on your bid price
When your team gives an ok or average performance in the interview, your company ends up looking just the same as all the other companies in the process. This encourages the project GC selection decision maker/s to choose the lowest bid. Because if the competing project interview teams all sound the same then, why not?
Staff morale suffers
The members of the RFP team put a lot of blood, sweat, and tears into preparing a full RFP bid and it hurts when they miss out at the last stage. The wider employee group may also feel highly invested in the RFP and project interview process, particularly for high-profile projects, so the excitement and anticipation of winning leads to disappointment and a hit to morale when the interview is not successful. Every failed interview hurts staff morale.
Your employer brand gets damaged
Every project your company misses out on negatively affects your employer brand. When your competitor wins the big projects, it becomes a little bit harder to find and attract great new talent to your company.
You’ll start to receive fewer invitations to interview
When you look and sound the same as your companies, and when you more often than not fail to win projects, the shine will start to fade on your company. Gradually, your firm will receive fewer and fewer invitations to participate in the interview process or you’ll just be invited to make up the participant numbers.
Learn about how your company can start winning more RFPs. Click here to book a quick call.
How Do Failed Project Interviews Affect Your People?
Let’s examine how your team’s performance in interviews can affect the people inside your construction company.
Your pitch team may include a senior executive, project executive, project manager, superintendent, pre-construction manager, and so on.
They feel uncomfortable presenting
A common concern we hear from these types of professionals is that they feel really uncomfortable presenting.
“I went to engineering school, not to speech school.”
Talking about the wrong things
Members of the interview team often find themselves talking about the wrong things in the interview.
“I found myself going on and on about rock size for a school project when all the School Superintendent wanted to hear about was how my team was going to handle student safety with all our heavy machinery moving around on site.”
It’s a waste of time
Some members of your interview team find that the entire process is a waste of their valuable time and is hurting their careers.
“Every time, I have to give up a whole bunch of time impacting my ability to stay on top of my current projects to prepare for the project interview, and then when we don’t win it’s so disappointing and frustrating. Sometimes I wonder if I should participate in the interviews at all.”
Project Directors and CEOs
Project Executives and CEOs are paid by results so when the results aren’t coming in, well, obviously it’s not good. They know it’s crucial to up their game and win more of these projects or their job is on the line.
Interested in learning more about how your company can start winning more RFPs? Click here to book a quick call.
What Are Some Of The Ways To Solve The Failed Interviews Problem?
You have plenty of options when it comes to trying to fix your record of failed interviews for construction projects.
Unfortunately, most of your options aren’t good enough.
Do your own dry runs
The interview team does its own dry runs in a room at the office and it’s led by an internal leader or account manager.
This internal person can sometimes just pick holes and overly criticize the quality of the presentation. Rather than help the interview team improve, it can have the opposite effect causing erosion in confidence.
So everyone loses confidence and it actually gets worse.
Spend more time & money on graphic design
Put in extra marketing spend to make it look fancier – fancy slides, etc.
No meaningful effect if it’s not supported by an improved quality of presentation.
Old-school presentation skills course
Traditional presentation training courses.
The training was generic and not in the context of the interview.
You need something better . . .
How We’re Different
There’s so much riding on your interview so you need something a little different.
You need something that focuses on your specific problem.
At Organization Learning Group, we specialize in project interview presentation and presence training for construction companies.
We started out trying to fix these problems with service and have been getting ever more sophisticated with every year.
We’ve been quietly helping companies like yours and getting great results.
Learn how your company can start winning more RFPs. Click here to book a quick call.
How It Works (What You Get Our PROJECT Interview Presentation & Presence Training For Construction Companies)
Here’s how our Project Interview Sales & Presentation Training For Construction Companies works.
You’ll enjoy:
- A classroom-based training and coaching program (choose from half-day, 1-day, or 2-days) where you’ll get expert advice and help on how to craft and deliver an engaging, inspiring and persuasive project interview for construction projects.
- Team and individual coaching and feedback sessions to improve individual and team performance.
- Needs-based deep-dive one-to-one sessions to perfect your presentation for active project interviews (typically 1-2 hours for 1-3 sessions).
- Expert-led facilitation and coaching of dry run/s for the interview.
All or any of the training and coaching can be in-person, remote over Zoom/MS Teams, or a hybrid combination.
By the end of the training, your team will:
- Feel far more comfortable and confident when presenting.
- Know how to present the right things. The things that your future client wants to hear about.
- Demonstrate confidence and belief in your (you, your team, and the organization) ability to successfully execute the construction project.
Frequently Asked Questions
Have some questions about our Project Interview Sales & Presentation Training For Construction Companies?
Here are some questions we are often asked.
We tried sales training before so how do we know if this will work for us?
This is not some generic program. Our training is specific to Project Interviews and big-ticket construction projects.
How can you possibly understand us when you don’t know us or our culture?
This is our specialty.
We love the construction industry. It’s our passion to help construction folks win and build amazing projects.
How will we measure success?
We do pre and post-training assessments of confidence, quality, and so on.
In a recent debrief session, we were told that the work we did gave the interview team such a big boost of confidence and enabled them to give an amazing presentation.
- Moderated panel discussions on a specific topic
- Topic specific multimedia campaigns
- Virtual and/or in-person group discussions, practice and coaching conducted over two rounds of meetings
All of this can be customized for a diverse population, and busy schedules in multiple time zones.
Who does this help: This is ideal for new leaders, individual contributors identified as future leaders, and existing leaders who have gaps in their leadership competencies.
Why Act Now?
Why act now, book a call, and get the training started?
Why not wait for some time in the future when you have a bit more spare time to start fixing this problem?
Simple: if you keep doing it the same way you’ll get the same results.
You need to change things up if you want to stop falling over at the final hurdle.
Get In Touch Now
Interested in learning more about how your company can start winning more RFPs with our project interview sales & presentation training for construction companies?
Go here: www.organizationlearninggroup.com/contact
You can then choose to enter the Contact Us form to book a call.
Alternatively, you can send our CEO Reggie Pearse a quick text message and you can take it from there.
