SMEs are the real engine of the economy and the key to a nation’s vitality. They can spring from a garage, the mind of a returning emigrant or indeed that of a newly arrived immigrant. They provide a path, build careers, feed families and develop their surrounding communities.
Because of their training or background the founders of early stage small to medium size organisations can find themselves wedged in the weeds of the operation through either preference or necessity. They neglect strategic work which leads to their organisations stagnating and flatlining. I come across these situations regularly – all with familiar issues. Here are some of them:
1. Under skilled and disempowered teams
Busy-body founders and leaders want their hands across every activity in the business. As a result they neuter their staff and deprive them of opportunities to learn and grow.
2. Nightmare clients
These organisations have more than their fair share of nightmare clients. Nightmare clients affect your health, keep you awake at night and make your life a misery. They destroy teams, bully, gaslight, renege on agreements and constantly change the goalposts. They infect entire organisations sucking executive teams and even board members into the weeds.
3. Contracts that don’t fit
Struggling SMEs often have what I call a “Frankenstein” portfolio of contracts. This is where an organisation has a jumble of contracts that have a differing array of characteristics that are very difficult to service with any consistency. Apart from stressing the company’s operations it is bad for the company’s identity as the market will be confused and find it hard to work out what they stand for.
4. Unresponsive buyers
SMEs whose leadership is more focused on delivery and operations often don’t understand the importance of building good relationships with prospects. This means that they continually struggle to gain access and build influence.
5. Unexpected contract losses
Many SMEs chug away delivering what they think is a great service and, like the boiling frog, are oblivious to the sucker punch that awaits. They forget to renew and revitalise their products and services which leads them to offering up more of the same. The result is that they are blindsided with an unexpected contract loss.
6. Every opportunity is a “must win”
Unexpected contract losses erode confidence and financial stability. This places considerable pressure on the organisation to win the next opportunity, often leading to a stressed environment, increased sick leave and resignations.
7. Ineffective proposal response process
These organisation don’t have a playbook for how to approach procurement competitions. As a result they don’t have a documented process for assembling bid teams, developing stakeholder support, qualifying opportunities, content production, meeting practices and quality assurance.
8. Exhausted bid response teams
Many organisations are not selective about what opportunities to go for. This can lead to bid teams working on a number of proposals at the same time, which leads to long hours, increased stress, too much junk food and resignations.
9. Losing proposals
Exhausted bid response teams who are operating without the foundation of a documented response process produce proposals that are tired, ugly, error-ridden, irrelevant, low scoring and losing.
What now?
If you are experiencing any of these problems and want to have a chat you can click on the link below. Otherwise you can connect with me on LinkedIn. You can also complete this scorecard to get a snapshot of your business development fundamentals.
