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Win more large service contracts – more often

The fastest way to grow revenue is to win more of the large bids you already have. This is a collection of posts that can help you do that.

Selling Large Service Contracts to Big Companies

by Chris Arlen

Landing a large service contract with a big company is the holy grail to service contractors that don’t have them. Big deals have their upsides and down. Unfortunately service contractors don’t learn [...]

click to continue → July 7, 2011

4 Prejudices Incumbents must Battle

by Chris Arlen

You’re the supplier of a large dollar service contract, successfully delivering for 3 or more years. Now it’s going out for rebid and, unfortunately as incumbent, you’re saddled with some heavy baggage. [...]

click to continue → January 27, 2011

Who Cares What Sellers Want?

by Chris Arlen

Obviously we do if we’re selling or managing sales. But buyers (aka prospects or customers) have no reason to care. They receive no benefit by helping sales people. As dumb and basic [...]

click to continue → June 17, 2010

4 Unbelievable Sales Beliefs

by Chris Arlen

Sales people have strange beliefs. Not you. Some of them though. They must have, judging by their actions with customers. Here are a few interesting ones. What do you think?

click to continue → May 3, 2010

First things first – sales effectiveness or efficiency?

by Chris Arlen

As a consultant, I’ve seen an unintentional decision playing out among large  service contractors (those with dedicated sales resources) and smaller firms as well. Most of these firms are committed to improving [...]

click to continue → March 19, 2010

Selling Sales Efforts

by Chris Arlen

Is the only benefit of sales personnel their ability to secure a signed contract? Consider this; you’re the one responsible for bringing on new business, you’re boss oversees your sales efforts as [...]

click to continue → February 18, 2010

RFPs to Nowhere?

by Chris Arlen

I asked a contractor-friend of mine what his biggest pain in contract sales was. His answer was “not getting the opportunity to make a presentation after submitting a proposal in response to [...]

click to continue → February 9, 2010

The New Numbers Game

by Chris Arlen

The old game for selling throws lots against the wall and something sticks – numbers comparing thrown to stuck. And it’s still true, something sticks, eventually. Even one becomes the justification to [...]

click to continue → January 15, 2010

Conversions in Selling Services

by Chris Arlen

Service contractors can should learn a great deal from web marketers. Web marketers are data diligent and process aware. They’re  focused on “conversions” – points in their online process that are measurable, [...]

click to continue → January 7, 2010

The Greatest Sales Question

by Chris Arlen

What’s important to you? Or put another way, what is your single most pressing challenge today? That pressing challenge is the one keeping you from getting or enjoying what’s important to you. [...]

click to continue → December 3, 2009

Lost Opportunity Cost

by Chris Arlen

Staying the same never is. We exist in a constant state of decision making. Not making a decision, is making a decision. Not taking action is making a decision. Healthcare reform is [...]

click to continue → November 19, 2009

Side-by-Side Competition

by Chris Arlen

There’s always competition for service contracts*. You’d think contractor proposals were written with that in mind. Alas, not so often. During an RFP process Procurement will pull responses from contractors’ proposals and [...]

click to continue → October 12, 2009

Keep It Together: Thoughts on Proposal Binding

by Chris Arlen

Service contractors have their reasons for choosing how their proposals are bound. Customers receiving those proposals have other needs. So, beyond keeping 100s of proposal pages from littering the floor, what’s the [...]

click to continue → September 24, 2009

Top 5 Reference Killers

by Chris Arlen

Reference selection for a proposal can be like nitroglycerin – choose the wrong ones and start looking to the next bid because you’ve just obliterated this one. Who would have thought your [...]

click to continue → September 17, 2009

The Million Dollar Prep

by Chris Arlen

This preparation is for contractors seeking to win a facility service contract of $1 million dollars annually, or more. Why a million? Just a nice number to say a contract opportunity is [...]

click to continue → August 12, 2009

Selling to Procurement’s Agenda

by Chris Arlen

A current trend is for greater involvement by Procurement in service contracts of all sizes. In the past Procurement had always run large bids. Now it seems they’re running many smaller ones [...]

click to continue → June 1, 2009

Janitorial Fact & Fiction

by Chris Arlen

March 16, 2009 Unhappy Janitors at Microsoft protest subcontractor’s cuts This article points to the janitorial subcontractor’s staffing cuts and unhappy janitors because of increased workloads. It made me wonder about our [...]

click to continue → March 19, 2009

Selling to Procurement

by Chris Arlen

An interesting insight came out of our interviews with Procurement professionals (Procurement Talks: An Interview with Microsoft and Expedia’s interview to be published next week). There’s not one style of procurement, but [...]

click to continue → June 27, 2008

To Bid, or Not to Bid

by Chris Arlen

Now that’s a serious question. Whether you’re the contractor invited to bid, or the customer inviting bids, this can be a touchy question. From the contractors’ side, declining to bid invitations can [...]

click to continue → December 7, 2007

Hollow RFPs

by Chris Arlen

Does this sound familiar? A contractor-client notes an increase in Requests for Proposal (RFPs). Normally lots of RFPs are a good thing. However, these RFPs aren’t what they seem. He feels many [...]

click to continue → August 20, 2007

RFPs = Written Interviews

by Chris Arlen

Imagine you’re in a job interview. You want the job. The interviewer needs to hire someone to fill an open position. Simple enough. In the beginning, the interviewer tells you lots of [...]

click to continue → May 17, 2007

Naming Names: Matching Customers’ Words

by Chris Arlen

Tolkien created wonderful character names like Gollum, Gandalf, and Gimli. These names belong to a unique world. When you hear them you know where you are. Same is true for customers. They [...]

click to continue → May 10, 2007

Reversing Into Darkness

by Chris Arlen

You know what a reverse auction is. Leaving the light, moving into the darkness, and finally oblivion. From a contractor’s perspective anyway. I don’t like reverse auctions. They’ve been called zero-sum, power-based [...]

click to continue → April 10, 2007

Right Time for Rebids?

by Chris Arlen

Anyone who’s had a contract up for renewal, especially of the 80/20 variety, knows the fear of losing it (80% of your revenue from 20% of your contracts). In Would You Rather [...]

click to continue → March 29, 2007

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