A global service company with ~ £80 million of business from a major client (amounting to ~ 20% of the available revenue from the contract ) was aware that the company would be rebidding its work in 2019. This was the end of a seven-year cycle. The service company had an ambition to 'at least double' the revenue earned for the following seven years i.e. increase its share to ~ 40%. The bid was due to be issued in Q3 2019; to get well ahead in terms of bid approach the service company decided to hold a two-day strategic planning session in Q1 2019. The bid team was to be assembled from around the world comprising subject matter experts, client account managers, market research analysts, business development executives and senior management; the location for the workshop was London.
As the members of the team, who would need to work closely together over the coming months but in very dispersed geographic locations, did not know each other very well, the two days began with some innovative team building. A number of video pitches were scripted, acted and edited in this half-day exercise, the three sub-teams preparing the pitches were asked to imagine the video would be shown to the client as an element of the bid. Oscars were presented! 'Out of our comfort zone' but 'Great fun' were some of the comments. The remainder of the time was spent identifying and agreeing key aspects of the bid content 'how will be leverage what we have already and how will we further differentiate ourselves?' and the bid process 'what will we need to get right as a team?'.