Personal Development and Career Progression in Bidding and Work Winning, with Matt Light
In this episode of the Red Review, host Jeremy Brim sits down with Matt Light, Director of International Proposals at Ascela Health and Deputy CEO of the APMP UK Chapter, for a wide-ranging chat about careers, personal development and what it really takes to progress in the world of bids and work winning.
Matt has spent 15 years in bidding and proposals, mostly in UK and European healthcare. He started with an internship at Capita, spent a decade at Lloyds Pharmacy working up to bid team leader, had a spell in supply chain, and now leads proposals at Accela Health. Alongside his day job, he's volunteered with the APMP UK chapter for three years, most recently stepping into the Deputy CEO role.
Early careers: relationships before writing
One of the biggest myths in bidding, according to Matt, is that success starts with learning to write well. It doesn't.
"Anyone can write," Matt explains. What separates a good bid professional from a great one is confidence: the confidence to walk into a business early in your career and build relationships with the people who actually deliver the work.
Matt's approach with junior bid writers is to spend the first three or four months focused almost entirely on relationship building, not writing. Getting to know subject matter experts. Understanding the risks and challenges in each part of the business. Building a network that runs from operational staff all the way up to the exec team.
That grounding pays off later. By the time bid professionals reach middle and senior roles, and their voice starts carrying more weight in solutioning conversations, it's that relationship capital that lets them really drive a bid through.
Middle and senior roles: use the data
Jeremy shared a sobering pattern from his work benchmarking growth maturity across nearly 30 clients over the past 27 months: roughly 80% of profit consistently comes from 20% of clients, yet almost no leadership team realises it. Key account management and capture are rarely deployed properly upstream of bidding, if at all.
The result is what Jeremy calls "hobby bidding": throwing proposals at anything that moves, winning roughly one in five, and mistaking that for success. The consequences run deep:
Adverse selection means the bids you win are often won on price, with delivery teams left underbidding and overstretched
Working with clients who didn't really want you in the first place makes for miserable delivery
In today's fight for talent, bid teams stuck winning poor quality work with poor quality clients will simply leave
Matt shared a real example from his own career, working with an organisation so entrenched in "we'll throw it at the wall and see what sticks" thinking that the bid function was treated as little more than an admin silo. The business no longer exists.
The turnaround, when it happens, comes down to data. Once bid professionals have a few years of experience and a track record to draw on, they're in a position to go to their director or exec and show, in numbers, what isn't working and why. That's what shifts a business from treating bids as a back office function to treating it as the engine of growth.
Own your own development
Jeremy didn't hold back on where development responsibility sits: with the individual.
"You've got to be the person that makes that happen," Matt agreed, while acknowledging the privilege of the opportunities he's had. But every one of those opportunities, he pointed out, came from asking for them. Nobody handed him a seat at the table for a six month competitive dialogue. He asked to be there.
Both Jeremy and Matt were clear that structured training only gets you so far. Research shows people retain just 10 to 20% of what they learn on a course, and most of that is forgotten within days. Real development comes from reading, doing, talking to people, and actively seeking out opportunities that stretch you.
A few practical takeaways from the conversation:
Early careers: interview your employer as much as they interview you. Ask about their bid process, whether they run capture, what their win rate is, and whether they storyboard their bids properly. Storyboarding is consistently one of the top reasons bids are won or lost
Middle managers: use data to make the case for change, particularly the financial impact of poor win rates and misdirected effort
Anyone, at any level: put yourself forward for opportunities. The worst that happens is someone says no
Introverts take note: you don't need to be the loudest voice in the room. Asking "purposefully naive" questions in meetings can guide a room to the right answer just as effectively as stating an opinion outright, and it builds your reputation as someone who adds value
What's next for the profession
Matt closed out the conversation with an update on the APMP UK chapter's work. A new senior leaders focus group, led by Nigel Thacker, is bringing together experienced bid leaders to work out how the next generation can reach senior roles faster and with more support.
The chapter's wider "intentional career path" initiative is looking at three areas: promoting bidding as a career within schools, colleges and universities, working with employers to build specialised bid career pathways, and deepening the relationship with government and the Cabinet Office around apprenticeships and policy.
It all feeds into this year's APMP UK Conference, marking 25 years since the chapter was founded, taking place on 24th and 25th November at The Vox at the NEC in Birmingham. Details here.
Transcript
00:00:00
[upbeat music]Welcome to the Red Review podcast, brought to you by Growth Ignition, the award-winning transformation and training business, and our partners Bidscript, the bid management, bid writing, and opportunity search platform.
So hello, welcome to the Red Review with me, Jeremy Brim.
Um, exciting episode today.
I'm joined by my friend Matt Light.
Um, and we're gonna have a conversation about personal development, careers, uh, and development in the world of, uh, bids and work winning.
00:00:34
So hi, Matt, welcome aboard.
00:00:36
Hi, Jez, thanks for having me on, mate.
00:00:39
No problem at all, no problem at all.
Great to have you.
So we better start,'cause y-you've got a good old LinkedIn presence like me, and, and put out some wonderful content, but there might be some people that have not crossed paths with you so far.
Do like and subscribe or find Matt on, on LinkedIn as appropriate.
But, um, so if you wouldn't mind just giving us a bit of context, Matt.
So tell me a bit about you and your career, where you're up to, and then we'll get into the subject.
00:01:04
Absolutely.
So I've had 15 years in bidding and proposals now, um, predominantly in the UK and European healthcare market.
Started, well, probably like most bid people I guess, by sort of falling into to the profession.
I was doing an internship at, uh, Capita.
They were doing some great bid stuff.
I just joined in, um, and it went from there really.
My first proper bid job was with, uh, Lloyds Pharmacy as a bid writer.
00:01:40
I stayed with them for 10 years, working all the way up through to, uh, bid manager and then bid team leader.
Had a little stopover in UK supply chain with, uh, Wincanton, which, um, you and I both know was an interesting experience.
That was, uh, that was good fun.
And then I'm back in healthcare now, have been for the last two years with an American organization called Accela Health, who have bought out a small and medium enterprise in the UK for their, uh, GB and EU footprint.
00:02:18
I'm the director of proposals there.
So yeah, have done all sorts of stuff in my career, um, from, you know, all the, the weird, wonderful six-month, uh, competitive dialogues, all the way through to, uh, the, uh, the, the, the weekender COVID vaccines tender that, um, happened a few years ago.
So, um, yeah, looking forward to, to this chat, and I'm hoping that with my experience, I'll, uh, have a few helpful insights to share.
00:02:54
Very good.
So yeah, we're, we're mates, aren't we?
We should probably, um-
00:02:59
We are
00:02:59
...
confess to the audience.
Um, and we, we have chatted about things periodically, although both busy and things like that, but quite often we'll, you know, we'll have a call when I'm in the car or something and a bit of a chinwag, or I'll catch you at the dinner of your, your APMP conference or, or whatever.
Um, but y-I'm a big fan, um, beyond that in that you do share some really unusually...
You know, bear in mind, only 1% of people on LinkedIn ever post.
00:03:26
Mm.
00:03:26
Um, out of, like, a billion people on here.
Um, you are quite active and sort of selflessly, um, you do share some really useful content actually for the audience.
And so thank you for that, mate,'cause there's not that many people who, who are employed people rather than vendors like me trying to build a brand, et cetera, that, that do that.
We need more employed people to share stuff really.
I guess that does link through to you should tell us about your role with the UK chapter of the APMP actually.
What, what...
We'll get into the detail of what the chapter's up to later, but what do you get up to with, um, the association?
00:04:02
Yeah, absolutely.
So that's a little bit of my, uh, extracurricular activity outside of work if you like.
So I've volunteered for, uh, the APMP UK chapter for the last three years now.
Um, and, and as you've kind of just alluded to, I saw that as a bit of a way to, you know, give back to a profession that's served me really well over the last, uh, decade plus.
So started off in their membership portfolio, looking at how we could obviously bring in new members, but engage and maintain the, the membership that we have, which is still the largest chapter-wise, uh, globally.
00:04:43
And then for the start of this year, I've moved into the, um, it's called deputy CEO role, makes it probably a little bit more grand than it sounds.
Um, but, uh, yeah, that's looking after, as you again mentioned at the top, uh, the annual conference this year, the big one, uh, which we can definitely talk about a bit later on.
00:05:09
Very good.
Very good.
Well, thank, thank you for your service in that.
Um, you know, we'll, we'll probably get onto it.
I've, I've had a bit of a mixed journey with APMP over the years, but I've been really pleased to see, uh, more, more sort of US mothership than UK stuff.
Uh, so'cause I was one of the authorized training org-or-organizations delivering foundation practitioner, et cetera, training, and sort of fell out of bed with that a few couple of years ago, maybe three years ago.
Um, but with the new chief exec in the States, and particularly the new sort of, uh, budding group of people on the UK board, um, it's been lovely to see you guys really progressing things actually.
00:05:49
Uh, yeah, one, one, one, one of my niggles were, was overinflated job titles for things.
Um, but-You know, in amongst things.
But particularly, I, I think, yeah, U-UK chapter-wise, it's been great to see more employed people, um, rather than vendors on the board, um, and doing good things in terms of governance.
But particularly, I was really pleased recently to see, um, some activity, I think it's at a global level, going on around, um, quality control of content.
00:06:20
Yeah.
00:06:20
Um,'cause that was one of the, the challenges, I think, about coordinating just the mass of content that the association was putting out across the main certifications and, uh, the new micro, um, certifications, and just making sure everything connected and fitted correctly.
So it's, it's great to see some activity going on, uh,'cause it's important that it all fits together and works for the, the community, isn't it?
So, um-
00:06:47
Yeah, and, and, and I think that bit's been sorely needed, particularly.
Uh, to be honest, you know, it's not been looked at for a number of years and...
Well, I mean, it could be a completely separate conversation of when does best practice stop becoming best practice.
But, um, yeah, I'm, I'm glad that there's a lot of activity going on around that.
00:07:08
Yeah.
I mean, I do feel that it's really challenging,'cause we, we probably had 20 years where nothing really changed much.
00:07:17
Mm.
00:07:17
Um, so it's interesting that you started out as a lad at Capita,'cause I started out as a lad at Mouchel doing the same thing.
00:07:24
Yeah.
00:07:24
Um, and it's sort of part of the story.
You know, if, if you could bid cheaply transfer outsourcing deals with UK public sector, um, if that's your schooling, then frankly you can go and write fantastic bids and win stuff anywhere, anywhere in the world.
00:07:39
Yeah.
00:07:39
Um,'cause it's probably the most constrained market.
Um, you know, if, if you can write tenders that meet that, those, you know, answer all of the questions, meet the scoring criteria in that kind of level of, um, you know, focused area, then, um, you can, you, you've pretty much got the grassroots to go and do anything.
So it's, it's, it's interesting that you've come from that world.
Um, and so but frankly, what we learnt as kids at those outsourcers didn't really change for, like, 20 years.
Like, mates of mine still take the piss out of me now because I'm still trotting out stuff that I was doing at Mouchel or EC Harris 20-odd years ago at the core of things.
00:08:18
You know, strategy stuff, proposition win themes solution, but obviously particularly storyboarding into writing, reviewing, ripping off Shipley's colored review gateways and all that sort of stuff.
We'd all been dancing the same tune for donkey's years.
But the game's changing with AI, isn't it?
00:08:34
Yeah, it is.
Absolutely.
00:08:36
Um, and so what that means for the body of knowledge, the sort of heart of the APMP in terms of its bible of how you do stuff, must be really challenging, so it's gonna be an interesting few years, um, in, in how that pans out.
I mean, I'm, I'm certainly, um, receiving a, more, a, a, basically a barrage of requests now, not for bid writing training, um, for prompt, AI prompt training.
00:09:03
Yeah.
00:09:04
We've got a combination of Copilot, uh, and a couple of other bits.
How do we get the best out of this?
Um, or we've got one of the big platforms, how do we use this effectively?
Um, alongside, you know, and obviously what we, you have to have an intersection of that with, um, how you approach bidding traditionally,'cause it should be a side-on to support you in that, and there's big dangers in just sticking a bunch of stuff in an AI platform and, and taking what comes out the other end.
00:09:35
Um, I've done some posts recently about checking sources and-
00:09:38
Mm
00:09:39
...
crap in, crap out, and all that sort of stuff.
But it is interesting how the game's gonna change.
But anyway, um, we now are on, we should probably talk about personal development, shouldn't we?
So-
00:09:48
Yeah, let's.
00:09:49
You're closer to this than me these days,'cause it's been a long time since I've had staff.
Um, you know, obviously I'm helping people with capability development training, and as part of the design of the training that we do, um, we work with clients to understand their core and their strengths and weaknesses of a performance, and what we're looking to help them improve, uh, across the group.
Uh, but fundamentally I'm not really involved in line management and particularly sort of people's development.
So, and ob-obviously with your APMP hat, that's kind of at the heart of what, what you get up to.
00:10:23
So I guess the, the question is what, what's going on, uh, with careers and personal development, um, in the world of bids and winning work?
And if we can talk about it in terms of phases, early careers first, middleweight in terms of sort of bid managers, and then up to senior roles, leaders.
And then we will touch on, uh, people who enter the space or looking to enter the space,'cause I've had a bit of that recently, coaching people on how to get into the game.
Uh, we'll come back to that in a sec.
So first of all, what's going on in terms of early careers?
00:10:55
'Cause I know there's been some APMP activity, but what, what are you seeing in that space?
00:11:00
Yeah.
I, I think, I think it's important to start contextually, Jez, with, you know, we, we are still in a space with bidding where, you know, and, and you say this quite a lot, th-this, this stuff isn't taught in schools and colleges and universities, right?
Um, this isn't something that you can easily find-
00:11:26
Yeah
00:11:26
...
as a ca-as a career path.
Um, and that's a shame because actually when you look at what we do as, as bidding and capture and social value and work winning professionals, um, I, I think it's one of the greatest professions that, that's out there and has, uh, so much scope for, you know, where you can take your career in it.
So yeah, there's been a bit of APMP activity around what they've called intentional career path, and in the UK we're doing a, a lot with the, the kind of basic building blocks of that and working out how we can make that Much more specific for, for bidding in this geography.
00:12:07
But, you know, I think generally with people entering the space, you know, you, you've got to start with...
You've got to start with making it attractive to them, right?
You've got to let them know it's there.
You've got to give it a bit, a bit of promotion.
I see people doing that a lot more now.
You know, whether it's through LinkedIn or whether it's through, uh, specific programs that people have.
I mean, I know, you know, Pippa Birch, for example-
00:12:38
Mm
00:12:38
...
has got her kind of entry program.
Um, there's the bid and proposal coordinator apprenticeships that are available through the government, that kind of thing.
And we, we are getting better at enabling people to, to get into the space.
And yeah, we'll, we'll touch on that a little bit more.
I guess once we've got people in, uh, for, for me, the fundamental argument then becomes well, what do you, what do you want them to focus on first, okay?
00:13:12
'Cause you can, you can bring somebody into the profession, whether they've got, you know, a certain set of bid skills or not at that point in time.
Do you want them to actually learn how to be a really good bid professional and to, you know, follow that APMP best practice from A to Z, you know, all, all the way through?
And yeah, there's a certain element of you do want that, but actually you've got to balance that with, well, how are you helping...
00:13:48
Could be a, a, a fairly junior person, just come out of college or university.
Maybe it's somebody who's had a career change.
You know, how do you help them actually navigate through the wider skill set that they'll need to be a real success in the role?
So when I've brought people into those kind of early roles in my career, I've balanced that with kind of saying,"Look, here are the fundamentals of what you need to be learning.
00:14:23
So, you know, here's all the great stuff about how to write really well, and how to do a great exec summary, and, you know, proposal design, and answer the question, get the marks,"all that sort of stuff.
But equally as importantly, I spend a lot of time, particularly through their induction, just introducing them to business and introducing them to, to people.
'Cause I found when I first started bid writing that actually, you know, as glib as it's gonna sound, anyone can write, okay?
00:15:00
Not many people have got the...
I think it is a confidence thing.
Not many people have got the confidence going into businesses early days to just start putting themselves out around the business and kind of go,"Hey, look, I, you know, I'm Matt, I'm the new bid writer in, in the business.
I'm, I'm gonna be working with you on loads of bids.
I need to know what you do.
I need to know what, why it's important.
I need to know the, the challenges and the risk areas that you're having in your part of the organization.
00:15:36
Because actually, I'm in a really good position to help you with that.
You know, the, the, the bids and tenders that we're doing here, if I can articulate some of what you would like to see in your world, you know, some of the fires that you're fighting in current contracts, and maybe mitigate some of that or bring in some, some, something different or some innovation in, in your area, then actually I can help make your job easier in the future by making sure the contracts that we're winning are actually reflective of how you can deliver them."So I get my, you know, early folks to, to probably spend the first three or four months doing more of that than I get them to do the actual writing and bidding.
00:16:25
'Cause I think once you've built up that fantastic, you know, subject matter expert and stakeholder, uh, relationship pool, you know, going all the way through from your tactical and operational people up to senior directors and exec, that gives you the...
I think that gives you the grounding, then, to make sure that whatever you're going to do in your bid career going forward, people know exactly what they can expect from you, exactly how you're gonna work, and the, the level of value that you're gonna bring.
Then you, yeah, then you go and get good at all of the, the writing and, you know, leading bid teams and, and a-on all of that great stuff where the best practice is out there.
00:17:12
But for me, that kind of relationship building, getting to learn the business, knowing it inside out, that's the bit that I think some people miss.
And by the time you get to, you know, your, your more middle and senior roles where you're gonna start being in a position where you're in the room to do more solutioning and your, your voice is naturally going to get heard a little bit more, that knowledge and relationship that you've built up around the business is gonna be absolutely critical to making sure that, you know, you're delivering the, the bid submissions that you know you can as an organization, because you can really drive them through.
So that would be my, um, my kind of take on, you know, bringing people into the profession.
00:18:02
Actually, yeah, you know, b-bid writing or bid coordinating, if, if you follow that best practice to the letter, it is-A fairly straightforward thing to do with the learning and, and time that it takes to come with that.
00:18:18
Yeah.
00:18:19
I think from a, from a hiring manager point of view, you know, you need to focus on balancing it with that other, um, you know, s-still tangible but less bidding skill set that's gonna really help people develop, uh, their career in general going forward.
00:18:40
Yeah.
Thank you, mate.
That's really interesting.
So there's, there's a bigger context, I guess.
So since I...
So I still train bid teams all the time, the bid writers and all of that kind of stuff, as, as well as other stakeholders.
Um, but actually my focus in the last three years has switched, um, much further up the funnel.
00:19:02
Mm.
00:19:03
'Cause I've kind of been in search of what actually really drives performance and ROI, um, business-wide in how you grow a B2B, B2G business.
Um, and it's the, the environment in which our tribe operates is really unhelpful.
00:19:20
Yeah.
00:19:21
Um-
00:19:22
It is
00:19:22
...
and I've got, I, I...
So, um, I'm on my 28th client in 27 months now, I think it is, um, where they are all making about 80% of their profit with 20% of their clients.
00:19:38
Mm.
00:19:40
The old Pareto principle.
Um, not a single chief exec or MD of any of those businesses or business units knew that.
00:19:48
Yeah.
00:19:48
So don't look at their client portfolio or profitability like that.
Uh, none of them were operating key account management upstream.
Um, very few of them have ever heard of Capture, let alone deploying it.
And if they are deploying it, it's quite sparingly and mixed in terms of who's leading it and how it goes, because they've not got enough of our tribe involved upstream.
Um, and so I had a really sort of stark realization about a year ago now.
00:20:19
Uh, I was asked to...
There's been a, a couple of really big things I've been up to in the last three year-probably three.
I've had one big anchor client each year, a big corporate.
For three years I've gone...
Uh, last year particularly our anchor client, where they'd underperformed for nine years, if we were honest.
Um, there were a number of issues with mixed performance across different regions and service types.
00:20:54
Uh, but basically I did a growth maturity benchmarking workshop with each of their businesses, and then brought the MDs together in one room with the group chief exec to run them through...
My growth maturity benchmarking session is where I workshop through what, where they are on the continuum of basically bad, average, and high performance through business planning, marketing, cam capture, bidding, and client experience.
00:21:17
Yeah.
00:21:17
'Cause if you join the dots through those things, which almost nobody does, and you drive activity even just a little bit in each of those things, um, and connect the dots through it, you'll be heroically more, more, more, you know, high-performing, more profitable than everybody else about time.
Almost no one understands it, which really brought home to me in the[audio cuts out]'cause I was looking at my screen, the arrows I go through and color-coded by[audio cuts out].
And I turned around and I realized, uh, five of the six had absolutely no idea what I was talking about.
00:21:56
Yeah.
00:21:57
Um, they'd, they'd just...
'Cause everyone's grown up in the end game, as more, um, sophisticated businesses would call it, in bidding.
They just assume that you get on some frameworks or bid some term deals or whatever, and just mini bid, hobby bid everything that comes through there.
00:22:15
Yeah.
00:22:15
And you'll be all right, lad.
Um, and that used to be the game 10, 20 years ago.
Uh, but it's not anymore.
And the problem with it, which I don't think anyone's really spotted, is if you keep hobby bidding stuff to strangers and winning one in five and thinking that's success, A, you're blowing your people to bits, particularly our tribe, your bid team.
Um,'cause it's horrible only winning one in five, isn't it?
We wanna win-
00:22:34
Yeah, yeah
00:22:35
...
four in five.
Um, and, uh, or I-and ideally get more and more focused on direct award proposals and negotiations.
Um, but, uh, there's, there's...
When you get that adverse selection of winning, the one that you do win when you're hobby bidding, uh, is probably with a stranger.
You've probably won it by accident on price or program.
00:22:59
Mm.
00:22:59
And therefore your delivery teams are immediately under pressure because you've underbid it.
Uh, it's probably working with strangers who they don't like or don't understand your business and didn't want you.
They wanted somebody else, and you've gone and won it on price.
So everybody has a shit time, and guess what?
You make a loss probably.
00:23:17
Yeah.
00:23:17
If you accounted for account management and cost of sale effectively, which no one does.
Um, and but what's worse now, both in the bid team space, but just generally in business, and not just in the UK, it's a global phenomena, we're in the biggest fight for talent ever.
00:23:33
Mm.
00:23:34
Um, if you continue to win shit work with shit clients by hobby bidding stuff, your people will leave and get a job somewhere else for more money.
00:23:43
Yeah, they absolutely will.
Um, and, and-
00:23:45
So there's actually massive consequences of that.
00:23:49
And you know, we, we saw that in practice, didn't we, a couple of years ago when you came in and-
00:23:55
Mm
00:23:55
...
uh, yeah, tried to, to help me with everything that you've just talked about there at, at Wiggum Cansom for a while.
And unfortunately, you know, I can say this now'cause the business doesn't exist, um, but you know, they, they were, they were so-They were so entrenched in that kind of old school thinking, e-exactly as you've described, you know.
"Oh, yeah, we, we, we can just bid stuff.
We'll, we'll throw it at the wall and see what sticks.
We've got a bid team, but we only really need them there to actually do the, the writing of the bid.
00:24:28
We don't actually even need them to do the, you know, the, the management of the bid,'cause we'll balance that between the, the sales rep and the project management office."Um, and, uh, and yeah, you, you kind of, you get what you get as a result of that, don't you?
I mean, we-
00:24:44
Yeah
00:24:44
...
we saw it.
Y-yeah, their, their win rate was...
I mean, we managed to improve it in, in the time that I was there, but the win rate was, I, I don't even think it was one in five when I started.
Um, you know, everyone was actually proud of that, going,"Oh, yeah, this is a pretty good win rate for, for this kind of industry."I went in and went,"Well, yeah, I mean, you're lucky to have that, to be fair, at the minute."Um, but yeah, you, you, you're right.
It does, it does affect people.
00:25:17
I mean, you know, I, I didn't realize until I joined that business that they'd gone through two different iterations of a bid team before they asked me to come in and build the third one.
Um, and that on-you know, we only lasted two years there, because they would fundamentally not change the wider way that they worked to, um, y-you know, not treat bid as a, a, as an admin silo.
00:25:45
Mm.
00:25:45
And I think that's where we've got the opportunity.
You know, as we progress into those, uh, middle and senior roles, once we've built that, once we've built our, our experience and expertise in, in the job, and we've also built it in the business, I think that's where we've then got the opportunity.
You know, think about once you've been in a role for, for s-three, four years, all that data, all that rich data that you'll have to, to be able to, to mine and go back on so that you can get in front of your, your boss or your director or your exec and go,"Look, you may think this is working.
00:26:28
It ain't, and this is why.
And, you know, what can we do differently here?"And that's when you can then bring in the, the, the capture stuff, like you've said, you know, go further up the funnel.
Sometimes that pushback that you get, and, and I've seen it in a couple of businesses, is, is that people go,"Well, hang on a minute.
You're just bids."
00:26:52
Mm.
00:26:52
"What, why are you tell-why are you telling me what to do?
Why are you telling me how to go out and treat customers properly?
Why are you telling me how to go out and sell?"And I think if you can crack the, if you can crack the nut in that conversation, which is,"I'm not telling you how to do it, I'm actually telling you why it's important to do it in this way, and how it benefits us as a whole business, you know, not just for me, but for everybody else,"y-what, once you've cracked that nut, that, I mean, that's-
00:27:28
Yeah
00:27:28
...
that's a fundamental change piece then in a business.
And, and I, and I've seen it happen successfully when I was at Lloyds Pharmacy.
We, we did that.
Yes, it took two, two and a half years to get from where we were to a really, you know, crack team of 80% year on year win rate people.
But we, we only, we could only get there with the business's buy-in to go, and actually we do need to do something differently here.
00:27:58
We're gonna listen to your expertise on this and, and we're gonna give it a go.
You know, we had a couple of exec sponsors who went,"Yeah, okay.
We understand what you're trying to do here.
Let's go for it and see if it works."And, you know, again, sounds a bit glib to say it, it, it worked overnight, but those, just those first couple of opportunities, the bid team getting involved earlier in, in capture, being more ingrained in with what the sales and account management team were doing, just flicked that switch.
00:28:33
And, and, you know, I think if we get the opportunity to do that as we progress up through our careers, y-you, you've gotta use the data,'cause I think that's what lands really well with y-your seniors and, and execs.
00:28:48
Yeah.
00:28:49
Particularly around the financial side of things.
But once you've got that data and you can land it with them, that's when the light bulbs start to go off, I think.
00:28:58
Yeah.
00:28:58
And that's when you start to, to kind of get that change across the whole piece that you talked about at, at the start.
00:29:06
Yeah.
I, I wholeheartedly agree.
So I think for junior people, early careers people, I would try and seek out employee at work experience, and then maybe apprenticeships or employment with businesses.
I, I would interview them.
00:29:21
Yeah, definitely.
00:29:22
They, they're gonna interview you, you, but interview them and qualify them on...
Go and ask them,"Have you got a bid process?
What does it look like?"And try and understand how mature it is.
"Do you, do you conduct capture on just your, you know, your key pursuits or anything?
You know, what, what's upstream of bidding?
What's your win rate?"
00:29:42
Mm.
00:29:42
Through.
00:29:44
Yeah.
00:29:46
"We're relatively good at this stuff."
00:29:48
Yeah.
00:29:49
Maybe it's more public sector facing,'cause that's a good environment to learn in,'cause it's, it's got a framework or wireframe for you to operate in with decent questions and scoring criteria, et cetera,'cause ev-everything else, you know, flair and design and all that sort of stuff can come second to being able to answer a question and storyboard effectively.
You know, particularly do they, do they do some solution proposition stuff?
But particularly, do they storyboard their bids?
That's always a key determining factor for me.
It's one of the top three reasons why businesses will win or lose bids.
00:30:24
You can always map it back.
I've got one...
I'm off, off to a meeting after this actually with a client I'm gonna help with a bid in September.
They've sent me a bid they've just lost, and lo and behold, hasn't been storyboarded effectively-
00:30:34
Yeah
00:30:34
...
and they've lost a key client.
So, um, yeah, that's always a key one, kids.
So ask if they storyboard.
And then if you're middle manager, you know, bid manager, et cetera, you're absolutely right, Matt, use the data to drive this thing on.
So I guess another thing, I, uh, my friend Vicky Jackson, who's now at Capita actually, she's the big dog, absolutely smashing it out of the park as she does everywhere she goes.
She's an absolute machine, that woman.
Um, and one of the leading lights of our, our profession globally, I would say.
00:31:05
Um, she, uh, a previous employer of hers, she brought me in for a workshop with their whole function, like 50-odd people in the group.
And, uh, somebody...
I, I gave a speech on some stuff, and somebody said to me, you know,"Oh,"you know,"what, what should I expect the company to do for me in terms of my development?"Um, and I, I was probably a little bit aggressive or a bit glib or, um, you know, I can have a habit of going over the top a little bit, but they...
that question really pissed me off.
Um-
00:31:34
[laughs]
00:31:34
So I said,"Uh, look out the window.
Do you see that black Maserati out there?
That's mine.
Um, do you think I got that by waiting for someone to tell me what development to do?"
00:31:46
Yeah.
00:31:47
"No, I fucking didn't, did I?"And, and they said,"Oh, I'll steal your Maserati."I said,"Do you know what?
I've got another one at home'cause I own a dealership."So, uh, at the time, I think.
Don't anymore.
Um, but, you know, we invest in things and have a successful series of businesses, and the heart of it comes down to, um, I read stuff, I do stuff, I talk to people.
Um, nobody has ever just sort of put me on a course and expected me to change.
00:32:17
'Cause to be honest with you, you know, some of the stuff we do in our business, we-we're not a training business, we're a capability development business.
Um, and the difference is humans only retain 10 to 20% of what they learn on a course anyway.
00:32:30
Mm.
00:32:30
Within three days you've forgotten 80% of it.
Um-
00:32:33
Yeah, yeah
00:32:34
...
if you, if you took it in in the first place.
So in six months time, your, the actual ROI on structured learning, as we call it, is pretty low.
It...
You want to do some structured learning, some training as a starting point, but it's up to us as humans to develop ourselves, as you do, and, you know, we were talking off camera about Henry at Bidscript, for instance, who I work with.
Just, I, I had a call with Henry the other day.
I just said,"Mate, where do you learn all this stuff?
You know, who taught you this stuff?"He said,"Well, I'm, I'm, I'm accountable for it.
I read, I do..."He understands more about how to grow a B2B business than most really senior people I've ever met in business.
00:33:13
He's, he's incredible, that lad.
And, um, they're doing some great work in that platform, and it's'cause he makes it happen.
So nobody's gonna do this stuff for you, particularly in this world of AI and the rest of it.
You've gotta go, and I know it's busy and I know you're working hard on bids, although hopefully not too hard on rubbish win rate stuff.
00:33:33
Mm.
00:33:34
Hopefully you find a good employer that will give you the space.
But, you know, you've gotta take a couple of hours on a Saturday morning or whatever it is and develop yourself and it's an investment for the future, isn't it?
So, um-
00:33:46
And, and, and the thing, and the thing is, mate, you know, I, I...
And, and look, before I say this, I hold my hands up and say that I sit here with all the privilege in the world in terms of where I am at the minute and, and I'm ve-I realize I'm very lucky in that.
I do agree, though, that, okay, it's called personal development for a reason.
00:34:08
Mm.
00:34:09
Right?
So if you want to be somewhere in two, three, five years of your career, y-you have got to be the person that, that makes that happen.
And I think where I've been...
I think, yes, again, I've been very lucky because the opportunities that I've been afforded in my career to date, I, I've been a-allowed to make the most of the, the ones that I've been given.
00:34:44
But I was the one who went out and sought those opportunities in the first place, you know.
Nobody...
I referenced that, um, six month competitive dialogue right at the beginning.
No, no one was going to kind of let me be part of that in terms of actually going to all of the dialogue sessions, uh, having that, um, relationship and being able to, to build that relationship with the customer, be part of the solutioning, take that all the way through.
00:35:19
You know, I, I could have just done the, okay, well, you know, I'm gonna lead the process and I'm gonna write it when it comes in.
I'm, I'm quite happy with that, and okay, I can say I've done a competitive dialogue.
You know, there, there's no harm in going and asking for those opportunities to say,"Can I be part of this?
Can I do this?
I see there's an opportunity over there.
I think it's gonna be really beneficial for us as an organization to have me as a..."You know, we're now talking maybe m-more senior bid person in there perhaps, but it still applies-
00:35:55
Mm
00:35:55
...
no matter where you are in your journey.
You know,"Please let me in the room because I've got a lot to give here.
And, you know, if you let me in the room you're gonna get a-added value out of it by me being in there with the expertise that, that I've got."
00:36:12
Yeah.
00:36:12
And I really do think we, you know, we...
Yes, it's all incumbent on ourselves, but we, we need to-...
generally be doing a lot more of that, and we need to not be afraid of when we see an opportunity that we think,"Yeah, okay, that would be a of benefit for me being involved because I've got the experience and expertise to support it."But actually, selfishly, it will be of benefit to me being involved as well,'cause that's gonna be really good for where I want to go in the next few years.
00:36:45
Get yourself in there.
I mean, the worst that's gonna happen, right?
Is somebody says no.
00:36:51
Yeah.
00:36:51
And that's fine.
You, you know, you kind of move on.
There'll be another opportunity, hopefully, along the way somewhere else.
But yeah, we, we need to make the most of those opportunities.
I think from my perspective, as I've gone more senior throughout businesses, I've only been able to do that through, you know, taking the opportunity to get myself into different rooms, to, again, learn different skills that aren't necessarily bidding, but that I can make relate to bidding in terms of that leadership piece-
00:37:28
Yeah
00:37:28
...
to, to have, to have grown my career.
So yeah, I, I agree with you.
I think taking some accountability for it and finding the opportunities, getting yourself a decent exec sponsor as well-
00:37:40
Yeah
00:37:40
...
who kind of understands why you're doing it and wants to, to help positively push and challenge you with that, that, that's a complete game changer.
00:37:51
Yeah.
Get yourself a mentor, an internal one in the business and an external one.
Absolutely.
So, um...
And yeah, it needs to be...
We, we need to...
Our tribe of bidding people needs to try and exert ourselves as the home of winning work or the, the project management of winning work, at least, across the business.
Um, yeah, I, I, it's worth people having a look.
I, I did do some stuff in Q4 last year on the concept of high agency in how you grow-
00:38:19
Mm
00:38:19
...
a business, and it's not all about actually, um, being on the front foot.
It's not about being a secondhand car salesman, right?
And being, you know, being able to talk to people and communicate and all that sort of stuff.
'Cause some people, it's just not in their bag.
Um, i-the other side of the coin with high agency, if you Google high agency, Jeremy Brim, Great for Business or something, it'll come up with the stuff that I did, the articles and blogs and things.
Um, but the other side of it is about emotional intelligence, EQ, learning lessons, driving performance, and it's go-you know, you don't find many people who are, have the right energy in terms of entrepreneurial-ism, and particularly s-being solution and value creation centric.
00:39:01
Mm.
00:39:02
It's really easy for people in businesses to drift just flogging what you've always done, rather than being client centric and really focusing on how are we gonna create the most value for this client to the point where it would be ridiculous for them to go to anyone else.
Or, you know, we're always gonna win this deal because we can save them a million quid more than anyone else'cause we've done this work upstream.
So but you don't have to be a big personality to make that happen.
It might be that you just...
It, it's, it, it's about how are you gonna create the most value for the business and then take a share of that value in return.
00:39:38
Yeah, I mean-
00:39:40
And the business
00:39:40
...
uh, to, to that point, yeah, I, as much as...
[laughs]Again, like you said at the beginning, as much as I kind of put myself out on, on LinkedIn, that's fairly easy to do when you're sat behind a keyboard.
And naturally, particularly earlier on my career, I was, you know, very introverted person.
But like you say, you don't have to be a big personality to make it work.
One of the, the kind of real tricks that I still have in my toolbox to, to kind of, uh, get people thinking in a different way and to kind of prove my value is just to sometimes sit in rooms and sit in meetings and ask what I call are the, the, are the purposefully naive questions.
00:40:27
Yeah.
That's smashing
00:40:28
The, the, the, the, the ones where, you know, I, I sit there and listen in meetings to operational people talking, and, and they kind of go,"Well, we, we can't make this work because of X, and actually that causes a problem with Y."And, you know, we're all intelligent people.
We can sit there and join the dots, but you don't necessarily, again, either through kind of confidence or character or whatever it might be, you don't wanna stick your hand up and go,"Well, actually, I feel like I might have the answer to that."But actually sitting there and going,"Do you know what?
That's really interesting.
00:41:06
I've heard what you've said.
Can you explain, you know, explain to me why that's an issue?"Or,"If we could do it differently, how do you think that would work better?"And just kind of sitting there and knowing that you're asking the right question to kind of almost lead people to an answer where the, again, the light bulb goes off and they go,"Actually, yeah, we don't have to make this as much of a problem as, as we do at the moment'cause we could do, you know, B rather than A."You can then,"Okay, brilliant.
Well, we're gonna put that in the tender response then.
00:41:40
Yeah, okay, you've got to go away and work and make it work, but you've just said that, that we can do that, so that's brilliant.
Okay, we..."And, and, and being able to kind of sit...
You know, that doesn't matter then if you're a naturally introverted character or whether, you know, you, you don't feel like you've got the, the confidence to kind of stand up and go,"This is what I think."There are ways and means to tease that out, which again, actually people look at in your career and go,"Well, that person over there asks really good questions that add value, and we need to give them more opportunity to do this."
00:42:16
Yeah, yeah.
Agreed.
And that might be in writing or, you know, other ways to prompt it, not just-Being a personality, as you say.
Um, so I'm just conscious, we've got five minutes, Matt.
So, um, and we'll probably connect two things.
So if we wrap it up in APMP, uh, world, um, so I wanna hear about what you're up to with the UK chapter, uh, and your big events this year.
But first, i-is there something specific for...
The, the, uh, weakness or a challenge we've always seen is, uh, development or interaction for senior people.
00:42:49
Yeah.
00:42:49
So what do heads of bids do?
Uh, and I, I think, uh, I know Nigel Thacker's got some stuff going on in that space-
00:42:55
He has, yeah
00:42:56
...
uh, that's worth looking up.
But, um, I think I saw something from APMP in that space.
So what, what are we up to for senior people, and then what are you up to for the rest of the year, and then we'll leave it?
00:43:05
Yeah.
So, so on, on the senior piece, Nigel has now set up, um, a senior leaders focus group through the UK chapter, which, um, you know, that's probably been going on in the background for, for the last four or five months.
I know that by the time we get to conference in November, there'll be a bit more of a, a, a hard launch of it into the wider world there.
But Nigel's brought together a really great group of, of leading lights in, in bidding in the UK to kind of go, you know, look, actually, again, recognizing the privilege we all have of being in the positions that we are, how did we get to that?
00:43:50
What are the challenges that we faced?
How can we make it easier for the future generation of bidders to get to similar, if not higher, levels of seniority in their businesses or their, you know, what-whatever else they may be doing?
How can we help support that?
And again, it's about the fact that we all see it from a point of view of this is our time to give back now.
00:44:17
Mm.
00:44:17
And this is our time to really help make sure that we're moving the profession on, uh, making it more purposeful, making it more meaningful.
So Nigel's leading a, a great piece of work on that.
I'm really looking forward to people seeing much more on, on that when we hard launch it later in the year.
Um, yeah, to be honest, that's part of, uh, a wider piece of work that we're doing in the UK chapter around what we call intentional career path.
So we're looking at that from all aspects, to be honest.
00:44:52
But probably in, if I kind of simplify it into three work streams, we're looking at how do we better promote this fantastic profession into educational establishments, how do we capture people early, how do we make bidding capture all that great stuff, actually land on, you know, syllabuses and in, in students'minds.
Then with employers, I mean, you know, that's the obvious one, but looking at actually working with some employers at the moment about how we can create really, you know, specific and specialized bid pathways for their teams so it's not just generic.
00:45:38
And then obviously with, with government as well, you know.
We, we have already with APMPK had a, had a fairly decent relationship with Cabinet Office through our public sector focus group.
But it's about, you know, how can we take that further on?
How can we, you know, get them to buy into it?
Like we said, the apprenticeship's already there, and that's fantastic, but, you know, what more can, uh, the government and policy side do for us to, to help make bidding better?
00:46:12
Yeah.
00:46:12
So yeah, we, we're, we're looking at, we're looking at all of that.
And, you know, all of this, uh, is, is gonna be the real focus of the, the conference this year.
So, uh, the, the big one is happening 24th and 25th of November.
Uh, it's at a conference center called The Vox, which is on the NEC campus just outside of Birmingham.
So-
00:46:34
Oh, yeah
00:46:35
...
ab-absolutely amazingly easy to get to, um, train, plane, whatever.
And I'm really looking forward to, to what we've got planned for people.
You know, it's, it's a special celebration this year because the APMP UK chapter, it's 25 years since, uh, John Williams, Chris Wardwire, and co set it up.
So we're having a bit of a celebration around that.
But actually more, more to the point, what[audio cuts out]is, this is a pivot point to go, we've done some great stuff as a profession over the last 25 years in the UK, what's next?
00:47:18
You know, how do we really land some of this change that, that we really want to do and we really think is meaningful to the profession so that, you know, when you and I are completely old and gray and sat here still chatting in 25 years'time, we can look back and go,"Yeah, you know, 2026, we said that we were gonna do some really big stuff to make some real change happen.
Yeah, didn't, didn't we do that?"So that, that's a thing-
00:47:46
Hear, hear
00:47:46
...
what the, what the theme of the conference is looking at this year, which I'm really excited about.
00:47:52
Fantastic.
Well, again, thank you to you and board members and all the volunteers that make all this stuff happen.
You know, it's not all perfect with APMP world, but you have to, uh, recognize the efforts that go in for the good of the, the discipline.
It's, it's really important and, um, so thank you for that.
And some of the other vendors that support it, et cetera.
Um, so thank you for that, Matt.
We're, we're out of time.
We've rabbited on.
00:48:18
[laughs]
00:48:18
We've blown through an hour slot, uh-
00:48:20
As, as we do[laughs]
00:48:20
...
with prep, et cetera.
As you do.
So perhaps I'll have you on another time once we're into next year, um, to unpick some other subjects.
So I really appreciate the time.
Thank you very much, chap.
And, um, I will see you...
I'll, I'll come along to certainly the dinner at the conference.
I think I'm gonna have a bunch of stuff going on with clients at the time, so I might not be able to make it to the day stuff, but, um, I'll see you for a beer at the dinner like last year, if not.
00:48:45
Perfect.
I'll get the, uh, I'll get the seating plan sorted.
00:48:49
[laughs]Very good.
Thanks, mate.
00:48:51
Thanks, Jez.
Speak to you soon.
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