Competing for government contracts is difficult with requirements frequently changing and RFPs often lacking the information needed to formulate the bid. With the added challenge of being up against everyone else submitting a bid, winning can seem unattainable. Tilt the scales in your favor with the help of some competitive intelligence.
Here are 3 proven ways to learn more about the competition and improve your chances of winning the bid.
1. Find mentions of competitors in meetings
This one seems obvious but is easier said than done. On any given day there can be thousands of government meetings taking place across the country. Without knowing in which meetings your competition will come up, it is difficult to find those key conversations that include valuable competitive insights.
You can take a different approach with Cloverleaf AI. Instead of reading through agendas and trying to intuitively anticipate when a conversation will happen, you can set up custom alerts that will let you know as soon as a meeting has taken place that included your competitor’s name.
Say you operate in the telecommunications industry with four to five key players and you want to know when one of them is mentioned in a meeting in rural Ohio. With Cloverleaf AI you can enter each of your competitor’s names in the search bar and filter your results to only include meetings in the counties in Ohio that matter to you. You can save this search and receive an email the morning after a meeting takes place giving you an easy advantage over your competition.
2. Track competitor’s bids over time
In today’s world of rising material costs and constant rebidding, tracking your competitor’s bids on certain projects is crucial. Arm yourself with the information you need to win the next rebid by identifying contracts your competitors have bid on recently and taking note of the amounts.
The best way to find these bids is to run an advanced search on the Cloverleaf AI platform. With an advanced search, you can specify that you only want to view a list of meetings where terms such as “RFP” or “Bid” must be included in conjunction with a list of your competitors.
With this search, you can easily come across meeting clips with local council members are reading bid amounts for an RFP.
3. Research sentiment
You’d be surprised what kind of conversations you can find when searching with the power of artificial intelligence. Taking your search to the next level will help you find insights that you might not have thought to look for otherwise. Take the conversation below for example where a local committee member discussed how excited he was to drop Comcast as a provider.
Looking for these discussions can be like finding a needle in a haystack but with Cloverleaf AI you can simply set up a campaign to monitor mentions of your competitors and watch the results as they appear in your inbox.
Finding recurring issues and headaches your competitors are causing their customers is a great way to gain a competitive advantage for your business.
Sometimes winning an RFP can be a battle but if you put these strategies into practice your chances of success are sure to improve. The best part is there’s plenty more value packed into meetings that go unnoticed everyday. Make an investment to uncover this value today!
