Constantly evaluate how a post or message was received by your audience. Did something you post inspire a bunch of comments? Was there a particular message that had a higher-than-average open rate? Identify what made that communication unique and replicate that in your future messages. It’s like having a virtual audience clapping at something you said during a speech. Use feedback!
Keep your charitable giving aligned with your core mission and service offering. We run an annual promotion where we provide complimentary grant-writing to local charities since this is in line with our service offering of writing grants and RFP responses.
So many people view social media as a channel to distribute content they developed elsewhere. Instead, we use social media to engage with followers differently. For instance, we use our social media channels to share bidding opportunities that are relevant to our followers’ businesses. It keeps people engaged because following us could allow them to find bids they wouldn’t have otherwise found.
It’s more important to have the right investors and banks on board than the financing they offer. Otherwise, all you really have is an additional layer of decision-makers that slows you down. Be more concerned with conducting due diligence on them rather than stressing over presenting yourself. Treat this like any sale: Focus on partnering for a mutual benefit rather than what you want.
The Bid Lab is innovative in a traditionally stagnant industry of responding to Requests for Proposals (RFPs). Our team is constantly evaluating “best practices” and revolutionizing the way things have been done for decades, which only works because we don’t judge each other.
Being genuine obviously doesn’t cost anything, but it will generate so much business if you act with integrity consistently. Clients always say how they appreciate the straightforward and transparent process we incorporate, and they share this with other prospects. This is just an easy and free way to market yourself!
At our company, we crave criticism or constructive criticism. We have built into our process a touchpoint to ask how we did and what we can do to improve. We don’t ask if there is anything we can do, but what we can do to improve. It’s a small but important difference!
Without trusting your team, there is no way you can scale your operations to increase the volume of your output. If you trust your team to do the job correctly, you can focus on the next growth opportunity, instead of simply taking care of BAU (business as usual) work.
Always make sure to keep your current clients happy before you expand to new markets. When current clients are happy, it will make the product expansion happen almost automatically—through referrals, positive reviews and an increase in your brand value. Further, you can even ask your existing clients to be a reference.
When first starting a company, you should conduct market research to evaluate how your competitors are pricing, then adjust your pricing accordingly. Do you offer a higher quality service? Then aim higher in terms of pricing than your competitors. Are you a value product? Then price yourself lower. Then, as time goes on, pay less attention to competitors and listen more to client feedback.
