Coaching and Support

The success of every project begins and ends with the brief. A clear brief will communicate what you need from an external supplier accurately. It keeps your project on track and guides successful delivery and results. Creating a detailed brief will ensure you can compare supplier proposals in a like for like fashion and work with your selected vendor to achieve your desired project outcomes. Working with us will ensure you develop a clear brief that your suppliers understand.

Finding suppliers that can deliver your project within your budget can be time-consuming. It requires a good understanding of their capabilities and pricing models. We do the research for you based on your brief. Using our industry knowledge, we develop a list of potential suppliers listing their pros and cons to enable you to choose whom to invite. We then manage the invitation process and make sure every supplier that accepts your invitation to tender is clear about the brief.

An excellent potential supplier will ask clarifying questions about your brief to improve their chances of winning. Ideally, all of the suppliers you invite to tender will submit questions. The best practice is to send your answers to all participants in writing to create clarity and competitive tension, even if only one supplier enquires. The questions they ask will tell you a lot about them, their capability and how they think. We track all of these communications and include the findings when helping you assess their tender responses.

To inform your ability to select a supplier, you need to be able to compare tender responses in a like for like fashion. As each business will have a different way of explaining its value proposition and a unique way of approaching your brief, assessing tenders can be challenging. We lead you and your staff through the process of filling in an assessment matrix to provide a side-by-side comparison of all submissions. Selecting a shortlist then becomes much more straightforward.

Once you have a shortlist, the best practice is to conduct supplier presentations. Meeting your potential suppliers to talk through their proposals allows you to ask clarifying questions and develop an understanding of what it might be like to work together. If necessary, this process also enables negotiation on project deliverables and pricing. We establish agendas and questions for these presentations. Suppliers will talk to you clearly and use less jargon when we attend these meetings with you. They know we fully understand their service offering, so they will not try and win you over with salesy industry speak.

Once you have selected a supplier, we can assist you in managing project delivery. We have managed countless creative projects and understand how to help you and your vendor achieve the best outcomes. Part of our process is to educate you and your staff to manage creative projects without outside assistance moving forward.