Can you give us a brief overview of your role?
As Bid Manager I am responsible for the coordinating the sales process; from receiving the initial enquiry, arranging site visits and clarifications, submitting tenders, negotiating contracts and assisting with the mobilisation in collaboration with the operational and back of office teams.
Our partnerships with all the Hemlow departments enables us to be successful as a sales team and ensures we continue to grow and develop our service offering across England.
I understand that professionally, you have had a really good year so far. Can you tell me about the start of the year?
We had a very strong start to the year, winning a number of large prestigious buildings in central London owned by some of the wealthiest people in Europe. Our reputation has enabled us expand our service offering and we have responded to the current circumstance and developed a new way of maintaining buildings known as Interim Maintenance, which was been positive with our clients.
How has the way we bid for jobs changed over the years?
As Hemlow has grown it has opened up new and larger opportunities including working in new industries such as retail and education. We have also been successful with more prestigious static engineering sites after updating our proposals, re-examining our pricing models and creating site specific strategies that respond directly to the clients requirements. This new way of working has been instrumental in our success and has shown clients how Hemlow has adapted and grown into the quality provider we are.
How do you think our clients are perceiving us at the moment?
Our brand has always been associated with quality and, as a medium sized company, our local service delivery model has set us apart from our competitors. The Hemlow name is associated with high standards of work and has led to a large number of referrals over the years. Alongside our new approach of tendering for buildings and treating each one independently we have had better conversion rates and larger order values.
How has your perspective on selling changed since you first joined Hemlow?
I believe that I have grown quite a bit as an individual, and this has definitely changed the way I look at selling jobs now.
It is easy to look at the tender on paper without reading in between the lines at what the client wants. However, it is important to always look at the pinch points in order to make tenders stand out and show that we can give a quality service. All of which we now do, as previously mentioned, and has led to our success in growing the company.
What is your ambition for the rest of the year? Any particular jobs or types of contracts we would like to win?
The whole industry feels as though it has been put on hold, however we are now starting to see signs of life. It is therefore important that we make ourselves readily available to the client, letting them know that Hemlow is here to provide a service no matter what the circumstance. Therefore, our ambition is to maintain the momentum we have seen through the start of the year, taking on more sites and continually growing as a company!
We have also developed a number of other service offerings which we believe will fit well with our clients including Interim Maintenance and OptiMaintenance. These new innovative solutions will open up new opportunities for us and I look forward to seeing how the clients respond to our new services.
