How the future of procurement shapes sales strategy for SME manufacturers

A question that still requires an answer

Anyone who has read through a batch of bids knows that it is time consuming. Scanning through, looking for compliance statements to score and evidence to back it up is laborious.  Effective bid writing ensures you answer the question clearly, with well-structured and signposted responses that make it easy for the procurement team to recognise the quality of your bid.

Clear, thorough and concise answers are required; this is especially the case when bidding through a portal. When procurement teams use AI, they can review a larger number of bids, but AI isn’t telepathic (yet!). Clear and concise answers remain just as crucial, as the AI is essentially doing the same evaluation process.

Top Tip

Technology is transforming procurement, but human creativity remains your competitive edge. Don’t just react to AI-driven bidding processes – proactively shape them. Your “wetware” is still the most powerful tool in winning business.

Human race

For much of history, the speed of business moved at the pace of the post. Deals, decisions, and even disputes all travelled by letter. With communication technology today, our thinking time is the bottleneck. However, the expectations from both procurement and sales teams of bid response and bid feedback times continue to shorten.

Our clients will eagerly discuss lean manufacturing with my Business Transformation Coach colleagues, from whom I have learnt a lot too. Interestingly, the clients forget many of the principles when it comes to bids. Like manufacturing, the bid process benefits from defined steps, quality checks, and deadlines to ensure a finished product that meets high standards (i.e. it wins the job).

Sure, AI can help write the bid, but bringing all the information in from different departments and getting it approved requires processes involving humans. Streamlining these human-centric processes is essential for meeting even tighter bid response deadlines.

The before and after

While the bidding cycle itself may feel increasingly compressed and locked down, opportunities for engagement extend far beyond the bid submission date. Before the bid even opens, proactive outreach and early conversations can help unearth the true priorities and pressing needs of procurement teams. It has always been thus.

These early insights can be invaluable, allowing you to shape your bid more strategically. And after the bid is submitted, the story isn’t over. Following up after a bid and nurturing ongoing relationships will help to reinforce your commitment, build trust, and ensure your company remains top of mind for future opportunities. By seeing the bid cycle as just one stage in a larger engagement strategy, you can move from simply responding to a request to actively shaping your client’s perception and future needs. This again, is as it has always been.

Wetware is still in charge

AI may help procurement streamline their activities, but we’re not under the rule of robot overlords… for now. The “wetware” (our wet human brains) is still making the final call. While answering the question accurately matters, humans bring insights and creativity that algorithms can’t fully replicate; that’s your edge!

In today’s procurement landscape, technology plays a significant role in shaping decisions, compressing timelines, and processing bids. Yet, despite the automation, human insight – our “wetware” – remains essential. As procurement teams adopt faster, data-based methods, sales teams must balance technology efficiencies with the uniquely human elements that make a bid compelling: creativity, strategic thinking, and relationship-building.

By engaging early, crafting clear, quality bids, and nurturing connections even after submission, sales can adapt to these changes while maintaining their influence in the process. The future may be digital, but there’s still plenty of room for a human touch.