Hi,
I wonder how important is the reference list of a company when bidding for a project?And if the company has no references in the area of the project can it be considered equally strong for it to hire people that had references in other companies or just forget about bidding altogether?

In need of advice

Tim

 

IMHO

References often seem to be quid pro quo between companies that work together. In many cases, particularly of smaller companies there is often cross-ownership.

As far as I am concerned, a reference is only worth something if you personally know the individual giving the reference and is usually as much an evaluation of him/her as anything. Even then there is often fear (for various reasons) of giving a negative reference.

Keep in mind that no one is going to give you a reference that will say anything bad. If you talk to them, try to develop a list of projects and people you can investigate outside the reference list.

I would suggest talking with the reference for an extended period of time to get a feel for how much he knows about the project/bidder. I suspect that often references are given by people not directly involved in projects, which in my mind makes their value doubtful. It does little good to talk to someone so far removed from things (like sales man or executives) that they only have a vague clue what really goes on.

I once read a series of reference letters written by end users for an OEM. The letters were all written by high ranking execs of an end user. Well, as it turned out, they were actually written by the OEM, and the end user just copied them to their stationary and signed them. The end user involved had agreed as part of the contract that they would provide such references, but they were really useless in any real sense.

Bob Peterson

 

Depends on the customer. If it is a builder the cheapest price almost always is the go. If a factory references can be important as they do not usually want learners or people inexperienced in their type of business or machine programming it.

 

References are critical. As others have already pointed out there are ways to get the most out of references. Anybody who is serious about the success of their projects will check references. Don't assume that references will always be positive. I have received negative warnings from provided references that I have followed up on for potential employees and suppliers.

Identifying the specific people that will work on a project along with references for those people can be very persuasive particularly if the project involves work requiring very specialized skills or where those skills are critical to success. I don't think the people listed have to be employees but simply stating "we will hire some experienced people" won't go very far (but it wouldn't hurt if that is all you have).

"Forget about bidding"? Nobody here can answer this. Only the customer can answer that. Why not call them and ask? You might be surprised what you can learn by asking a straight-forward question like "We have no experience in this area but we are interested in building up capability. Would you seriously entertain a bid from such a company?" Many buyers will give you an honest answer because they won't want to waste their time looking at unresponsive bids and everybody appreciates honesty.

Regards,
Ralph Mackiewicz
SISCO, Inc.