In the introductory article in my YOUBIDFAST series I introduced the RADAR as the third essential component of an Online Business Development System. The purpose of the Radar is to automatically monitor the web to give you advance warning of opportunities (Lead Generation) early enough to have a chance of exploiting them. Here is how to build your Alerts Radar using just free software.
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The Purpose of The Radar
The purpose of the transmitter was to reach new contacts on a one-many basis and the purpose of the walkie-talkie was to engage with your most important contacts on a one-one basis.The Radar is how you automatically monitor the web to get early warning of those opportunities (Lead Generation) which match your specific interest criteria using web monitoring software such as google alerts. The purpose of the Radar is to identify unknown opportunities early enough to have a good chance of winning them. The diagram below shows how the 3 components fit together.
Getting Started with the Radar
Before I explain how the Radar works you should do two very easy things:1. Join all the free tender sites
Here are some of the ones I have tried - you will be able to find others. I am afraid they are a mixed bag so don't have big expectations about them and then you wont be disappointed:
tenderalerts
tendernews
tenderszeal
competefor (London 2012 Olympics)
2. Subscribe to specific customer sites you are interested in
Many major public and private sector organisations have a New Tenders section on their website where you can sign-up to be notified if anything they put out to tender. Work through your list of strategic customers and target enterprises to see what is available.
In both cases if you can get an RSS feed its easier to manage than email alerts!
Now lets set up your own unique automated web robot
You will soon discover the power of an amazing bit of free software from google called google alerts but first you must do a little bit of homework following 6 simple steps:1. KEY SERVICES:
Define the key services which your business offers (using your customers language)
e.g. in my case Business Collaboration Consulting
2. SERVICE KEYWORDS:
For each Key Service define your Service Keywords
e.g. For Business Collaboration Consulting my keywords are:
("Collaborative Network"
OR "Business Network"
OR "Innovation Network"
OR "Virtual Enterprise"
OR "Business Cluster"
OR "Network Facilitator")
3. KEY PERSPECTIVES:
Now define your Key Perspectives - I find these 6 are a good start point for most enterprises:
- Published Tenders and Requests
- Funding Sources
- Key Customer Activity
- Key Competitor Activity
- Own Company/Product Mentions
- Key Topic News
4. PERSPECTIVE KEYWORDS:
For each perspective define your Perspective Keywords
e.g. For Published Tenders and Requests your keywords could be:
(Tender OR RFP OR PQQ)
5. CONSTRAINING KEYWORDS:
Define any obvious Constraining Keywords (optional )
e.g. UK, Consulting, Technology
6. CONSTRUCT THE PERSPECTIVES-SERVICES MATRIX:
Decide which Perspectives you wish to track and whether you want to track them by Key Service (COMBINED) or by themselves (SINGLE)
The figure below is an example of such a matrix which I use:
Now Construct a Radar Alert for each matrix cell you wish to track
For SINGLE Alerts the alert is just the Perspective Keywords (See step 4) and for COMBINED Alerts the alert is the Perspective Keywords "AND" Service KeywordsIn this example above we have a COMBINED ALERT (ALERT 1) as follows:
=============================
(Tender OR RFP OR PQQ) <- Perspective Keywords AND (Consulting OR Technology) <- Constraining Keywords AND <- Service Keywords ("Collaborative Network" OR "Business Network" OR "Virtual Community" OR "Innovation Network" OR "Virtual Enterprise" OR "Business Cluster" OR "Network Facilitator") ============================= Now load each Radar Alert into Google Alerts
You should test each alert by simply clicking on the search terms within google alerts and seeing what it produces.
Dont rush this stage you need to make sure your alerts produce the results you expect before you start them running forever in the background.
Once you are happy don't have the alerts emailed - send them to RSS - as I mentioned earlier its much easier to manage
Here is a screenshot showing how the example we just discussed looks in google alerts
The google alerts syntax is very similar to google search syntax (with some annoying differences) - if you need to explore google alerts in more detail there is an excellent google alerts guide produced by Nancy Blachman.
Finally try and keep your search terms as simple as possible - there is a temptation to use exclusions to remove "false positives" - this is dangerous and could result in you missing real opportunities. Better to have some false positives than missing some great tenders!
Alternatives to Google Alerts
There are a number of alternatives to Google Alerts but in my opinion none are as powerful:Trackle (from $2-$30 per month)
Yahoo Alerts (uses predefined areas - not user defined searches)
Microsoft Live Alerts
Add-ons to Google Alerts
There is one very interesting add-on to google alerts which I have used - Alertrank. Alertrank intercepts your google alerts and filters them onto a management dashboard with some extra information not provided by Google Alerts such as the credibility of the source. Alertrank also allows you to mark your sentiment regarding each alert (like or dislike) which I think it then uses to adjust how it filters your alerts in the future.Alertrank is certainly worth a look at but I would suggest you start with standard google alerts first and look to Alertrank if you want or need more.
[STOP PRESS: On July 7, 2010 I received an email from Alertrank to say that they were shutting down their operation due to lack of funding]
Summary
Google Alerts is an amazing tool which you can use to build a professional Alerts Radar as a key component of your own unique Business Development System. There are a number of other alternatives and add-ons but google alerts is really all most enterprises will need. Twitter Alerts can also be very useful to see what is hot.
To take your Business Development System to the Advanced level read The Radar (Advanced) or The Transmitter (Advanced) or The Walkie-Talkie (Advanced).
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