Bid Manager

Your role

You’ll be managing and coordinating a variety of complex bid proposals in response to customer requests, supporting the sales team and ensuring we follow relevant processes to deliver high quality bids each time. This means you’ll be the main point of contact for all Digital Realty teams contributing to the proposal. From pre-sales qualification meetings, contributing to the strategy and pulling together the right information, helping to write the proposal and ensuring it is produced and delivered on time in accordance with the sales process, and delivering high-quality tender response, you’ll play a key role in winning new business. You’ll also be working on the production and maintenance of bid collaterals in the Bid Knowledge Library. 

This is a hybrid role requiring some days in the office each week.

What you’ll need

• Good project management skills, with an eye for detail
• Ownership of the end-to-end bid process that ensures deadlines are met 
• Knowledge of bid and proposal / RFP processes, tools and procedures such as Shipley
• Salesforce.com or similar CRM background, Loopio and knowledge of SharePoint 
• Strong experience of MS-Office applications, particularly Word, Excel and PowerPoint
• A degree and APMP Foundation, Practitioner or similar qualification or experience
• Commercial awareness, including good numerical skills
• Technical background 
• Ability to write persuasively
• Ability to manage virtual teams in a multicultural environment
• Character to prioritise work under pressure to meet deadlines
• An assertive yet tactful communicator, with the ability to build working relationships
• Ensuring client requests for information are met in a timely manner with minimal effort
• Fluent in English. Another European language is beneficial

Responsibilities

• Manage end-to-end bid process to ensure compliancy within customer and internal deadlines 
• Lead and manage virtual bid team (e.g. Bid Plan), bid reviews & compliance with sales process
• Responsible for the quality and consistency of all proposals under management
• Pre-sales activities in conjunction with sales including qualification meetings
• Support sales / bid team towards requirements clarification
• Manage the bid qualification process for complex bids
• Contribute to bid strategy to maximise our chance of winning
• Create be-spoke templates of response and pre-populate based on existing information (i.e. Bid Knowledge Library) 
• Contribute to the written proposal - both in terms of content and framing of answers
• Co-ordinate all input to meet proposal submission deadlines
• Management of inputs from a variety of HQ and EMEA country stakeholders, typically involving contributions from sales, business development / marketing, technical experts, operations, HR, finance, commercial strategy and legal
• Contact other HQ / EMEA departments for supporting bid team members
• Ensure the collation, consolidation and quality of the proposal response documentation 
• Ensure all services are included in the final price to the customer
• Ensure proposals are planned, delivered and submitted in a timely and professional manner
• Monitor compliance and best practice with the sales process & commercial governance 
• Chair meetings - Organise recurrent internal calls with the bid team to ensure team alignment and good progress on the proposal response (kick-off call, regular review calls, peering review call)
• Orchestrate bid team activities towards revised proposal response documentation in relation to post-submission customer’s clarifications 
• Attend (on request) customer meetings led by sales
• Follow processes for the archiving of bid responses and associated work
• Develop and maintain the Bid Knowledge Library
• Production of individual proposal standards library components under direct control as agreed in advance
• Ensuring that all other integrated processes impacting or impacted by the bid process are followed
• Problem management and resolution of issues arising during any bid under management
• Adherence to Salesforce.com and associated procedures and sales process
• Liaison with partners and / or channels who may be a factor (supporter, contributor or intermediate customer) in the winning of the bid
• Contribute to on-going development of the bid process

A bit about us

Digital Realty brings companies and data together by delivering the full spectrum of data center, colocation and interconnection solutions. PlatformDIGITAL®, the company's global data center platform, provides customers with a secure data meeting place and a proven Pervasive Datacenter Architecture (PDx™) solution methodology for powering innovation and efficiently managing Data Gravity challenges. Digital Realty gives its customers access to the connected data communities that matter to them with a global data center footprint of 300+ facilities in 50+ metros across 28 countries on six continents. To learn more about Digital Realty, please visit digitalrealty.com or follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter.

What we can offer you

Our rapidly evolving business sector offers the opportunity to be part of a courageous and passionate team who work together to understand and meet the changing needs of our global customers. Join us and you’ll be part of a supportive and inclusive environment where you can bring your whole self to work. As part of our team, you’ll get to work with people from different business areas, challenge the way we do things and put your ideas into action. We’ll also give you plenty of development opportunities so you can build a rewarding and successful career with us. This is an exciting time to join our business so apply now and make your mark on our future.