The visibility gap killing mid-market FM growth
The best mid-market FM firms quietly lose tenders to louder, weaker competitors. Procurement is the reason.
Mid-market FM firms — the £5–50m business owners I work with every week — share a problem the bigger players don't have and the smaller players don't notice. They are technically excellent and commercially invisible.
Procurement teams have changed. They scope before they shortlist. By the time your bid arrives, a buyer has already searched your name, read whatever shows up, and formed a view. If nothing shows up, you start at a disadvantage you can't recover with a stronger proposal.
This is the visibility gap. It doesn't appear on your P&L. It appears on the tenders you stop being invited to.
Closing the gap is unglamorous: a small number of substantive articles per year, in titles the buyer already reads, written by someone who can do the work in your voice. That's it. The firms doing this consistently now will be the ones procurement teams shortlist by default in three years.