Flowery Language in Tenders
The following sentence appeared in a tender we were reviewing:
Language and Tone
Tips and advice on the effective use of language and tone for maximum impact when writing bids, proposals and tenders.
Keeping your Tenders Meaningful
When you are presenting your proposal, ensure your language is correct, meaningful and cannot be misinterpreted. Avoid the use of words like ‘frequently’, and ‘quality’. If you use these, the reader will assume you are deliberately trying to be evasive.
Readability Test
There are several tests which gauge the readability of a document. These include Flesch-Kincaid, ARI and Coleman-Liau.
Long Winded Documents
A sentence which runs over several lines may be grammatically perfect but is likely to be unnecessarily complex and include several sub clauses which mean the reader has to concentrate extremely hard to understand the meaning and thus increase the chance that they will stop reading before they reach the full stop at the end of the sentence.
Keep Your Proposals Simple
When it comes to proposals, no-one is impressed by big words and complex sentence structures.
Makes your Negatives Positive
There may be times when you have to include a negative topic in a proposal. An example of this might be poor accident statistics.
It’s Good Fun Really – Setting the Tone for your Tenders
Try to maintain a high enthusiasm level when writing bid and proposal documents. The tone of a document comes directly from its writers and it is very difficult to disguise the writing of a weary or frustrated author.
Manage your Proposal Reviewers
If you provide reviewers with clear guidelines, they are more likely to give you meaningful feedback.
Festive Gifts
Does your finished document resemble a Christmas cracker which generates lots of excitement but actually contains a bad joke?
Is Your Tender Schizophrenic?
Consider the customer’s reaction if your main tender document is friendly, collaborative and helpful but your cover letter is formal, contractual and inflexible.
