Tips and advice on improving your bid process to reduce time input and produce higher quality and more effective bids.
Where you are asked about business continuity, it may be tempting to focus on your recent experience of disruption due to COVID. While it might be useful to cite this as an example, the client will be interested in all aspects of business continuity. Your response should cover areas such as data security, office integrity … Read more..
Many companies receive bid and tender opportunities through alert systems or directly from customers. To stay one step ahead of the competition, you should supplement these channels by contacting potential customers who have been identified through market intelligence. Furthermore, where you proactively seek out work, you have the potential to negate the requirement for a … Read more..
Many people struggle to choose between “it’s” and “its” because they think it takes a possessive apostrophe. Possessive adjectives (my, your, his, her, their, our, its) do not need an apostrophe. Only use an apostrophe with “it’s” when the word means it is or it has. Without the apostrophe, “its” means belonging to it.
When writing a consultancy proposal it can be very difficult to know how much to “give away”. To resolve this, it is useful to focus on the way you work and the desired result, along with the approach you will take. By describing the steps or phases you recommend, you avoid telling the client the … Read more..
Writing persuasively is a skilled task however there are elements which can be applied by any author. You should always keep the reader, their anticipated response and your desired result in mind. With tenders, this will ensure you describe the benefits and make the document customer focused
Templates are useful tools because they save you time and effort. In theory, they are ‘ideal’ documents which contain all the relevant information and follow your company procedures. In practice, because they have been repeatedly amended, they often contain superfluous information and typos.
A customer’s objective is never just to spend money, so leading with your price would be absurd. Their objective is to pick a product or service that best meets their need. Buyers are not allowed to make assumptions when evaluating proposals so check you have told them all the things you need them to know, … Read more..
Using the four stages of competence model (Martin M Broadwell), many people are unaware of the things they know they know (unconsciously competent). This is why it is difficult for them to convey their knowledge to others. When detailing a process in a bid or proposal you should clearly describe all the parts and not … Read more..
Proposal and bid templates are often re-used without much thought being given to their contents. Why not spend a couple of hours critically appraising your standard documents and ask your colleagues to do the same? You can then compare notes and decide which sections to rewrite or update
While some businesses are ‘on hold’ at present, there are many which continue to operate. These firms still have supply chain requirements so opportunities exist to make yourself known to their buyers. An initial personal approach can then be followed-up with a tailored proposal outlining the benefits you can deliver to their company.
