Tendering Top Tips

Many companies collect extensive customer intelligence during business development activities. It is important to make use of that intelligence when writing your bid.

Do not fall into the trap of allowing valuable details, such as the desire for collaborative working, to be omitted in preference to more tangible requirements.

Your bid procedure should be concise and relevant. Remove any steps that do not add value. Your policy documents should be correctly dated, properly formatted and filed so that they can be found quickly.

Smart suppliers will identify ways the customer can save money, possibly using innovative solutions.

Other factors which customers value include flexibility and reduced commercial risk.

Good graphics are visually appealing and easy to understand.

If, however, your graphic is cluttered, contains small text or looks amateurish then you should either revise it or revert to using text

If you cannot articulate the reason the client should buy from you, they are unlikely to work it out themselves.

Win themes should be used irrespective whether you are writing hundred pound or multi-million dollar bids.

I regularly see documents where the win themes focus on excellent customer service. When backed up with evidence, this can be a very persuasive argument which many customers like. If, however, the accompanying correspondence dwells on terms and conditions, exclusions and uses contractual language then the customer can get confused.
It’s important your whole message is convincing so whatever style you choose, make sure it’s consistent throughout.

To increase the impact they have, you should use titles which highlight the benefits of your proposed solution. You can also embed your win themes into the titles.

With a pricing schedule, instead of writing “Staff Costings” you could say “Flexible Cost Structure”.

Under a photo, instead of writing “Generator 143-ABX” you could say “Low Maintenance Generator 143-ABX”.

It is the lack of relevant information, the absence of any customer focus and basic structural errors which often mean small companies do not win.
Public sector tenders are difficult to complete and their requirements are sometimes unnecessarily onerous. Despite this, companies can significantly increase their win rates by addressing the key areas above.

A systematic approach to producing a high-impact customer focused document will work throughout; it is only the quantity of material which will change.
With bigger bids the process becomes more formal and the number of people involved will increase. With smaller bids the decisions are probably thought through more quickly however the same steps should be taken.

There is a great song which goes:

Indicate the way to my habitual abode; I’m fatigued and I wish to retire.

You may know it as:

Show me the way to go home. I’m tired and I want to go to bed.

Make it easy for the reader to understand your messages.

Unfortunately many bid writers only update key numbers or details, not realising that badly edited boilerplate text can lose them the bid.
The effort required to transfor the focus, objectives, win themes and keywords in boilerplate will often outweigh the time it would have taken to write something from stratch. If a good document structuring process is being used, the time to create something new will be minimal.

Some companies hand over files with tracked changes still embedded. This can be particularly embarrassing if prices or opinions have been commented on during drafting.

There are different ways to clear the data depending on the package you use. In current versions of MS Word, Excel and Powerpoint you should click the Microsoft Office Button, point to “prepare” and then click “properties”. In Access, go to “manage” then “database properties”.