At Tender Victory, we understand the pressure and stress that often comes with starting a new bid. With the promise of deadlines and the often overwhelming amount of work and research required, even thinking about starting your bid can seem like an impossible task. However, this does not have to be the case, we are here to guide and support you through a calm and well managed tender submission process.
We also endeavour to provide additional support for first-time tenderers, as we acknowledge that the bidding process will be even more daunting if it’s being done for the first time. If you haven’t tendered before, don’t panic! There are plenty of actions you can take to ensure your business is as prepared as possible for bidding, even before the process has started.
Before you start…
Firstly, we recommend that you prepare to answer the standard, typically asked questions within the Selection Questionnaire (SQ) which is used in the vast majority of public sector tenders (check out our FAQs to better understand procurement terminology – also note that under the new Procurement Act the SQ will be superseded by the Procurement Specific Questionnaire (PSQ)). To help you with this, we have provided some of these questions in our ‘Preparing for tendering’ blog post. By preparing yourself and your business with these questions, you’ll find it to be a much more comfortable process and you and your team will be able to feel as confident as possible before making the step towards writing the detailed quality responses, that will be scored!
Preparing to put pen to paper…
We suggest that before you start planning and writing your responses, you think about what the buyer is looking for and how this correlates with what your business has to offer. This can be researched by looking into the buyer’s background information and website in order to provide you with an understanding of what is important to their wider organisation and business strategy.
This can include:
- Added value
- Sustainability, environmental or social value considerations
- Quality management and best practise
- Value for money
- Customer service
- Innovation
- Business continuity and risk management
By identifying the buyer’s key themes and interests and noting how they relate to your business, you have created a good starting point for how you will approach your tender. Furthermore, any past site visits, events or meetings that you have attended will be sure to come in handy – use past knowledge!
Another useful act of preparation is ensuring you have a clear bidding strategy. By doing this, you are making sure that:
- You and your team know what bids you are targeting, and know that they are in line with your overall business development and growth strategy
- You are ready for the actual bids you want to go for
- You can maximise the limited time that’s provided for the tendering process – so you’re way ahead of your competitors
- You feel confident about your offer, so your team can work their best for the bid
When developing your strategy, consider how for each bid you can demonstrate the following, in a way that is meaningful to the buyer’s organisation:
- Your experience and history
- Your ability to collaborate and form a partnership approach
- The qualifications, accreditations and awards held by your business
- Your business standing through reputation and trust
Tender Victory is happy to support the development of your strategy through our Bid Coaching Service. For example, we can use our step by step process to clarify:
- What’s not working and how to fix this
- Your goals for bidding
- Resources – how you can maximise them
- The plan needed to achieve your goals
- Strategy needed to get there
Putting pen to paper…
When faced with a difficult and important tender question, it can be easy to panic and deviate away from what the buyer is really asking you. However, if you read the question and really break it down, you will be able to work out what the buyer really wants to hear from you in your response.
To do this, we recommend taking for the following steps for each scored question:
- Write out your solution in detail – what it is, what it does and how you will operationally manage it – and how it will meet their requirements.
- In addition to meeting their requirements, include the added value your solution will bring to the buyer’s organisation.
- Outline your reasons for recommending this solution, making sure you back up your reasons based on similar contracts with another client or customer.
- This could be in the form of a brief synopsis or a link to a case study where your solution has been put into practise.
- This will show the buyer you are a credible and reliable business with a demonstrable track record.
Our tender writing top tips:
- Make sure you are answering the question being asked, not just including information in a non-relevant way.
- Work out which questions give you the best opportunity to really give evidence of your approach.
- Be clear and concise! Buyers will appreciate clarity and it will give you a more credible appearance.
- Your responses should address key issues and explain why your company and solution are the best method of addressing them. Make sure to back up claims with credible evidence based on past experiences!
- Go above and beyond – we published a blog post about this: ‘Going above and beyond with your answers to tender questions’.
- If you are tendering for something more creative and diagrams and visuals are permitted, go the extra mile and put across your company’s personality and the added value you bring.
- Aim high! We wrote a blog post on ‘How to score higher on your tender submissions’ which will help with this.
In addition to our tender writing and review services, we also offer workshops to help you and your team learn from our experts, first hand, how to approach tendering successfully. More information on our Training Page, or on Eventbrite.
Contact us if Tender Victory’s expert writers can you help you develop your approach or review your draft tender responses.