Many businesses make the mistake of thinking their tenders can be managed by relatively inexperienced business development executives. They approach tenders as little more than question and answer exercises, ignoring the strategic intent, and underestimating the heightened state of competition. Those same businesses also wonder why success eludes them.

In strategic procurement, the key word is ‘strategic’. When hundreds of thousands – if not millions – of dollars revenue is up for grabs, or at stake, you would be wise to invest in your bid strategy.

Whether you started preparing for a tender months in advance, or are reacting to an opportunity which has just been advertised, the key is understand and anticipate the needs and wants of the tendering organisation, how your competitors might respond, and what is subsequently your most appropriate bid-specific stategy, having regard for:

• Whether the tendering entity is an existing client
• The nature of the opportunity – for example, whether it is an open tender or by invitation only
• Market and competitor intelligence
• The evaluation criteria and their weightings
• The composition of the evaluation panel.

Don’t compromise the success of another tender. Call Market Expertise on +61 (0)414 287 206.

Large business and government tenders will sometimes be a few hundred pages. Documents of this size do not come together easily – especially when they involve input from scores of stakeholders, and sign off from seemingly as many. Biographies need to be assembled and customised; data needs to be extracted, analysed and presented; subject matter experts and function leaders need to be interrogated; case studies and project sheets need to be updated… Even if you employ business development personnel they may not have the experience or confidence to manage these large bids. And even if they do, can you afford for them to be unavailable to do anything else whilst preparing your tender? A smarter approach is to engage tendering experts to remove the burden and ensure your submission is high quality, compelling and compliant.

Don’t compromise the success of another tender. Call Market Expertise on +61 (0)414 287 206.

Procurement specialists will go out of their way to caution tenderers against including marketing material in their submissions. But the reality is tenders are as much marketing documents as anything else. Therefore, when responding to a Request for Tender it’s imperative that you write in plain English, and in a convincing, compelling and engaging manner.

An added challege with large tenders is input and content will be submitted from dozens or even scores of stakeholders. Each piece of content will be written in a different style, a unique voice. Some content will be heavy with jargon, other content will be written almost in shorthand. Much of it will need to be rewritten. Content will need to be compared, cross-checked and scrutinised for contradictions and duplication. Subject matter experts will need to be interviewed to fill in missing pieces of information, and ensure all questions have been answered.

All of this is the role of the tender writer and editor as well as smoothing and standardising the content so that it reads as though written by just one person, a single voice.

Don’t compromise the success of another tender. Call Market Expertise on +61 (0)414 287 206.

In our experience, most businesses require the services of a one-stop Tender Manager. They need a reliable, responsible tendering expert who can serve as strategist, project manager, bid writer and editor. They need their bid to be managed from start to finish. They want the peace of mind that comes from knowing their tender will not only be lodged on time, but will also be compliant, compelling, representative of industry best practice, and will present their service or solution in the best possible manner. 

And they want all of this delivered in a manner that minimises disruption to their business.

Don’t compromise the success of your next tender. Call Market Expertise on +61 (0)414 287 206.

Tenders are now the preferred procurement mechanism for business and government. And, more often than not, they are managed by procurement specialists. 

To quote Benjamin Franklin, “By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail”.

Market Expertise can assist you in developing your overarching tendering strategy, including:

• Developing an appropriate go/no go process to improve the rigour with which you qualify bids.
• Creating document repositories, databases and toolboxes to make the process of responding to tenders more efficient, and ensure lessons learned are being captured.
• Helping you to identify your priority clients, markets and opportunities.
• Assisting you in building a sales pipeline by identifying opportunities to win new clients, or grow existing ones.
• Putting a key account management program in place so you are better able to protect and defend your most important clients.
• Setting up cost effective market, client and competitor intelligence.

Don’t compromise the success of another tender. Call Market Expertise on +61 (0)414 287 206.