Winning at the Tender Game

Is your business looking to tender for work to win public sector contracts? If you haven’t completed a tender before, the whole process can seem a little daunting. After spending 13 years tender writing, with many successes, I’m going to share my top tips to help you win those contracts.

Where to find opportunities?

Public sector procurement requires an Invitation to Tender (ITT), to attract competing offers for the products/services, which the public sector organisation requires. The phrase “tenders” is commonly used to cover a public sector contract opportunity.

All UK public sector organisations are required to publish contract notices over a certain “threshold.” England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales use their own procurement portals where they publish tenders over a certain threshold. Contracts published in the Official Journal of European Union (OJEU) are higher value contracts.

Changes from the 1st January 2021

After the UK's Brexit transition period ends, there will be a new e-notification service called “Find a Tender” coming into effect from the 1st January 2021. This will be used to post and view public sector procurement notices. It will supersede OJEU. If you use external third-party notice providers such as BiP Solutions or EU Supply, a selection of providers has confirmed that they will publish notices to “Find a Tender”. For further information, see here.

Plan to Win

You may be familiar with the Benjamin Franklin quote “If you fail to prepare, you are preparing to fail”. This needs to be your mantra when tackling tenders.

Once you have registered on the portal and decide that you want to make a bid, you MUST plan.

1. Map out the Timeline

Map out your timeline. I find Gantt charts invaluable to map out key dates and milestones. Top tip - factor in your first, second or even third stage reviews in your timeline. We used to refer to these as bronze, silver and gold reviews. A lot of companies forget about the review stages. Ideally, seek someone who is not part of your bid team who can offer independent and objective feedback.

2. Pick your Dream Team

Establish what resources you need to deliver a winning bid.

• Who is the Bid Manager?

• Who will answer the general questions?

• Who is best placed to answer the technical questions?

• Will you need professional bid writing support?

• Will you need graphic designers to create graphics?

• Who will submit the bid?

• Do you have all the resources in-house to deliver or do you need to partner up with external companies?

Get your dream team on board – in small companies there may be as few as two of you. Make sure everyone involved has a copy of the documents.

3. Devise your Win Plan

The documents require scrutiny. Carefully review the questions, these will contain clues which will help determine the client and project requirements. What problems does the client have? How can you solve them? Key areas to look out for are:

• Key client needs and project requirements

• Legal requirements

• Key risks

• Guarantees and warranties

• Methods of evaluation

• Instruction to tenderers

• Missing Information – flag these up to the client and seek clarifications

• Legal Review – indemnities, hold harmless clauses, limitations on liabilities, intellectual property, warranties

• Evaluation Criteria

• How is it scored? Top tip - allocate the most time to the highest-weighted questions

• Who wrote it? Was it the technical or procurement team? Reflect this in your response

4. Tailor your Responses

It sounds obvious but avoid the temptation to copy and paste. Ensure that you tailor the response to the client. What value can you add? Top tip - the word limit indicates how many words they expect to see. Bonus tip – always provide supporting evidence. If you say, you are the best cleaning company in Surrey, provide evidence to support your statement.

5. Presentation Matters

At times, you can use your own bid template, or you might be restricted to using the client’s template (sometimes this is an excel document). Always make your documents presentable. Whoever is assessing the document may have tens or even hundreds to score. Make their lives easier by breaking-up large amounts of text into bullet points, pull-quotes, sub-headings, and short paragraphs. Use infographics, tables, charts and images to tell a story.

6. Know your Portal

At present, there isn’t a single standard portal which public sector organisations use. Some portals are complicated. Learn how it works. It is not the time to learn how to use the portal when you have 30 mins until the deadline! Allow yourself good time to submit all your documents.

I’d say ‘Good luck’, but there’s no luck in winning a tender. Follow my top tips and prepare to succeed!

“If you fail to prepare, you are preparing to fail”

Benjamin Franklin