INFORMATION
Top tips on tendering in the Covid season
With the Government pinning much of its post-Covid economic recovery hopes on infrastructure investment, it provides ample opportunity for small businesses to get involved in tendering. Dewi Hughes (pictured), who helps SMEs write bids as managing director of Silverlock Tenders, provides 11 tips for how businesses can put themselves in the best position for winning a contract during a pandemic world – without making busy buyers read through numerous pages of boring, irrelevant material.
Carefully weigh up your decision to bid: A strong bid could typically take five to 10 days, so do you have the time, skills and resource to put it together? Also consider whether you’d profit financially if by winning the contract.
Make a plan for managing the tender-writing work: Give someone authority to manage the bid-writing work and produce a plan of what needs to happen when. This should be shared with the relevant people within the organisation.
Research the buyer: Find out what’s important to the buyer – values, objectives and the ideal solution – then try to find out who their current supplier is and how
they’re performing. Your bid should be focused on what’s important for the buyer.
Hold an internal kick-off meeting: This will enable you to discuss your solution and discuss the priority of the bid-writing work.
Make sure your bid is compliant: If you aren’t able to comply with what the buyer is asking for, it’s probably not worth bidding. If you still want to bid, seek clarity from the buyer as to whether your alternative is acceptable – or put in a bid that’s compliant, while also offering an alternative solution and explain why it’s better.
Answer all questions asked in the tender and give good evidence: Don’t let subject matter experts or
marketing people wander off the question. Look for added value to include in the answers, such as what the buyer would get over and above the requirement at no extra cost. Provide recent, relevant evidence with quotes and case studies.
Don’t make hollow statements about your organisation: Don’t say “customer service is our top priority” unless you provide some form of evidence because they will just cause evaluators to question your credibility. Instead, say something like “in 2019, we won the Customer Service Award at the East Midlands Chamber Business Awards”.
Use plain English: Evaluators need to scan lots of bids to get through the volume of work so keep sentences and paragraphs short.
Good presentation is important for getting your message across: Use headings and subheadings based on the buyer’s wording and order, so evaluators can clearly see that you have addressed their issue.
Use the tender portals well: Express your interest early on so you get all the Q&A material. Check how the portal operates. Upload the final tender the day before the deadline in case there are problems on the deadline day.
Get feedback: Have someone review the bid two-thirds of the way through the process. Following the bid, request feedback from the buyer to understand how you scored and why – then make sure you apply the lessons to future bids.
business network February 2021
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