TENDERING FOR CLEANING
CONTRACTS – DOES IT NEED TO BE SUCH A CHORE?
Stephen MacDonald, Managing Director of SMA, explains why a systematic approach can enable you to tender confidently for bigger contracts.
If you’re a cleaning contractor going after new business in either the public or private sector, how many times have you looked at an opportunity and questioned your ability to submit a winning bid? Maybe your resources don’t stretch to a full time BDM who’s both good at numbers and can draft clear proposals. Maybe you don’t have a bid library of standard responses. Maybe you are uncomfortable in unfamiliar client sectors.
The truth is that for any worthwhile contract nowadays, there are several hurdles to clear, any one of which could trip you up due to lack of the necessary skills. A pre-qualification questionnaire, a complex costing, a formal bid document, performing at presentation – unless you are properly geared-up, you can easily invest a lot of time in a tender, only to find you neither win the job, nor receive any meaningful feedback as to why you lost.
IS IT ALL ABOUT PRICE? There’s always the nagging doubt that price is the only factor and no-one can deny this is sometimes the case. However, most experienced business development managers will tell you that if you’ve really worked to understand a client’s requirements, listened to their concerns and costed the bid accurately, then a well thought out proposal, delivered in a credible way, will persuade a client to pay a premium.
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So how can you start putting together those winning bids?
KEY ELEMENTS TO WRITING WINNING TENDERS:
1 2
Read the tender document thoroughly to ensure you haven’t
missed any important requirements. The same applies if you’re at the prequalification stage.
Personalise your proposal by identifying your client’s key
cleaning issues and demonstrating clearly that you’ve addressed each one, offering alternative solutions where appropriate. Evidence always carries weight, so provide examples of how you’ve solved similar problems for other clients.
3
From the tender document itself or the client’s website, get a feel
for the organisation’s priorities and values. Create a list of key phrases the client uses and play these back in your response.
4
Where the client has not asked specific questions, invest time
to produce a high quality, ‘standard’ proposal document that shows off your company, but can be easily tailored to your client by adjusting a
couple of words or adding short personalised paragraphs. Elements of this can also be used for those sections of a more prescriptive tender where the client would expect you to provide a standard response, for example staff vetting or health and safety. Include plenty of images and graphics to break up the text.
5
Most importantly, focus your response on how you can benefit
your client, not on how well-known you are, or how long you’ve been in business. The reason contracts are so often awarded on price is because bidders only talk about themselves and fail to say how they will solve the client’s issues. When all’s said and done, Procurement and FM Managers are real, busy people who want to know how you can make their lives easier. If they can’t tell the companies apart, they will go with the cheapest.
SMA is a consultancy set up six years ago specifically to help cleaning contractors and suppliers in the key areas of marketing, business development, ISO accreditation and business planning.
www.stephenmacdonaldassociates.co.uk
twitter.com/TomoCleaning
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