Tendering is a crucial part of winning new business and securing long term contracts. So, if you’re a business owner, or in charge of a bid team, your tender submissions need to be of the highest quality. But with more and more businesses investing in their bid writing, it is now becoming fiercely competitive in many industries.
How will you stand out from your competition and ensure your submission is a winning one?
How will you present or communicate your information? How do you capture the buyers attention and instill the confidence that you are the right business for the job? As bid writing experts, these are questions our clients ask us every day.
And after thousands of tender submissions, we can safely say we have the answers. By the end of this article, you will have the knowledge and confidence to write a tender response that you can be proud of - and that your buyer will love.
So, let’s get into it.
When to submit your tender
First of all, it’s really important to understand and read the tender documents that are submitted by the buyer. It may be that after reading them you decide not to bid as you cannot fully meet the requirements. Deciding whether to respond or not is one of the most important parts of the tender process. Your business may not always be the right fit for every tender, so choose wisely and make sure to thoroughly read the tender documents.Developing your tender submission
As we mentioned above, it’s very important to understand each of the tender documents that the buyer sends out as your tender submission will be developed around these. We’ll now break down the typical tender documents that a buyer would send out and that you would need to engage with.- An invitation to tender - A formal document issued by a procurement authority outlining the scope of a project and invites businesses to bid for the work.
- The contract overview - This will vary depending on the tender documents, but it could contain pages of information or a short summary of works.
- Instructions about next steps & deadline - The buyer will outline their deadline and any specific requirements and expectations they wish. This also includes the contract information and terms and conditions.
- The evaluation and specification information - Here, the buyer outlines what they expect to see and how they will evaluate the tender responses.