5 don’ts when preparing a tender bid

I have been in business 9 months now.

It’s not long but it’s been busy.

I am happy to say that I have done enough tenders to have now seen some things that were avoidable and wasteful while putting together a tender response.  

I want to share them with everyone because I like helping my clients and readers, and like Warren Buffet said: 

“It’s good to learn from your mistakes. It’s better to learn from other people’s mistakes”.

So here are the top 5 things you should NOT do when preparing your tender bid:

1. Don’t forget to project manage the tender writing process.

Like a wedding, tenders have hard deadlines.

This means that there should be stages for developing different parts of the tender and everyone needs to know when each of these stages start and finish.

I have worked in a tender where there were very rough deadlines, nothing in writing, and no communication or follow ups to the key people during the process.

It made for a very confusing process with lots of frustration.

2. Don’t put the wrong person in charge of the tender bid development.

The right person needs to be someone that is capable of project managing, and has the right level of authority or coordination skills to pull people into helping.

They should also be someone that can communicate and coordinate work with others, especially when they are running behind in tasks.

This person is also who others can go to with questions or concerns.

I have seen a quiet project manager put in charge of coordinating a tender and they didn’t say boo to anyone, raise concerns or take a leadership role in the process.

It meant that everyone ran behind and there was an unfortunate last minute scramble to get the tender written at a suboptimal quality.

3. Don’t expect everyone to just pull it together and make it happen.

People need to understand the importance of the tender to the business, their roles in the project, what they are responsible for and how they work with others.

In another case, I saw people overlapping in their work, asking each other who was doing what, emails getting ignored and ultimately no one doing some of the work.

4. Don’t expect the tender writer, to know what to write on their own.

Even if the tender writer is an internal employee or someone that has worked with the business or organisation before, they cannot create all of the content on their own.

Yes, a good tender writer can come up with suggestions or content for checking and clarification.

But they cannot always be across everything and nor should they be as it isn’t always them that will do the work when the tender is successful.

I see this regularly where there is an expectation that a tender can “just be written”.

I have been caught with this myself.

The writer needs to be a tool to communicate the strengths is the business and to get the work or sales in the door.

5. Don’t fight reality.

Big organisations like government and corporations have policies for their procurement (purchase of goods and services) for a reason.

In developed countries like Australia, it’s common for policies to support:

• Local industry (buy local) or economic development goals or outcomes

• Indigenous or Aboriginal supply ends/or development goals or outcomes

• Environmental sustainability goals or improvement outcomes

• Social impact goals or outcomes

The message here is don’t fight it!

If you want the business, think about how you can use the opportunity to improve your business by taking on some or all of the same goals.

You might be surprised at the value this can add. 

Overall, nearly all of my clients have been amazing.

I have certainly learned from the amazing work they do in their businesses and have respected how they have adjusted and refined their approaches to meet the needs of the tender development process and also the policies of the organisation requiring goods or services. 

To summarise, here are the 5 things not to do when preparing a tender bid:

1. Don’t forget to project manage the tender bid development

2. Don’t put the wrong person in charge of the tender bid development

3. Don’t expect everyone to just pull it together and make it happen

4. Don’t expect the tender writer, to know what to write their own

5. Don’t fight reality

I don’t just see tender writing as a process of recording the status quo for a business, I see it as both an opportunity to reflect on the strong past performance and to use the tender bid development as an opportunity to increase sophistication, make a robust written record and develop new, and sometimes innovative, ideas and opportunities for the tendering business. 

If that sounds like what you are looking for in a tender writer, book a discovery call - https://calendly.com/conni-warren