How to Win TendersWinning Major Tenders – Public Sector and Corporate Contracts
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There are new limits for procurement under the EU rules.
They have increased so that might help some contracts to fall under the full-blown EU tendering process.
For full details please see European Commission and also the Cabinet Office (for UK only).
These will stand for 21012 and 2013.
Tags: EU Procurement Thresholds, Public Sector Tenders, Tendering, Tendering Terms
It is a basic fact that talking to your prospective customer can have a massive impact on increasing you chances of winning business. You have an opportunity to understand their needs and also test if your solution can meet their needs (ie selling) – as opposed to working blind (you normally only get the specification and generic requirements in a tender eg ‘value for money’, ‘high quality’ etc.).
It would be great if ALL of the public sector adopted a more open approach to discussion. It is all too common to find that officials don’t want to discuss contracts until they get near to tendering; then increasingly stricter tendering rules prohibit any form of discussion (eg contact by email or on-line portal only).
So it is good news that The Cabinet Office said that it will provide an ‘open door’ for current and future suppliers to discuss upcoming procurement opportunities to aid this process.
In the meantime, use any reasonable opportunity available to talk to prospects and get a real insight to their specific needs.
Tags: Bid Management, Fit to Tender, Negotiating, Planning for Tenders, Public Sector Tenders, Qualifying Tenders, Responding to Tenders, Sales Techniques, Tendering, Tenders & Tendering
Government contracts awarded to small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) have risen to 40% in September 2011 compared with only 5% in January
John Collington, the Government’s chief procurement officer made this statement at the Cabinet Office conference ‘The Crown and Suppliers: A New Way of Working’. He intimated this rise would continue along with other improvements.
Francis Maude, the minister of the Cabinet Office, said: “Already in the last year we have started to see more transparency with the contracts finder website where businesses can survey everything on offer. I am particularly glad that over 1,600 contracts have been awarded to small and medium sized businesses via this route”.
More details are at The Guardian.
Good news! Are you winning more contracts?
Tags: Finding Tenders, Fit to Tender, Planning for Tenders, PQQ / Pre-Qualification Questionnaire, Pre-Qualification Questionnaire, Public Sector Tenders, Qualifying Tenders, Responding to PQQs, Responding to Tender Questions, Responding to Tenders, Tendering, Tenders & Tendering
Cabinet Secretary Francis Maude has spoken about plans to cut red tape in public sector procurement: “The public sector in this country spends a huge amount of money in buying in goods and services from outside, something like £230bn a year, and we don’t do it very well, frankly. We follow the European law extremely literally, and they have very legalistic processes. We have very big contracts, and we get the worst of both worlds at the moment. We don’t buy very well, we exclude a lot of competitive, innovative suppliers who will tend to be UK-based, so neither do we get good value for the taxpayer, neither do we spend the money particularly well, nor do we actually support UK businesses.”
The value of public contracts awarded to foreign suppliers is 3% in the UK Vs. 1.9% in Germany and 1.5% in France: “The difference is the governments of these countries work closely with their domestic firms so they are geared up to win contracts at home and abroad. Whereas in Britain, by over-interpreting EU law and over-reacting to fears of bias in favour of British suppliers, we take an almost deliberately short-sighted approach to working with business.”
Anything to simplify tendering and to help UK businesses would be welcomed so let’s hope something comes of this.
Tags: EU Procurement Thresholds, Finding Tenders, Fit to Tender, Planning for Tenders, PQQ / Pre-Qualification Questionnaire, Pre-Qualification Questionnaire, Public Sector Tenders, Responding to PQQs, Responding to Tender Questions, Responding to Tenders, Tendering, Tenders & Tendering
Many clients have taken a while to win a tender but they have stuck with it and gone on to be very successful in tendering. Their formula to success is very simple:
Persevere
You cannot win every tender – a great hit rate would be 40% (that’s 60% failure!). But intelligently choosing the right opportunities (rejecting the poor ones), writing good submissions and competitive pricing helps the odds.
Learning
Rejection is painful – especially a big contract that you’ve spent a lot of time on. However, always get feedback and see how you could have done better. Then take action to make the improvements eg processes, policies, accreditations, pricing or the offering. NB some feedback can be misleading or very subjective so use common sense when evaluating.
Tenders normally mean big contracts and generally big contracts don’t come easy: Perseverance + Learning = Success.
(Of course this applies to so many things in life and business!)
Tags: Bid Management, Fit to Tender, Planning for Tenders, PQQ / Pre-Qualification Questionnaire, PQQ Mistakes, PQQ Writing, Pre-Qualification Questionnaire, Public Sector Tenders, Qualifying Tenders, Responding to PQQs, Responding to Tender Questions, Responding to Tenders, Tendering, Tendering Mistakes, Tenders & Tendering, Top Tendering Tips
Last year the Government set goals of spending 25% of its purchasing with small businesses and to simplify tendering: Will the Government be Successful in Backing Small Businesses?
New Suppliers to the Government (NSG), the working group tasked with encouraging small businesses to go for public sector work, feels that the Government is backtracking on its promise. Mark Taylor of NSG said: “The Cabinet Office’s position is that they are working hard on the minister’s programme, but that it will take time because it’s a business development decision. That’s not really good enough,”
There is more on this story at: http://www.computerworlduk.com/news/public-sector/3304154/government-backtracks-on-sme-promise/
So don’t hold your breath…
Tags: Fit to Tender, Planning for Tenders, PQQ / Pre-Qualification Questionnaire, Pre-Qualification Questionnaire, Public Sector Tenders, Qualifying Tenders, Responding to PQQs, Responding to Tender Questions, Responding to Tenders, Supply National SME Engagement Programme, Tendering, Tenders & Tendering
The tough economic climate has lead to an upsurge in suicide bidding – tendering at silly prices. Our post-tender feedback has highlighted some huge variations in bidders’ prices – including a significant proportion at below cost.
This is worrying practice is demonstrated in the construction industry: a RICS survey of nearly 400 quantity surveyors has shown contractors putting in bids below cost. 20% of tenders submitted during 2010 – 2011 were priced at a “sub-economic level”. Most suicide bids were 10% below cost but some were 40% under!
The findings also show that more than 50% have seen a client accepting a “sub-economic tender” in the full knowledge it was “potentially unviable”. Construction industry tender prices have fallen by about 15% since the start of the recession and suicide bidding has already caused some contractors to go bust.
Therefore tender with caution: be aware of the current intense price competition; qualify your tender opportunities carefully (especially where the price / quality split is heavily biased); maximise your quality scores.
Have you seen suicide bidding in your industry?
Tags: Bid Management, Planning for Tenders, Qualifying Tenders, Responding to Tender Questions, Responding to Tenders, Tendering, Tenders & Tendering
Give it the ‘overnight test’. Once you’ve got to the stage where you think it’s complete stop working on it. Then revisit it the next day to review it with fresh eyes.
We all make mistakes and rush things when we get tired, we also often see what we think we have written – rather than what is actually on the page. Therefore we don’t always spot our own mistakes. However, after a proper overnight break, we usually will notice these errors and also see how copy and presentation could be improved.
To do this, you must plan ahead; this is good practice as it helps avoid your bid being a last minute rush where you ‘chuck everything in and hope for the best’!
Ideally, you will also have an independent proof reader to provide another layer of quality control. You could re-read ad infinitum (although you will get diminishing returns) but a final ‘fresh’ review will pay dividends!
Of course, there’s a lot more to successful tendering as you will see in Tenders & Tendering.
Do you use the overnight test? Or have you noticed errors too late (once the tender’s been submitted)?
Tags: Bid Management, Planning for Tenders, PQQ / Pre-Qualification Questionnaire, PQQ Writing, Pre-Qualification Questionnaire, Public Sector Tenders, Responding to PQQs, Responding to Tender Questions, Responding to Tenders, Tender Writing, Tendering, Tenders & Tendering, Top Tendering Tips
It’s great news, you are down to the last few and close to winning a contract but the prospect of making a sales presentation can be daunting for non-sales people!
Often, due to lack of experience, those who will be presenting feel it’s not something they can tackle with confidence. Well, don’t worry!
The important thing to remember is that in most cases, the panel who will be marking your presentation want to hear from the people who will be actually delivering the products or service rather than receive a super-slick sales pitch from the sales department ie they want to see who they will be dealing with on a daily basis in order to assess their abilities, knowledge and experience. This helps the panel gain confidence that you will deliver a good service.
We’ve worked with many businesses where the directors and managers either lack experience and/or confidence in sales presentations; we’ve followed the steps shown in Shortlist Tender Presentations – Top Tips and focussed on showing the panel how the team will meet their needs. The results have been that they’ve beaten the bigger firms (and their their highly polished presentations) and won the tender or contract!
So when presenting, remember the panel will be looking to see if you can deliver, not how good a sales person you are.
Tags: Negotiating, Planning for Tenders, Public Sector Tenders, Responding to Tenders, Sales Presentations, Sales Techniques, Shortlist Presentations, Tender Presentations, Tendering, Tenders & Tendering, Top Tendering Tips
How to achieve successful sales negotiation is a huge subject but here are some top tips to help you get a better deal when negotiating contracts.
You can add much more to this list but these fundamental mistakes are frequently made by sellers but are easily corrected and can make a big improvement to the profitability of a deal! Please add any of your favourite negotiating tips.
Tags: Negotiating, Sales Presentations, Sales Techniques, Tendering, Tendering Mistakes, Tenders & Tendering
