1. Customer requirements – ask about the agenda: what content they want to see & how much time is available
2. Structure – the content of your presentation must be relevant to the tender (don’t just copy the last one you did)
3. Limit corporate emphasis (boring!) – tell them what’s in it for them (benefits)
4. Ask who is attending & why (refer 1st point) – this may help you decide what to focus on & who from your team should attend
5. Agree a leader – someone to control your team
6. Consider what questions may asked, what you will say & who will answer them
7. Rehearse, rehearse, rehearse and rehearse

You don’t have to be a super-slick sales person, in fact the panel are often more interested in the people who will deliver, but being confident will really help your chances of winning!

He said: “Our policy is to ensure that 25 per cent of public procurement goes to the small business sector. We need to give access through small-scale procurement.”

We have seen blatant discrimination against SMEs by some public sector organisations (eg discriminating specifically on size: requiring that a contract must not represent more than 8% of your turnover)… not to mention the requirement to have so many policies / accreditations and the ability to answer very complex questions on business management.

So it will be interesting to see how this works out.

Your views, experiences and coments are most welcome.

There is no absolute sales proposal template but a good start can be to write using these headings:

Summary – Brief outline of the key aspects of your proposal and benefits to customer

Background – Customer’s objectives

Your Company – Brief history, any qualifications / trade memberships etc + similar customers that you work for

Proposal – Full details of how you will meet the customer’s objectives and what you will do, how you will support / manage / resource, specification etc + benefits

Quotation – Price and caveats eg exclusions

Appendix – Supporting information and ‘bumph’ that detract from the main body of the proposal but need to be included eg detailed specifications, contracts, technical details, H&S etc

Please refer to the other posts in Bid Writing for more information on writing styles and content.

Anyone else got any other suggestions?

The great thing is that you can search TED to see if there are any suitable high-value tenders in your market / area and it’s completely free!

The interface has recently changed slightly so we’ve published some new instructions for a simple / quick search along with some other hints and tips on finding public sector tenders for free.

Happy searching!

This was a key recommendation in “Accelerating the SME Economic Engine” (The Glover Report).

The OGC has now published Small Supplier Big Opportunity / Flagging your Contracts to SMEs which asks public sector procurement to follow this by flagging opportunities deemed suitable for SMEs.

Reasons for SME flagging will include:

• Strong SME market presence
• Low contract value / volume
• Innovative solutions
• Tailored product / service
• Local delivery
• Limited scales economies
• Unregulated market

It’ll be interesting to see how it works.

Please post any thoughts or experience of this.

NB please read these first Responding to Tender Questions (Part 1) and Responding to Tender Questions (Part 2) and Responding to Tender Questions (Part 3)

Make it easy for the reader

Remember that a number of people will be evaluating your tender or PQQ response so make it easy for them – this will make it easier for them to give you good marks!

Make it easy to navigate

• Index page at the beginning
• Use page numbers
• Show company name & contact details towards the front – so they can contact you easily!
• If possible, use the headers & footers to contain useful information eg section name, content, company name etc
• Cross-reference where appropriate and explain so they easily can find the cross-referencing

Make it easy to read

• Take care with the layout, style and copy
• Bullets help emphasise points and make them easy to absorb
• Use images – a picture paints a thousand words
• Charts are often a better way of showing information when compared to long tracts of words eg flow charts showing a process

Clear pricing

Complete any pricing schedule, clarify any confusing issues and explain assumptions.

Be professional

Your tender response is your shop window so make it look smart, be clear, concise and better than the competition!

But don’t  be too modest

Do let them know how good you are! so use evidence:

• Examples
• Case studies
• Testimonials

See  Write Good Tender Submissions – Use Evidence for more on this last point.

Good luck!

Put yourself in their shoes

Think about:

• Who you are tendering to – the organisation and its style of working
• What exactly are you tendering for – specific aims and requirements (not generic)
• Who is involved in making the decision?
• The individuals and what they want or are looking for eg HR will have a focus on people whereas H&S will first look at safety
• Do they have any pre-conceptions (or miss-conceptions) to overcome?

Show understanding

Once you’ve considered these aspects, show your understanding in your tender response – this will help to engage the individuals on the panel who will then see that your response is all about their needs… this will help increase your score (and therefore increase your chances of winning the tender).

Empathy

Think about the issues they face eg aims, problems, needs etc. Then show your understanding – if you can also show how you will help solve their problems then that is powerful!

What’s in it for them?

Remember that you are not just looking to provide your service or product for a price – you needs to offer a solution that helps them move forward / solve a problem / get better / save money and so on. This means…

Benefits

Tell them what is in it for them by showing the benefits of choosing you. In sales training you learn the difference between features and benefits:

Features are what it is eg a dedicated contract manager

Benefits say what is does eg you will have someone managing your contract on a daily basis who will be on-site / on-call to personally resolve any issues immediately. This will not only save you management time but also ensure that a high quality of service is delivered at all times.

If you can say “so what” then you haven’t got a benefit. However an easy way of finding the benefit is to say “which means that…”

The old adage in advertising and in selling is that “benefits sell”. This is so true and is a key ingredient of a winning tender.

Remember that tendering is still selling – just very a very formal way of selling!

Still more to come on Responding to Tender Questions but if you have any thoughts or comments, please  do leave a reply below.

These values dictate whether a contract (tender) will be advertised in the Official Journal of the European Union (OJEU) and the website TED ie across the EU. Contracts with lower values are not required to be advertised in the OJEU – generally referred to as ‘lower-value’. Supply2.gov.uk is the national advertising platform for ‘lower-value’ opportunities. See blog – How to Find Public Sector Tenders for Free.

View the revised EU thresholds at supply2.gov or at the OGC

NB as shown in our Fit to Tender Checklist, often buyers will be checking that the tender contract value does not exceed 20-30% of the tendering company’s turnover (NB this is a guide, not a rule). Consider this when qualifying which tenders to go for.

Use the evaluation criteria
Most public sector tenders (and many corporate tenders) will provide you an evaluation criteria ie how they are going to score your response eg

• 30% price
• 60% method statements
• 10% presentation / site visits

This will often be broken down into more detail. Use this to see where you should be concentrating your efforts – in the example above you can see that method statements are more important than just being the cheapest.

You don’t always receive this with the tender but do ask for it!

Innovation
Very few organisations want to stand still, they want to do better; this is why showing how you can bring new ideas to a contract is important. In this fast-moving world, things are always changing so innovation also demonstrates that you are flexible and capable of providing more than a ‘me too’ solution.

Added value
Customers are always looking to get a better deal so adding value is always going to be an important part of your bid. This means offering more ‘value for money’ NOT being cheaper eg you may be able to add a service to your bid that costs you little or nothing but saves your customer money… this will interest them!

Differentiation
Innovation and added value also help you stand out from the crowd. If they receive five bids that are all very similar but you have shown new ideas, improvements and added value then you are increasing your chances of success.

Alternative bid?
You need to be careful with this and make sure that:

1. you do submit a compliant bid first
2. your alternative bid shows benefit to the customer – not just convenience for you

A client had a great example of this: the tender specification of a component had a lifespan of 10 years but our client showed that for 20% extra cost, a better quality component would last 20 years – that’s a saving worth having! (They won the contract.)

Some more to come soon…

Here are some real basic must-dos – these relate to the earlier blog Tenders and PQQs – Most Common Mistakes

Answer all the questions
Simply put – don’t leave any gaps. If you do, you cannot get marked and that means zero points / no score.

Answer the question
Don’t fudge an answer – if you are not sure then ask. Also check that you have really answered what is being asked.

Tell the truth!
It’s often tempting to give the answer that is expected eg: “Is your company ISO: 9001 accredited?” Too many companies have responded: “The company is in the process of getting 9001 accreditation”. Buyers know this normally translates to “No and no intention of getting it unless you really push me”.

Therefore give a positive response by adding when it is due to be completed (if you really are in the process) or state that you do not have 9001 but do have quality processes in place / would be willing to get it… or just say no. NB if it is a mandatory requirement, then you may just have to pull out.

Provide all the information requested
Double check that everything is included – buyers cannot give good marks to nothing. A typical issue here is not enclosing correct company accounts, insurance documents or policies etc.

Keep to the point
Make sure that you are really answering the question and be concise. Copying and pasting a similar question without prudent editing can often lead to meandering and inaccurate answers… again risking low scores.

More to follow soon on this important topic…

As always, any thoughts or comments are always appreciated.