Winning work without losing your cool: tendering for beginners

Are you new to tendering and don’t know where to start? Tender Plus has created this session to help you navigate the tendering process and understand what it takes to win your next opportunity. The session is particularly useful for small to medium sized businesses who may have limited time, resources or ready-made content available for tendering, bids and proposals. Learn useful tools and tips to help focus your efforts and achieve greater impact.

Our tendering experts share their five top tips to take the stress out of the tendering process and focus your tendering efforts for greater impact.

1. Focus on your client

It is worth engaging with your client before the formal procurement process begins. This is the best time to have an open conversation about what your client needs, their challenges, and how they define value. Getting to know your client and what they need is more impactful than creating a tender document with all the bells and whistles. These conversations will help you focus your efforts during the tender process and tailor your offer to your client’s needs.

2. Prepare content early

Getting your information ready before the tender process starts takes some of the stress out of tender deadlines. Start compiling information that is commonly requested, for example industry accreditations, insurance certificates and financial statements. Depending on the size of the tender, you may also need project case studies, Curricula Vitae for your nominated team members and information about your organisation’s governance processes.

3. Read the client documents carefully

It sounds simple but reading the tender documents in full can help you avoid expensive mistakes. If you don’t meet all mandatory criteria, your tender may not even be evaluated. Understand exactly what your client is asking for, which content is more important in the evaluation process and how to comply with the tender requirements. For example, your experience section may be worth 40% of the overall tender score so needs more effort upfront.

4. Plan to win

Spend some time planning your response when the tender documents land. This may be as simple as a to-do list that captures each key task and who is doing what. A more comprehensive method is to create a Tender Management Plan that tracks everything from compliance requirements to mandatory inclusions. This avoids the need to keep cross-checking the tender documents during the writing and review process.

5. Writing and reviewing

Tender writing should be concise and targeted to your client’s needs. Answer the question, demonstrate how you will give your client what they want and provide proof of where you have done this before. When you review your tender document, test your content against the terms ‘So What?’ and ‘Prove It.’ So What: what does this content mean to my client? Prove It: what case studies or client quotes can you include to demonstrate your experience?

Tender Plus helped a client strengthen their future tender submissions by creating best practice content examples for project case studies, Curricula Vitae and their technical approach. This content was created outside of the deadline-driven tendering process and made it easier for our client to quickly produce high-quality tenders.

 The Client

Our client is a well-established architectural practice specialising in sustainable, human-centred designs across sectors including health, residential, education and aged care.

The Need

Having identified content gaps in past tender responses, the client’s objective was to create several example documents that could be referenced or adapted for future tender submissions. This content needed to be adaptable and reusable for different tender types.

The How

We reviewed our client’s previous submissions to identify content gaps and areas for improvement. We also reviewed reference documents that enabled us to gain a full understanding of our client’s business and how they operated. We then met with Subject Matter Experts to fill any remaining information gaps.

We collated all information and provided best practice tendering knowledge to create example documents that could be used in future tender submissions. These documents reflected our client’s strengths in their market.

The Outcome

Our collaborative approach and best practice tendering knowledge delivered:

• A high quality Curricula Vitae example that showcased team member skills and experience
• A sample Project Sheet that demonstrated our client’s experience in design excellence, and
• A Design Management Methodology that described our client’s process in managing the design process.

“We greatly value the relationship formed during this process. The support in refining our tender documents was outstanding, collaboration was seamless and communication was always positive. We look forward to working together with Tender Plus again.”