Top Tips for Good Tenders

If you have never gone through the formal tender process before, it can be a daunting experience. Whilst the questions on the Pre-Qualification Questionnaire (PQQ) and tender documents are straightforward and direct, interpreting how you should answer to give you the best chance of winning can be a huge challenge. Like exam papers, you can amble around the point as much as you have space for, but if you don’t hit on the salient points and describe them well, your grade will be poor. Such is the case with tender writing.

It goes without saying that each tender opportunity is unique and your responses should also be unique and tailored to the contract in question. It is easy to fall into the trap of describing your company and what it does in each and every tender you apply for and worse, reusing the same responses over and over again, blind to the subtle changes that are required to be contract specific. Ultimately, the buyer does want to know about your company as this forms part of their decision making process. What your potential clients need to know more about is how specifically your company or organisation can serve their needs and what you can offer by way of benefits over and above your competitors. This is the essence of good tender writing.

The ultimate aid to writing good, client specific tenders is the contract specification. The entire public sector is bound to produce a detailed specification detailing their exact requirements prior to putting notices out for the contract. Furthermore, your potential client is also bound to release its evaluation criteria to demonstrate the level of importance awarded to each section of the tender by way of ‘weightings’. The heavier the weighting, the more important it is to ensure that section is perfect and meets every element of the specification perfectly. This will also indicate the level of weighting given to Price Vs. Quality – a very important indicator of whether your potential client is seeking the best price or the best service – offering the lowest price with the best services is difficult but an almost sure fire winner for obvious reasons.

Over and above your tender responses, there are more subtle issues to be aware of when writing your tender. When a potential buyer is overwhelmed with PQQ or tender submissions, it can be difficult to narrow down to the best suppliers. For this reason, errors, omissions, bad grammar, copy and paste problems and poor presentation can all count against you. Whilst it should be the content that matters most, and to a large extent it does, poorly composed tenders are deemed a valid way to whittle down to a few or one select supplier. Your tender should be like a written presentation and demonstrate your company in its best light so take as much care over these elements as your answers and you should stand a great chance of getting through the process.