Professional Bid Writers

Professional Bid Writers read the Bid over and over again before they even begin to write the first draft of the bid.
This third blog follows on from the others in the series and it is about the importance of knowing the rules. Every professional bid writer knows that all bids are different and it is imperative to find out how your bid is different from the last one.

At the macro level make sure you bid is compliant. Many bid writers fail as soon as they begin because they use incorrect font etc, make sure you read through the bid carefully and look for guidance on:
• The submission date
• The form of the submission
• Type of font
• Size of font
• Margins
• What you can place in the headers and footers and what you cannot?
• Page limits. Sometimes the page limit and word limit can be inconsistent
• Are images allowed?

Once you have read through the bid a number of times and created a template that matches all of the submission criteria you should then begin to look at the marks allocated for each section. If there is no specific individual question word limits within the bid but an overall page limit is provided, you can use this to allocate the amount of narrative to supply for each response.
The most important rule in bid writing is ………………

1. Answer the Question. Remember when you were at school and the teacher said it? Well, it is exactly the same in bid writing. Answer the specific question and the sub question; do not answer the question that you wished the bid had asked. This is really important. Too many bid writers do not analyse the question thoroughly enough and charge off to write the response before considering if it is the right response for this particular bid.

The second most important rule in bid writing is……………
Take your time and give yourself time. You cannot write a good bid if you rush it or place yourself under time pressure.
Top tip for time pressure: If you only have X number of hours to undertake your bid writing, then divide X by 100 and allocate your bid writing time for each question according to the marks. Simples!
Finally, when you write your bid make sure you know which format it needs to be submitted in and when. Do not forget that if your bid submission is in hard copy you will need to arrange to have it printed and potentially bound. Do not let all of your bid writing go to waste and miss the deadline!

Bid Writing Rules
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Last Minute Bids and Tenders