The Anatomy of a Winning Bid: What Procurement Teams Look For

As a competition, the aim of every bid writer is to produce a winning bid. This means not only writing credibly and with confidence, but actively persuading the evaluation team that your organisation’s proposed solution is the best approach to deliver the contract scope.

How do procurement teams evaluate tenders?

Public sector tenders normally take a holistic approach when evaluating a tender submission, with a more even split between quality and price and social value also usually forming part of the scoring criteria.

This is reflected in the recent shift in language from ‘most economically advantageous tender’ (MEAT) to ‘most advantageous tender’ (MAT) under the Procurement Act 2023, which governs public procurement regulations.

What forms a winning bid?

A winning bid or tender submission is a clearly written, compliant and tailored proposal which positions you as the ideal supplier for the contract. To win a submission, you will need to demonstrate understanding of the buyer’s needs, showcase relevant experience on similar contracts and present this in a clean, professional document.

As above, a competitive, high-scoring submission takes significant time and will require thought around including key differentiators from other bidders.

What are key differentiators for a winning tender?

Ultimately, a winning submission will actively persuade the evaluator that you offer the most advantageous solution at the lowest risk to the authority.

Although we cannot account for individual preferences of each evaluator, certain themes, topics and presentation of your proposals can be described as ‘key differentiators’ – distinguishing your submission from other bidders.

As a general rule, these include:

• Demonstrating your knowledge of the local area by referencing similar works completed, common congestion areas to be avoided and local challenges or demographic profiles – adding credibility and specificity to your responses
• Providing strong, relevant evidence of your capacity and capability to deliver, referencing previous contracts, relevant accreditations such as ISO 9001:2015, and data-driven results
• Proactive approaches to mitigating risk associated with the project, assuring the evaluator that you have considered mitigation measures to eliminate or reduce these
• Including added value and social value as a ‘win theme’ in your submission, across economic, social and environmental topics.

What strategies will produce a winning tender submission?

All of this supports a structured, tried-and-tested strategy which you can implement across all submissions, irrespective of the industry, sector or buyer organisation. As part of all submissions, we advise:

• Reading the contract specification and tender documents in full prior to writing, collating key information and requirements as part of a compliance matrix or similar document
• Creating bespoke answer plans to each question prior to starting the writing, ensuring you answer each question in full and have a solid foundation for quality responses
• Referencing the specification and other tender documents where appropriate, demonstrating you have a good understanding of requirements
• Including persuasive, evidence-based content in responses to strengthen the credibility of your proposals
• Pricing in accordance with the guidance listed in the pricing schedule, ITT and other documents, with nothing missed or omitted.

Support with producing winning tenders

At Executive Compass, our expert bid and tender writers have been involved in over 7,000 submissions over the past 16 years, with a fully auditable 85% success rate.

Our bid services to support winning submissions include:

• End-to-end bid and tender writing support, where one of our bid writers completes all quality responses forming the submission, with bid management support if required
• Bid review services, with a senior member of our team (normally a quality reviewer) conducting a comprehensive review of content produced
• Bid training services from our Training Services Manager Stephen Murray, tailored to your organisation’s bidding activity and level of experience.

For a free 30-minute consultation on how we can best support you, our sales and marketing team can be contacted on info@executivecompass.co.uk or via telephone 0800 612 5563.