By Caroline Boot, MBA (hons), BSc, MNZIM
Face it – winning tenders today is getting tougher and tougher. If you don’t have top notch tender documents, your competitors are probably winning more from the tender box than you are.
If this sounds familiar, chances are that writing tenders is not your core business, and – to be honest – you don’t like doing it.
The problem for many companies today is that building business through tendering is something you can’t ignore. You probably don’t get to see bids from any other companies in your industry.
So how can you tell what winning bids should be like?
Here’s where using the experience of independent professional tender specialists Plan A can be your secret weapon.
Professional tender support: what’s involved
There are now lots of ways that you can lift your win rate on tenders. A good tender writing company will:
1. Ask the right questions to shape a compelling strategy
2. Write down your strategy and respond to the RFT questions in a way that gets maximum scores
3. Develop your tender libraries and templates, so you have great basic information to put together bids in a hurry in future
4. Review and edit the bids you put together in-house, and tell you how to lift your win rate
5. Manage graphic design – so the finished product is not only written well, it also looks great
6. Train your people to write quality tenders.
The best part about getting professional help is that you’ll be able to transfer the knowledge and the tools developed, and use it on future bids – with or without external help.
Help when you need it
Many companies take the view that they can handle tender preparation well enough using their in-house staff. Using a specialist tender writer to help your team not only gives support to your team when needed, but also brings them up-to-date with the latest in tendering.
You’ll be reassured that the bid document is as good as it can be – complete, on time and professionally written.
Once you have good tendering basics, you can treat your specialist tendering consultant as an optional extra.
Get them involved on bigger and more important bids only when your investment is warranted – ask them to peer review or get them to support you only in the areas you need.
You’ll rest easy, knowing that if a heap of tenders arrive on your desk at once, you can quickly up-scale your team to get them all done, and then pull the plug when those jobs are done. Then your internal bid writers can breathe a sigh of relief and go back to their day jobs!
For more information:
Tel: 0800 PLAN AA
Email: [email protected]
Visit: www.plana.co.nz
