Questions to ask yourself before bidding for a tender

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Do you have a checklist to go through when considering which tenders, you’ll consider bidding against? Having a checklist in place will ensure that continuing with the bid process is beneficial for your business and aligns to your overarching objectives.

1.How well do you know your customer?

Knowing your customer is crucial to understanding the tender.  If you know what the customer values within their tender, then you will be able to tailor your bid accordingly.  Understanding any potential preferences might give you a higher chance of success. Can you and your team meet the tender requirements?

There are a lot of different aspects to winning a tender.  Establishing a winning bid management team with the correct skills, knowledge, and experience is key.  The team will be responsible for preparing win themes, project management, design and writing responses, to name just a few of their activities.  Think about the size of your team and compare it to the volume of hours the tender(s) will take.  There is often a time frame in which to submit a bid so ensuring you can allocate enough resources to hit the deadline is crucial

2. Do you have a solid foundation of experience to win the bid?

When approaching a tender one of the first thing to consider is your ability to demonstrate you have delivered similar contracts/projects in the past and/or the strengths of the team/operations you have in place to meet the buyer requirements.  It is common that tenders require sector-specific experience and evidence of how you performed therefore, making sure you have on hand a set of case studies to demonstrate your capability is critical.  

3. Are you able to comply with the terms and conditions?

Tenders are issued with their own set of terms and conditions which must be reviewed to ensure you are able to comply and you are comfortable with what the buyer is asking from you.  Leaving terms and conditions to the last minute may mean you decide not to bid and have wasted valuable resource. 

4. Is this worth it?

Before deciding whether to tender or not, read our bid decision guide

SME’s and businesses looking to start bidding, should consider registering for one of our monthly 1:1 session with our experienced procurement manager, Matt Saunders.  This is an opportunity for SMEs to discuss bidding, strategies and how to get started.  Book an appointment.

For more information about the tender process within the UK visit this website: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/314364/laa-tender-best-practice.pdf