Tendering or bidding is now more competitive than ever. In our experience, the current tendering environment is characterised by longer sales cycles, increased competition, protracted negotiations and ongoing supply chain disruptions, making pricing difficult.
On the buyer side, we are seeing changes in risk appetite, changes in sourcing approaches and a greater use of technology across all stages of the procurement process. Increasingly, buyers are turning to sophisticated online procurement platforms which cover everything from annual planning to individual tender evaluation processes.
Correspondingly, the bid management profession is lifting its game. 2019 saw the ANZ Chapter for the Association of Proposal Management Professionals (APMP) issue more industry certifications than at any other time in their history. Mirroring this growth, last year BidWrite saw a record number of participants gain industry certification through our APMP training programs.
Gone are the days…
For many, tendering is still viewed as an administrative process of completing the required documents, providing templated company information and a generic pricing sheet, then hoping for the best. However, from more than 13 years of tendering and thousands of tenders later, we know that if you aren’t tendering strategically, then your probability for success is low. The reality is that more often than not you’ll find yourself competing with bids crafted by trained and experienced specialists who have a far better win rate than you are likely to achieve alone. So, how can you catch up?
The Four Foundations of Successful Tendering
When stripped back to the core, successful tendering professionals devise an integrated and properly constructed submission based on some variant of what we call the ‘Four Foundations of Successful Tendering’. The Foundations listed below act as touchstones, guiding the submission from inception to completion.
1. Positioning – Understanding your client, the specific opportunity and the competitive landscape, as well as closing any known competitive gaps – before the tender is released. Typically, gaining relevant knowledge about your client and improving your relationship with them is much easier before a tender is issued. From our experience this also usually results in more success. This process also allows you to screen in/out specific opportunities with a much clearer head, thereby focusing you on your most likely wins.
2. Persuasion – Providing a compelling story that will set you apart from your competitors. Evaluators are looking for suppliers who understand their requirements and can best meet their needs. Persuasive bids contain good differentiators (benefits that matter to your client), not jargon, empty promises and unsubstantiated claims. And remember that however rigorous and objective the procurement process purports to be, bids are ultimately evaluated and awarded by people with views and emotions. Writing persuasively helps tap into these.
3. Pricing – Ensuring that your pricing is in the ballpark and considered value for money. Buyers are becoming more strategic and are looking for best value or return on investment over the effective lifetime of a product or service delivery. Thus, the upfront price is likely only a part of the overall evaluation equation. It’s natural to expect buyers to seek competitive prices, but don’t discount the fact they also need to feel assured that the contract will be delivered effectively and with minimal risk.
4. Compliance –Ticking all the boxes and providing all the requested information to ensure your bid is not rejected on a technicality. Paying close attention to compliance alone will not make you win, but it will keep you in the race. Although not glamorous, submitting a fully compliant bid that answers all questions in a clear, concise and relevant way makes it easier to evaluate, thus helping influence evaluators in your favor.
Framework, not formula
Our Four Foundations are second nature to trained and experienced tendering professionals. However, when picking apart the reasons why good new clients haven’t previously achieved the tendering success they deserve, we often find that in their headlong rush to submission deadlines, they overlook the very foundations of a successful tender.
In an ideal world, we’d fix this with a formulaic and easily applied 1-2-3 approach. However, the practical reality is that it takes a deft touch. Every sourcing project is unique and occurs within a particular context and specific moment in time. So what’s more effective is to use our Four Foundations as a framework with which to constantly check that you are approaching the task with right perspective and spending your time on the things that really matter to evaluators.
If you can manage to integrate our Foundations into your next tender submission in a diverse and creative way, it’s a surefire recipe for transitioning from tendering participation to tendering success.
If you can’t, then call BidWrite. It’s what we do.
