When tenders come in it’s tempting to allocate questions and start writing your bid response straight away. Pause. Take the time to develop a bid strategy.
Developing the right bid strategy helps you to understand the market; what the customer wants, what the competition looks like, and ultimately what you need to do to maximise your position.
It helps you to understand the resources you will need to deliver the bid proposal and ensures that everyone involved is fully informed throughout the tender process. Spending time on developing the strategy up front will pay dividends when your team submits its final bid proposal.
Mick spent 20+ years working for EDS and HP in the IT and BPO outsourcing industry, solutioning and managing complex Pan-European delivery models. This background has created a real passion for service excellence and delivering solutions that deliver true value.
eXceeding provided exemplary support under challenging and complex circumstances. They went the extra mile to ensure our submission was to the highest possible standard. We would definitely work with eXceeding again.
We have worked with eXceeding on two projects now and on both occasions, we have found their service to be of a very high standard and with a high degree of efficiency. They are able to deliver our information clearly and we have found them easy to work with. We will certainly be speaking to them when we require bid services again.
I’d just like to say again how much we valued the support you and the team were able to provide in such a short space of time. The feedback provided really helped us to lift our response up a level. We look forward to working with eXceeding again in the near future.
At eXceeding, we take a strategy-first approach.
We take time to analyse the requirements within the tender documentation, research the competition and identify any threats.
We work with your stakeholders to fully understand your organisation, your processes and your capabilities. Through our flexible, collaborative method, of formal and informal sessions with your management and bid team, we will help you identify the optimal strategy for your tender strategy.
We’ll then help you to describe those key threads that will make your bid shine against your competitors, and we’ll help you weave those threads throughout your submission.
Our final output is a clear and differentiated storyboard. Only once we have created the storyboard, will we start to plan out the bid response.
Winning work is difficult. To beat the competition, you need a clear bid strategy and your bid has to make you stand out from the rest.
By Theny Monteith on 19 February 2021
Sometimes it’s easier to discuss your requirements directly. Contact one of our expert bid consultants now.
Bid proposal management – The eXceeding Way.
After an initial stage of qualification, the next decision as to whether to respond to a tender is usually down to the availability of internal resources to write the bid response.
Often it is left to individual heads of department or sometimes sales teams to draft initial bid proposals, without subject matter experts being consulted until later in the process. This can lead to inconsistent responses and a lack of clear and tailored examples of your organisation’s expertise.
eXceeding employs a national network of bid writing experts. This enables us to call on a category expert with current market knowledge of response writing within your chosen sector. Our team are responding to bids every day, so they understand how bids are scored and the selection criteria.
Understanding
The entire bid team understands the messages – this is crucial as often multiple stakeholders are required to present the response further through the process.
Consistency
Themes and threads are consistent – by collating detail from multiple stakeholders and then centralising these, we can ensure a coherent response.
Clarity
All stakeholders are clear as to their responsibilities – contributors and subject matter experts have a clear plan and direction.
The result is an increase in win rates and a reduction in bid costs as your internal resources are freed up to manage more pressing tasks.
We will also ensure that your bid teams are upskilled – defining a clear and scalable process and developing a sound foundation from which you can grow your bid strategy for future bid responses.
Next step?
Why not book a free appointment to discuss your requirements in more detail with one of our experts.
Planning your bid response ensures that all areas of the tender documentation have been scrutinised and understood and all members of the bid team are clear as to their responsibilities.
Bids are won and lost on the quality of the final bid review. This stage is about polishing the content, adding additional evidence points and ticking off high-scoring responses against the prospect’s criteria.
The best bids are those that address the questions directly, evidence key points and pay close attention to the scoring criteria.
