Once the bid has been drafted, the final stage before submission is to test your response, by reviewing it against the initial requirements. We recommend that this final tender evaluation is conducted by someone who has not been involved in the bid to this point.
This can be an internal or external stakeholder, but an independent tender review commonly results in a better chance of a winning bid.
Despite how important this final stage is, 49% of our clients admit that they fail to conduct a thorough bid review before submission.
Often the bid team will proofread the bid, but they are so close to the content that errors are missed. Or sometimes the bid process has taken longer than expected and they simply do not have the time to complete a tender review.
This is why many clients choose to use an external consultancy for the final tender evaluation phase.
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.
We engaged eXceeding to assist us with a key bid submission for a client where we had been recently unsuccessful. Working to a very aggressive timeframe, eXceeding helped us transform the submission with a crisper look, increased use of graphics, and just making it more like a brochure than a technical report. The result was a submission that scored top marks on quality and which won the contract! We’ve already engaged eXceeding for help with other bids.
We really enjoyed the training sessions with eXceeding. We now have a process in place which saves time in drafting lengthy bid responses, as well as helping us to ensure that we are answering all of the questions thoroughly. We also felt that eXceeding went ‘above and beyond’ to find a consultant who was a good cultural fit for our business, which instantly put us at ease.
eXceeding supported Winvic with our General Contractor commitment presentation for one of our major clients. Their support throughout the project enabled Winvic to review our approach to answering questions in an effective and evidence-based way. By understanding our business and the objectives for the project, eXceeding helped to deliver a quality submission, that received excellent feedback, demonstrated by further appointments with our key client.
eXceeding’s bid management expertise, together with our experience managing tenders for many large corporate and public sector organisations, offers clients the unique insights your business needs to improve your bid, score better and win more.
Common issues we see, include:
To overcome some of these issues, our recommended approach means reviewing the final bid against the pre-approved storyboards completed by your subject matter experts as part of the response planning stage.
Key questions we ask include; does it fully answer the question? Does it articulate your win themes and solution? Does it demonstrate empathy with the customers situation? Is it clear and a pleasure to read?
Preparation and research could be the real difference between winning and losing your bid. Here are our list of dos and don’ts when structuring bid responses.
By Steve Rowland on 18 January 2021
Sometimes it’s easier to discuss your requirements directly. Contact one of our expert bid consultants now.
The eXceeding way.
eXceeding’s bid consultants can help with an independent tender review, or as part of a complete bid response process.
Sometimes it can be difficult for internal stakeholders to provide feedback; there is a fear of offending colleagues or a lack of experience of how to evaluate a bid. Or perhaps you simply do not have the internal resources to allocate sufficient time to the review process.
Our bid consultants can offer a completely unbiased review of your final bid response. We write and review bid responses on a daily basis, so we can quickly understand the criteria and the requirements to achieve the highest scores on each section.
We can review your response from an evaluator’s perspective, making sure that all of the client’s questions are thoroughly addressed and identifying areas where you could gain marks.
Why not book a free appointment to discuss your requirements in more detail with one of our experts.
Winning work is a complex process. To beat the competition, you need a clear strategy and your bid response has to make you stand out from the rest.
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.
The best bids are those that address the questions directly, evidence key points and pay close attention to the scoring criteria.
