Love me tender

At a recent workshop on Public Sector tendering, it was pointed out to us that many small businesses feel that tendering is a ‘waste of time’ or a ‘bit of a set up’.

I’m sure we’ve all have had some negative experiences whilst tendering in the past, but for the most part, working on our tenders, whether successful or not, has actually benefited our business.

I believe that there are a number of key issues that make tendering so onerous, particularly to small organisations.

1. Vocabulary
2. Rigidity of expectations
3. Clarity of brief
4. Death by technology

We’ll talk about all of these in just a moment, as firstly I wanted to point out that all the blame should not be placed upon the organisation issuing the tenders. In my opinion, the primary reason businesses fail to achieve acceptable tendering success rates is because they do not invest in the process of tendering nor do they perceive putting tenders together as their PRIMARY marketing and business development and winning work tool.

In sectors like construction and property development, where tendering is the norm, the people who are in charge of the tender response process are either management level marketing and business development staff or it’s outsourced to tender- writing professionals like ourselves at Tricolor. The reason for this is that these tenders are for many businesses the apex of the B2B relationship process.

Receiving a tender opportunity or a pre-qualification questionnaire (PQQ) is the sign that the business relationships that have been honed and developed have reached a point where those in charge of distributing work opportunities already believe that the business in question may be capable of handling the job. It is then about NOT sending back a tender that is half-baked or pulled together at the last minute by the admin team.

Tenders are not an administrative duty – they are your future. Deal with it (and quickly!)

Going back to the hurdles thrown down that were mentioned earlier – the question remains: how should smaller businesses cope with the peculiarities of the tender process? Our advice is… communicate, communicate, communicate. And if you’re in doubt about investing time and effort into your tenders, then you’re not ready to participate in the process yet because to stand a chance of winning, you have to be 100% committed.

Taken together the four barriers vocabulary, rigidity of expectations, clarity of brief, and ‘death by technology’ (e.g. bidding portals that looking like the controls for the Starship Enterprise) are incredibly daunting. Sometimes it might feel like the tender briefs are written by robots what with NUTS codes and online tendering portals that aren’t exactly the easiest to understand.

However, these barriers may not be as bad as they first seem.

Most tender issuers provide a two-way feedback system of Q&As and some also offer ‘Open House’ opportunities for tenderers to meet with the client and ask the pertinent questions face to face. These are invaluable opportunities that should not be missed.

But they are are missed and do you know why?

Because no one read the tender when it arrived on their desks. They look at the due date (4 weeks away, no problem) and then put it into the pile for later. This “later” is usually the week before the due date, when the Q&A session has closed.

My advice to you? If an unsolicited tender opportunity – e.g. one that’s come to you not just because you search the OJEU (Official Journal of the European Union) everyday – lands in your inbox, open it immediately. Or send it to someone who can read it for you and highlight the key dates, issues and what kind of response would win work.

Whichever way you choose, make sure you develop a RED | ORANGE | GREEN system of checkpoints that you analyse the tender against to make sure it’s a good fit for your business. For example, how much is it worth compared to your turnover? Is it geographically positioned in an area your business can easily service? Have you got a track record in these types of services or working with this client in the past. Obviously, if you get a lot of reds, it’s probably not the job for you. Lots of oranges, weigh it up carefully whether this project is winnable and if it isn’t, will going through the tender process anyway improve your business in other ways? Lots of greens – go for it!

So… in summary – when taking on tenders, remember the following:

• Timeliness and planning
• Appropriateness
• Marketing – this is your chance to shine.

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