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Choosing a bid management consultancy

13/02/2013 by · Leave a Comment

There are many reasons for recruiting a bid management consultancy:

  • The next tender is a must win contract
  • You want to improve your bid writing capabilities
  • You are short of bid management resource or a Bid Director
  • You need to find the best contract opportunities
  • Your Win Rate is simply not where you want it to be

Writing and managing a bid for a commercial contract or a local authority tender can be a daunting prospect, demanding skills that your company may not have needed before. However, hiring a bid management consultancy represents an additional cost, so what should you look for when choosing?

Find Tenders

It may be that you want to find the best contract opportunities for your business. Find bid writers who know their way around the arcane tender websites to find contracts for tender in whichever industry you are involved in, from construction contracts to public sector tenders. Moreover, find a bid writer who will be honest when assessing your capabilities and chances of success. There’s no point in wasting precious time and money applying for tender contracts you can’t win.

Bid Writing

Writing bids is a complex and time consuming process. Find bid writers who have years or decades of practice in assembling bid proposals, who understand the art of tender document templates and win themes and the most effective use of language. Search out bid writers with experience of public sector tendering as both bid writer and procurement officer, with detailed insider knowledge of the UK tender process. A good consultancy will vastly increase the pool of skills available to any company tendering for contracts.

Bid Management

Managing a bid is an enormous undertaking often involving months of work. Many stakeholders and hundreds of documents require co-ordination. Look for veteran bid managers and Directors with reputable accreditation (APMP or similar) and many years of understanding in how to win tenders. Find bid managers or Bid Directors who know how to deal with the inevitable crises and problems, and are willing to work out of hours to fix them.

How to Win Bids

Bid consultants don’t just have to write your bid; they can also transform your capabilities. Training sessions can show your staff how to tender for contracts and greatly improve their processes. They can help assemble the necessary documents and skills to get those local government tenders or commercial opportunities. Properly trained and experienced bid consultants can help you win that tender contract even if they are not involved in the actual process, by transferring their skills and experience to your team.

Win that Bid

Win that Bid possesses all of the qualities and experience needed to help you win that tender contract. Our multi-sector bid management specialists have worked across the industry and in procurement, and used those skills to transform the capabilities – and bottom line of many organisations. From training to bid writing, Win that Bid today!

Filed Under: Bid Management, Bid Writing, Bids, Proposal, Proposal Writing, Tender Writing, Top Tips, Win Bids, Win That Bid · Tagged: , , ,

Finding your voice

10/10/2012 by · Leave a Comment

Writing a bid means writing dozens of documents for a wide (and sometimes mysterious) audience. That means employing some basic writing techniques to get the best possible impact out of your proposal. There are some basic strategies for clear bid writing:

  • Be direct and concise.
  • Avoid block text. If it becomes unavoidable, break the page up with images, charts and text-box quotes.
  • Avoid using generic boilerplate sales language. We’ll discuss why below.
  • Words like would, could, might and may reduce the sense of quiet assured confidence in your bid, creating doubt in the mind of the reader.
  • One idea per sentence. What you really should avoid when bid writing is giant run-on sentences full of commas and different notions, that confuse the reader and reduce the flow of the document to a thick viscous sludge that causes the client to struggle for breath like a beached whale, as demonstrated by this sentence. Aren’t you glad that’s over?

Research the client

When writing a bid be client focused and personalised. One company’s non-specific generic boilerplate reads much the same as another’s, and will likely bore the reader. More to the point, a cut and paste job will fail in one of the basic goals of the bid – to demonstrate that the bid writer has a clear understanding of the goals, issues and problems faced by the client.

Determine who the reader of the bid (and its separate sections) will be. Are they informed enough to understand the specifics of your solution or are they seeking to employ you to provide a service with which they are technically unfamiliar? You should also write with personality in mind, even if you know yourself to be writing a bid for a team to read. Pragmatic thinkers will be interested in results, and look for direct language, brevity and the strong use of graphics to quickly illustrate a point. Analytical thinkers will prefer a focus on detail and accurate facts, with charts and graphs.

In general, it is best to avoid lots of Technical Jargon in an Acronym Soup (TJAS), even if you are expecting an informed audience. Anything that slows down reader comprehension will hurt the bid. If the client is using different terminology to that commonly used in your organisation or even your industry, it will normally be best to use their wording.

Given the sheer scale of many bids, applying these ideas can seem like a frightening prospect. Win that Bid can pass the lessons learned over many successful bids to your bid team.

Filed Under: Bid Management, Bid Management Case Studies, Bid Writing, Bids, Checklist, Kick-Off Meeting, PQQ, Proposal Writing, Tender Writing, Tenders · Tagged: , , , , , ,

Did your Win Theme get bronze, silver or gold?

03/10/2012 by · Leave a Comment

The client has a problem that it can’t solve itself. So it submits an invitation to tender (ITT) in order to discover the best available solution to that problem. In order to attract the client’s attention, a bid writer needs to have the most compelling solution to that problem, and that should all be encapsulated in the Win Theme which needs to run through the entire bid proposal.

Brainstorm the problem

If you are having trouble coming up with a win theme, consider the client. Is it a public sector tender or for a private company?

  • What does the client want?
  • Why do they want it?
  • What are the client’s priorities?
  • What are the client’s long term goals?
  • What worries the client?
  • What skills or products do I have that can answer those questions for the client?

Focus on the client

The client’s problem isn’t going to be solved by a detailed description of your company, its history and achievements, or even the quality of your general services. It needs a specific solution, which your bid writer’s win theme should address. Is there one primary focus – cost, regulatory compliance, innovation?

What can you offer the client that beats your competitors?

Make it the theme of your bid proposal

Once you’ve decided on a win theme, weave it through your document – not just the executive summary. Your bid writers should emphasise how your technical solutions reflect the theme. Highlight how your solution will allow the client to meet the goals you have identified.

If you or your bid writers are having trouble finding a compelling win theme, Win that Bid can help you find the answer!

Filed Under: Bid Management, Bid Writing, Bids, Opportunities, PQQs, Proposal Template, Proposal Writing, Tender Writing, Tenders, Top Tips, Training · Tagged: , , , , ,

Style is Substance

26/09/2012 by · Leave a Comment

When writing for a long tender contract, it’s easy to forget about the basics of presentation and proof-reading. These things determine the impression your proposal will make. A messy, haphazard executive summary will give the impression of a messy, haphazard bid.

Agree on a style guide and make a checklist

In order to look professional, your bid documentation will have to appear consistent through-out. Doing that means agreeing on style conventions:

  • How will these documents look when printed? Will headers and footers be lost? Are the page boundaries appropriate?
  • Are the naming conventions correct? How are technical terms spelt or capitalised? Is the client’s name really spelt like that?
  • Does document layout make it easy to find information quickly and easily? Is the layout clear, or will the reader be lost in a sea of colourful titles and text boxes? Can they refer to a reference quickly?

A late change in the style guide will mean having to revise dozens if not hundreds of pages of text. Remember that you find yourself yawning in a debate about bullet points.

Implementing that style guide as a bid writer will require time and attention. By the time you’ve taken into account table fonts, page alignments and caption conventions, you could easily have a 20 point list. Which makes keeping one vital, as that really is too much to mentally keep track of in a rush.

Leave some time for review!

I know it isn’t always possible, but it really is important to try to leave ample time for editing and review after the bid writing process is completed. That time will be needed to pick up on mistakes, ensure the appendices are correctly referenced (and present!), and make changes.

Once you’ve written a document, you as a bid writer believe in your heart that you wrote what you meant to say. This will almost certainly be different to what you actually said, and if you try to review your own work immediately after writing you’ll miss those mistakes. Anyone unfortunate enough to have been subjected to the first draft of this blog post will understand that.

Or to quote that misbegotten document: “Anyone unfortunately to be subjected to the first draft will be understood.”

To avoid scattering such zen sentiments throughout your bid, you need to give yourself adequate time for review. If you or your bid writers want a second opinion or fresh eyes, Win that Bid’s document co-ordination services can help.

Filed Under: Bid Writing, Bids, PQQs, Proposal Template, Proposal Writing, Tender Writing, Tenders · Tagged: , , , ,

How will the Public Services (Social Value) Act 2012 change your bid?

16/07/2012 by · 1 Comment

There have been some recent changes in the way that public bodies can take social considerations into account when procuring public contracts. The new Public Services (Social Value) Act 2012 aims to clarify the issue a bit.

The Act (applied to public service contracts) creates a statutory requirement for public authorities to have regard to economic, social and environmental well-being in connection with public services contracts and for connected purposes. However, the Act also states that these decisions must also be directly relevant to what is being produced in the first place. This is roughly equivalent to what the EU procurement regime already allowed for.

From the bid writer’s point of view, the main thing is to look at where the question of Social Value will come up in the tender writing process:

Before the public sector tender is issued: the contracting authority will try to identify non-commercial, social value considerations before they commence the procurement process. This will have a big impact on the technical specifications of the project that a bid writer should take into account.

In the terms of the Contract: if the contracting authority does decide it wants to place emphasis on a particular social need, it might include “special” conditions.

The selection stage: the contracting authority could well reject applicants who don’t meet the non-commercial needs of the contract. Bid writers should make sure that their bid meets those requirement.  For instance, the contracting authority might want to fulfil an environmental consideration and choose a company with a proven record in that area.

The Act states that the selection criteria must be non-discriminatory, proportionate and linked to the subject matter.

Need help writing a public sector tender? Contact one of our team today on 0203405 1850 and we can help.

Filed Under: Bids, Business Strategy, Proposal Writing · Tagged: , , , , ,

What should I put into the Executive Summary?

10/02/2012 by · Leave a Comment
For bid writers writing a tender and aiming to make the best possible impression on the client, the Executive Summary is all important. It will almost certainly be used as the starting point of their decision-making discussions. For some of those decision makers, the Executive Summary will be the only part of the tender proposal that they actually read.

Because it will be read by virtually everyone who reads the proposal, the Executive Summary should be concise, readable and avoid technical jargon. Bear in mind that the readers are likely to be impatient and lacking in technical training, if not extremely stressed.

That being the case, bid writers should focus on the win themes that are the focus throughout the tender.  Keep it short and relevant. Resist the urge to simply summarise everything else in the tender proposal: you should already have a table of contents.

Finally, it is worth bid writers taking extra time to ensure that your executive summary is properly presented. It is vital to proof read it carefully, given its importance to the success of the tender proposal.

Filed Under: Bid Writing, Bids, PQQ · Tagged: , , , ,

New procurement rules in Scotland

08/02/2012 by · Leave a Comment

The Sustainable Procurement Bill passing through the Scottish Parliament aims to open up new public sector opportunities by making the public sector tender process more standardised and transparent.

Complaints in the construction industry were a major driving force behind this bill. Industry leaders have been complaining that the existing construction tender rules were unfit for purpose and exacerbating the decline of the sector.

The Scottish government claims that the Sustainable Procurement Bill would ensure that:

  • contract opportunities are advertised or awarded through Public Contracts Scotland;
  • public bodies adopt streamlined procurement processes friendly to Scottish businesses;
  • smaller and medium companies have more opportunities to win public sector tenders.

Alex Neil (MSP) also emphasised that community benefit clauses will be an important part of the new procurement rules. He stated that the “bill will seek to ensure that major public contracts deliver training and employment opportunities”.

If it passes this bill will obviously offer advantages to Scottish businesses aiming for construction tenders. However, the simpler public sector tender processes ought to make it easier for other companies as well, especially those that emphasise their CSR and training programmes.

Filed Under: Bids, Opportunities, Policies · Tagged: , , , ,

The economics of the sandwich

06/01/2012 by · Leave a Comment

Lothian and Borders Police has come in for a bit of ridicule lately, following news that they had issued an incredibly complex PQQ describing their sandwich needs in pedantic detail. Other recent stories include complaints about construction tenders with over one hundred questions and extremely high accreditation requirements. These can seem like impossible hurdles for public sector bid writers. The solutions don’t seem immediately obvious: after all, a few weeks before the newspapers ran their story about sandwiches-by-committee, they ran a different story about widespread (and viscerally detailed!) complaints among the police about the standard of catering in the organisation. Lothian and Borders Police clearly felt they needed to respond with stringent quality requirements in their tender contracts!

How can companies cope with these problems?

It is worth complaining to the government’s mystery shopper program if you find yourself confronted with a public sector tender PQQ request that seems insurmountable for anyone other than an established supplier. Blanket requests for ISO accreditation or similar is probably the most common stumbling block for tender writers. In particular, companies tendering for contracts in the environmental sector have a real problem with ISO14001, which is time consuming and expensive to implement.

The good news is that the Cabinet Office has already taken action to provide alternatives: An example would be that of TUCO, the University Catering Organisation, which was asked to review its PQQ requirements after complaints that it asked too much in ISO accreditation from suppliers. Obviously, procurers have a right to ask for guarantees that their tenders will be fulfilled: now they are simply being asked to provide alternative ways of providing those guarantees. Most of the irreconcilable problems surrounding public sector tender PQQs will relate to the council’s transparency requirements.

Bid writers going for government tenders in the UK should not be afraid to make complaints about poorly written PQQs or confusing requirements. In recent months Win that Bid has seen some particularly egregious examples of poorly constructed PQQs – the inexperienced procurement team in Northern Ireland is a particular offender! This is something that the government seems genuinely intent on changing. In the meantime, it is important to pick the right tender for your business, and Win that Bid can help you find tenders.

Getting the Basics Right

The basic strategy for getting through complex public sector tenders is to be prepared for them in advance. After a few UK tender bids a bid writer will have a library of policies and documents ready to go. It’s worth getting started on building that library now so you can be ready to take the next big opportunity – one thing you really need to avoid is going in unprepared and rushing to hand in the bid at the last minute. To help you along Win that Bid’s sister company Proposal Monkey offers a comprehensive range of policy templates to help you get started, or Win that Bid’s bid management service can advise you on putting together everything you’ll need.

Filed Under: Bids, PQQ, PQQs, Procurement, Proposal, Proposal Writing, Top Tips · Tagged: , , , , , , , , ,

The Bribery Act 2010 in force

04/01/2012 by · Leave a Comment

You might have seen some conflicting news reports about the Bribery Act lately. Notably, the legal firm Ernst & Young recently polled company employees and found that only 6% of companies surveyed believed that the Bribery Act compliance rules had affected their business. That said, the Bribery Act 2010 is also very young – the first person to be sentenced under the terms of the act was sent down on the 18th of November 2011.

He wasn’t some high flying CEO handing over diamonds in exchange for winning an oil contract or for favour in a weapons contract bid but a 22 year old court clerk from Redbridge called Munir Yakub Patel. His six year sentence (which could have been somewhat worse had he not pleaded guilty very quickly) has been taken as proof that the courts intend to take the act seriously. However, since he was a public employee, it is difficult to glean any information about how the courts intend to treat businesses in anti-corruption cases.

The big thing that everyone should take away from the sentence is this: Munir Yakub Patel didn’t offer a bribe, he took one. This is why the Royal Mail have been issuing guidelines warning postmen not to take Christmas tips worth more than £30 and this is why companies need to know the compliance rules so they don’t inadvertently find themselves in unexpected legal trouble by taking a gift they shouldn’t have done.

The Bribery Act 2010 is especially unclear on the subject of gifts between companies. The Ministry of Justice didn’t specify any monetary value above which the act comes into force which can leave companies open to unexpected legal challenges.  A company can cover itself by having a clear and public policy regarding gifts, including a maximum monetary value.

Things to consider

When choosing “reasonable and proportionate gifts” it is important to consider the context. Giving a lavish gift to a retiring client shouldn’t present a problem since there isn’t any intent for the recipient to act improperly in exchange. Similarly, presenting a gift in recognition of a job already accomplished is generally acceptable. Companies should be more circumspect when exchanging gifts in an ongoing business relationship.  The general consensus appears to be that “reasonable and proportionate” gifts include items like calendars and USB sticks. Be careful with expensive alcoholic beverages and avoid things like expensive jewellery, Christmas hampers and foreign trips.

Another reason to have a clear policy is that companies can now be found liable for failing to prevent employees or contractors from taking or receiving bribes. This makes it especially important for expanding businesses involved in multiple tenders or business relationships to have a clear anti-corruption policy that all employees are aware of, simply to protect themselves. It wouldn’t be worth the cost of a legal wrangle if an employee inadvertently takes a £200 bottle of champagne from a contractor and gets called up before the courts! For this reason the company’s policy on bribery should also be provided to suppliers and other relevant business contacts such as those bidding for tenders so that they don’t inadvertently expose the company to legal trouble. Our sister-company Proposal Monkey can help supply those documents.

In addition to the arrest of Munir Yakub Patel, fines have also been brought against a number of large corporations. It is likely that 2012 will be the year that the Bribery Act 2010 comes into its own and the year in which business finds out how the courts intend to apply it. To ensure your business doesn’t face undue problems, read the act, draw up a simple compliance policy and ensure that your employees are aware of it. Those simple steps will do a lot to limit the exposure of any company to the new anti-corruption rules. Win that Bid’s bid management and co-ordination service can help get all your documents in order and fill in any gaps.

Filed Under: Bids, Business Strategy, Policies · Tagged: ,

How to Win Construction Tenders

14/11/2011 by · Leave a Comment

In 2011 more than 100,000 tenders, worth over £220 billion, will be published in the UK. That represents a significant opportunity for you to expand your business and increase your turnover by bidding for construction tenders.

Often, the work is right on your doorstep, and opportunities to bid for construction tenders will increase with the implementation of the new localism bill. This aims to force local authorities to seek out local companies to complete their contracts. Of course, there’s also a global market of private companies out there, just waiting for you to claim a slice of the construction contracts that are available.

This world of opportunity means you should consider carefully before writing a construction bid. Is the contract one that you really want to go for? You would be well advised to concentrate your construction bid writing in areas that are the core strengths for your business. There will be other opportunities to open up new markets through word of mouth and other avenues. For construction bid writing, stick to what you know best and gather some great feedback for a job well done. That completed tender is then likely to lead to referrals for more varied work.

Tenders Direct is a useful place to seek out construction bids. This comprehensive database is easy to search in quite focused geographical and work-related areas, so you can easily see where the construction bid opportunities are.

We have partnered with Tenders Direct to offer you a bid management service tightly focused on your areas of expertise. Using our promotional code you can save £150 on your registration fee.

Through our Bid Management Service, we can then manage your construction tender opportunities, assessing how each potential contract fits in with the scope of your business. We will then filter 10 or 20 Pre-Qualification Questionnaires (PQQs) per annum to you. Thus, our Bid Management service saves you time and energy on hunting down construction bid writing opportunities so you can concentrate on the work you really want to do.

On your behalf, having scoped out your best fit construction bid opportunities, we can help you through all the stages of the bid writing process. From our experience, if you use our full construction bid writing service, you can realistically expect to be short-listed for one in three construction tenders and win sixty per cent of those bids.

We hold a library of your key documents such as insurance and policies, which will need to be submitted for every tender. Using those and in close consultation with you, we can complete the whole bid writing service for you.

You are in charge. Having been presented with the construction tender opportunities we find for you, if you want to take over the bid writing process from there, you can. Alternatively, we can handle the entire process for you.

Our construction bid writers have over 15 years’ experience in procurement and other relevant disciplines. They are familiar with many of the organisations and individuals buying construction services. That means they are well placed to help you through every stage towards winning a construction tender, from the invitation to tender right up to the final presentation.

Knowledge of the buyer is crucial to securing construction contracts. Buyers want to deal with contractors who fit in with their culture and who will follow their policies. As we know these buyers well, we can put you ahead of your competitors, with our team of experienced construction bid writers helping you to present your bid in a way that will score you highly in bid comparisons and which will tell buyers exactly why you are right for their job.

We are the UK’s largest tendering consultancy, which means we have the knowledge and expertise to write compelling construction bids.

For professional bid management, to improve your win ratio, or for a full construction bid writing service, call Win That Bid on 0203 405 1850 or e-mail hello@winthatbid.com.

Filed Under: Bid Management, Bid Writing, Bids, Construction, Home News, PQQ, PQQs, Proposal Writing, Tender Writing, Tenders, Win Bids · Tagged: , , , ,
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