When to walk away from a tender “opportunity”
In the last 20 years, formal procurement has crept into just about everything large organisations purchase, from the simple and commoditised (stationery) right through to the complex and intangible (professional services).
It’s a system that providers are stuck with for now, especially when it comes large consumers of professional services (government, banks, insurers, listed companies and other large corporates).
The opportunities a win could present may seem attractive, but does your firm take the time to properly evaluate the risks and real costs?
If you’re tempted to bid on something, or you have a partner in your firm that cannot resist chasing down every single opportunity – “we should throw our hat in the ring” – see if you pass the following reality check first.
Reality checking the opportunity and testing assumptions
This quick (non-exhaustive) bid or no bid list will help you critically size up a bid opportunity:
- Do you know if the tender has been advertised far and wide? Competition can be fierce for “open” tenders.
- Have they indicated how many suppliers they are likely to appoint? The trend is to reduce the number of providers.
- Do you know who the incumbent providers – your competitors – are? It’s incredibly hard to unseat satisfactorily performing incumbents.
- What do you really know about the consumer and their reasons for tendering? If the consumer simply wishes to “test the market”, it’s likely that there will be no or minimal change to the composition of their providers.
- Have you dimensioned in $ how much work you will actually get if you win? And how does that stack up against the costs of putting together a bid?
- Do you clearly understand what it will cost to produce the services once appointed?
- Do you meet minimum threshold requirements? For instance, do you have the required professional indemnity insurance?
- Has your firm ever done any work for the tendering organisation? At all? Or are you total unknowns?
- Do you and your team actually have the time and resources to put together a credible bid?
- Are you starting your response late? Never good!
Whilst much of this is common sense, it can often fly out the window in the heat of the moment. Just be sure you know when it’s a real opportunity, and when to walk away and spend your time and effort on something else.
One of the reasons Julian Midwinter & Associate’s track record in bids, proposals and tenders is so strong is because we divert clients from wasting precious time and scarce resources on dud “opportunities”.
Download our FREE Win more tenders, bids & proposals guide to learn how to say no to poor-fit tender opportunities. Or try our bid or no bid assessment checklist.
And if you’re thinking of throwing your hat in the ring, we can help – please get in touch.
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Feature article
Tender readability – tips to improve your tender presentation and some tender presentation no-nos
Tender readability remains a problem for some in the 21st century. I still see submission documents that cling to a handful of really old hat tender presentation and formatting techniques. I suspect this is because some of these ‘rules’ are viewed as being more appropriate to a ‘formal’ style of document such as a tender. […]
