More tips on nailing the sale – doing your best in pitch meetings and during shortlisting interviews
No matter how clever a professional or a ‘natural’ you are or how beautifully presented your tender or bid was, you’ll put in a far better performance – at a pitch, prospective client meeting, shortlisting interview or beauty parade, or whatever – with a little preparation. Maybe you’re great on your feet, maybe you enjoy […]
Continue ReadingIs this tender, bid or proposal rigged?
It’s widely known that public sector procurement rules generally have certain dollar thresholds where a need to ‘approach the market’ and obtain at least three bids will kick in. It might be for services or projects valued at over $80,000; or for even lower amounts (especially for local government bids). Given the obligation of public […]
Continue ReadingClosed or invitation only tenders, bids and proposals
Firstly, what are closed or invitation only tenders, bids and proposals? In addition to the generally well-understood terms ‘tender’, ‘bid’ and ‘proposal’, there are ‘open’ and ‘closed’ processes, and then variations within each that can apply to professional services procurement. Open or public tenders, bids and proposals An open tender is just that, open to […]
Continue ReadingHow to run a kick-off meeting for your tender, bid or proposal
As we have discussed before, the difference between a winning tender, bid or proposal and a loser frequently comes down to what you know before you write a single word … not what you find out after you’ve written the document. An effective way to know more about a client is to gather your team […]
Continue ReadingWhy firms keep bidding on losers and what you can do about it
A crap ‘win rate’ or lack of bidding success is usually a direct result of bidding on too many losers, aka inappropriate ‘opportunities’. Too often, professional services firms are tempted by the potential boost in revenue, and go all out pursuing speculative tender and proposal opportunities. Generally these firms have no consistently applied or objective ‘bid-or-no-bid’ […]
Continue ReadingAnd the winner is…Environmental scanning
And the winner is… ‘Sid-an-eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!’ Juan Antonio Samaranch annoucing Sydney’s winning bid for the 2000 Summer Olympics. The exhilaration from winning a tender, bid or proposal is hard to beat and the benefits are many! But what about lost bids, tenders and proposals? An infamous proposal failure was Australia’s lost bid for the 2022 Soccer […]
Continue Reading11 Quick fixes to improve the quality of your tenders, bids and proposals
It’s the night before your tender, bid or proposal hands in and with a sinking feeling you realise it still needs ‘work’. Maybe it needs a lot of work, or just some key finishing touches applied. But without a deadline extension there’s no time to fully recast your responses, alter your document structure, change the […]
Continue ReadingResponding effectively to (unspoken) questions in tenders, bids and proposals
Over the years we’ve read hundreds of requests for tenders and proposals seeking services from professional services firms. Often RFT/Ps can seem cobbled together bastardised versions of older requests that have been edited by committee and end up asking silly, repetitive or irrelevant questions. Most of the time nothing sinister is going on, it is […]
Continue Reading3 essential win themes for tenders, bids or proposals to the financial services sector
When it comes to preparing your next tender, bid or proposal to the financial services sector it is a good idea to establish your key “win themes” at the outset. “Win themes” are those key selling arguments and messages that will be repeated, re-spun, and repeated again in several places and in several different ways […]
Continue ReadingHow to interview subject matter experts (SMEs) at tender time
SMEs – that’s ‘subject matter experts’ (rather than ‘small-to-medium enterprises’) – can be great to work with (as can small-to-medium enterprises!) on a tender. However, sometimes in the heat of a deadline SME input to a tender can become lost in translation (or worse left out). We’ve talked before about how specifics sell, and that’s […]
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Feature article
Closed or invitation only tenders, bids and proposals
Firstly, what are closed or invitation only tenders, bids and proposals? In addition to the generally well-understood terms ‘tender’, ‘bid’ and ‘proposal’, there are ‘open’ and ‘closed’ processes, and then variations within each that can apply to professional services procurement. Open or public tenders, bids and proposals An open tender is just that, open to […]
