 "Plan to Work as a Winning Bid Team")
Winning Bid Teams follow a well-managed plan when responding to Tenders and Bids. They avoid the last-minute crisis issues submission, making sure everyone has had their input well in advance of submission day. They follow a plan that prioritises input, drafting, reviewing, adding content when they have the optimal time to do.
Bid Teams that struggle without bid plans, will often fail, missing deadlines, skipping over comprehensive and forensic first draft reviews, submitting a tender bid that will “just do”. Don’t be like them!
Some tenders are open for response for weeks, its common for Teams to get complacent when there’s a lot of time left to submit, failing to see the benefit of great planning and effort when they think they have time. If you can follow a structured Bid plan when responding to a tender you will avoid last minute panics for stakeholder feedback or input, poor reviews and stop things being missed with half-hearted read-throughs.
Winning tenders have great bid plans under pinning them, allowing for comprehensive responses, time to gather intelligence on the buying organisation or subject in question and support and buy-in from all stakeholders, all onboard with the commitment to bid to win.
When completing a Tender everyone will keep emphasising the end date. For obvious reasons it is important, but the last thing you want to do is to leave it to the last minute. This is where a Bid Programme comes in, it is another tool in the planning of completing a winning bid.
What does a good plan look like?
The key element is creating your plan. Create a task list and use a RACI (Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, Informed) to assign the tasks amongst the Bid Team and wider stakeholders.
- Registration and acceptance of the tender on the e-Tender portal.
- Download all tender documents
- Stakeholder readthrough
- Bid/No Bid Decision and Sign Off
- Bid Project Kick Off Meeting
- Set Timelines and RACI, messages, priorities, strategy.
- Develop Checklist
- Full review of tender documents
- Content planned and collation (certificates, accounts etc)
- Stakeholder input request and first sharing of content
- First Draft completion
- First Draft review
- Amendments and additions
- Second Draft Review
- Amendments and additions
- Bid Team forensic review
- Final Amendments
- Bid Director Sign off
- Submit to Portal
Manage Your Workload
Define your RACI. Ownership of tasks agreed upfront when you start the bid process and sharing your content to one place. Using track changes in documents etc. Microsoft Teams or a network drive are excellent tools to share and collaborate on documents. Be clear, who is to deliver what content, answer what question and by when.
Keep to Your Plans
Keeping to your plan is vital. Be aware of deadlines, if a key stakeholder has a holiday planned, factor that in for delivering content, drafts, and reviews. Have one person project managing the plan and responsible for holding the stakeholders to account for their input.
Plan in regular catchups. Some Bid teams organise themselves using Agile methodologies, with daily stand-up meetings, first thing to manage any issues that come during the response process. These stand-ups are great for bringing to front and centre anything that may derail delivering a winning response.