 "Scores on the doors! Are You Ready to Bid?")
Anyone can submit a tender response or bid but ask yourself, are you winning and if not, why not? Are you ready to bid?
A great tool to winning bids is to reflect on what you are trying to achieve. Look at your organisation with an internal perspective and qualify yourselves on where you are on your Public Contract tendering journey and what are the ears you want to improve.
Buying organisations will evaluate your bids using scoring, to work out where you are against competing bids. Develop your own scoring mechanics and challenge yourselves to identify your bid improvement journey. A good start is asking the questions below and rank each question 1 = Low, 2 = Medium and 3 = High. This is a great indicator in knowing what needs developing.
- Do you know your win/lose ratio
- Does your company operate and effective bid strategy and approach that delivers winning bids?
- Do you have the resource pool and stakeholders to input and develop tender responses?
- Do you have set criteria for Bid/No Bid decisions?
- Do you know where your tender opportunities come from?
- Do you have a bid plan, with RACI, defined roles and responsibilities?
- Do you have an up-to-date library of supporting documentation, policies, certificates?
- Do you know and understand your pricing models to be competitive?
- Do you know how to write a good winning bid?
- Do you know what to look for in a review?
- Do you follow up on supplier feedback and lessons learnt with your Buying Organizations?
Add up all your scores and identify the 1s and 2. Develop an action plan to develop your weaknesses into strengths, setting dates to measure yourselves again and see how much your scores have changed. Do this regularly so complacency doesn’t set it.