DIY Tender Writing: The Good, The Bad & The Ugly

Tender Writing is not for the feint-hearted and is in no way a small task. Without exception, the quality of any tender writing submission ultimately affects the outcome. So, if you decide to go it alone as a Tender Writer for your business, let’s look at the good, the bad and the ugly of DIY tender writing to determine if it is something you want to pursue.

The Good

Knowing Your Niche: There is no argument against the idea that you know your business better than anyone else, hands down! You know your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats, exposure, financials, risks, and you have an intuition about your industry that has evolved over the years you have been exposed to it. You also understand your pricing model, risk factors that can impact this, pressure points on projects, risk mitigation processes, and potential exposure to liability and HR issues. All of this inherent knowledge and experience is highly valuable to putting together a successful Tender Writing submission.

Full Control Of Submission Content: Completing your own Tender Writing submission means that you are in full control of any promises, claims, offerings, etc in your responses. Should you win, then down the track, here should be no nasty surprises related to your offering.

Note: this is highly dependant on your ability to read and interpret the criteria, terms and conditions of the Tender documents to ensure you cover any exposure or assumptions, rather than leave them unaddressed. There are many, many times when a business has found themselves highly exposed and out of pocket due to not reading or understanding full conditions of a Tender response.

The Bad

Overwhelm: Tender Writing submissions are a lot of work, not just in preparing the responses to the criteria, but in collecting and presenting supportive evidence, creating and vetting supporting documents that may be mandatory as part of the submission, staying on top of any amendments, gathering information from sub-contractors and then, fitting all this in around continuing to run a profitable, functioning business. Most businesses under-estimate the sheer workload in Tender Writing and leave themselves with way too little time to put a quality submission together, which ultimately reflects as poor quality and has a negative impact on the outcome.

Decisions: There are many decisions that need to be made when tender writing to put forward an optimal submission. The price you want to quote is only one piece of the puzzle and granted, has a large impact on the outcome, yet is never the sole decider. Far more important may be any terms and you wish to put forward that may either negatively or positively affect the cost for your business to deliver. In cases where you cannot compete on price, then you need to decide what else you can offer. Without experience in putting together past successful Tender Writing submissions, you may be putting forward a completely irrelevant and value-less offer. Making these decisions on your own can leave you exposed as being inexperienced, which may negatively impact your Tender writing outcome.

The Ugly

Lack of Expertise: Most tender responses require a gamut of Supporting Documents to be put forward with the Tender Writing submission. Presenting such documents as professional, polished material may not be your core business skill, thus will either put you under significant strain, or result in a lack-lustre and irrelevant document pack being submitted. Good quality supporting documents form the backbone of any tender writing submission and allude to the business capability, professionalism and long term vision to be the best in your game. A lack of these documents can detract from the real value and promise your business can offer.

Missing Critical Points: In our experience as a Tender Writing firm, we have sadly seen too many cases of businesses being put under immense pressure, or suffering large losses due to missing critical points stated in the terms of the Tender documents. It is vital to ensure you have a clear understanding of what is assumed, what needs to be stated clearly and what you might need to clarify when tender writing to ensure you do not put your business at risk.

Where Does This Leave You?

When the Bad and Ugly outweigh the Good so heavily, we can see it is not only daunting, but risky to go at tender writing alone. What may seem like a cost saving in the short term, if the tender is lost, it can actually cost you more. Tapping into the experience of successful Tender Writers gives you the best chance of winning at the Tender Writing game so that all time invested does not end up being a wasted cost of valuable staff resources.

At RTB our Tender Writers in Sydney work with you to elicit the highest expertise and niche offering your business has to offer to the submission, then present it in an articulate, professional response that speaks to the key criteria.

We address & remove those bad issues mentioned above, because our business is to focus is on your tender submission while you focus on your business. We have had many successful years as tender writers in Melbourne so we know how to plan and time submissions and ensure we do not miss vital details that can make or break your chances of success. You can keep on running your business while we take care of the business of doing the tender writing for you (and with you).

We negate the ugly via having access to a team with vast experience across an array of industry sectors and importantly, in tender writing, dealing with assessors, plus understanding and interpreting what is required in every Tender Writing submission that we put forward. To date, we have won over $400m of business for our clients through successful tender writing submissions.

Red Tape Busters is one of the leading Grant Writing Company in Australia. We Have specialised grant writers assisting business and non-profit organisations all over Australia. For more information, please visit - http://bit.ly/2nuWajg