Are you a technical writer? How often do you lose a high-value tender because of an average written bid? Do you know the reason behind your failure? Be it traditional tendering or e-tendering in NSW; even an error-free, grammatically flawless proposal can be rejected because you might have the following misconceptions about bid writing:
1. A tender response is an information packet
Your tender response is not an information packet—rather a persuasion tool. You don’t have to feed encyclopaedic information about your offering and company to the tender committee but persuade them to choose your company overall the others.
The best way of persuasion is to mimic what a salesperson does, i.e. understand your customer, identify their need, acknowledge it and offer a solution to that need. If you focus your response on your company’s attributes without linking them to the customer’s needs then they won’t be interested in your services.
There is nothing self-evident in this process, so connect the right dots for them, and assure them why you should win the competition.
2. A tender response template can be used
This is where people go wrong: tender responses cannot be written from a template because it needs to be personalised for the client. You need to dedicate an appropriate amount of time to customise the proposal as per the client’s requirements, which requires thorough research about the client and the industry, but it can raise your chance of winning substantially. Make sure your tender writer allocates enough time to create a bid that is entirely tailored for that client, i.e. find out the influencers and decision-makers in the client’s organisation and write to win them over.
1. A tender response is an information packet
Your tender response is not an information packet—rather a persuasion tool. You don’t have to feed encyclopaedic information about your offering and company to the tender committee but persuade them to choose your company overall the others.
The best way of persuasion is to mimic what a salesperson does, i.e. understand your customer, identify their need, acknowledge it and offer a solution to that need. If you focus your response on your company’s attributes without linking them to the customer’s needs then they won’t be interested in your services.
There is nothing self-evident in this process, so connect the right dots for them, and assure them why you should win the competition.
2. A tender response template can be used
This is where people go wrong: tender responses cannot be written from a template because it needs to be personalised for the client. You need to dedicate an appropriate amount of time to customise the proposal as per the client’s requirements, which requires thorough research about the client and the industry, but it can raise your chance of winning substantially. Make sure your tender writer allocates enough time to create a bid that is entirely tailored for that client, i.e. find out the influencers and decision-makers in the client’s organisation and write to win them over.
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