18 Feb The Importance Of Having A Strong Bid Strategy
An essential step in the bidding process is formulating a strong bid strategy that your business can routinely use when sourcing and applying for tenders.
Having a strong bid strategy in place will improve your chances of winning contracts, prevent you wasting time on unsuccessful bids, and help your business achieve sustainable long-term growth.
In this article, we will address what a bid strategy is, discuss why you need to have a bid strategy in place, and outline how to create a strong bid strategy that works for you and your business.
What Is A Bid Strategy?
A bid strategy is similar to a marketing strategy. For example, it should outline your ‘target market’, the steps your business needs to take to appeal to this target market, and your long-term plan for growing and developing your business through bidding on contracts.
When putting together your bid strategy, consider:
- Do you want to target clients from the public or private sector? Or perhaps both?
- What types of organisation should you target?
- Do these organisations have common priorities or values that they emphasise above others? If so, how can you make sure your bids show your shared commitment to these principles?
- What will you need to invest to successfully bid on a contract and deliver on your promises?
- How can bidding on certain contracts help your business achieve long-term, sustainable growth and development?
Why Do You Need A Bid Strategy?
Developing a strong bid strategy helps you ensure that you are targeting your services to the right audience, and that you can provide the results that the buyers require.
Without a strong bid strategy in place, you risk wasting resources on tenders that you are unlikely to win, or that you are unable to deliver the promised results for.
The Strategy Of Writing A Successful Bid
Once you have identified your target audience, the best type of contracts for you to bid on, and how bid writing fits into your overall strategy for business growth, the next step is putting a strategic process in place that will ensure you create the strongest bids possible, time after time.
This will help you maximise your chances of submitting successful bids and growing your business through winning more contracts.
In particular, before you even start writing your bids, you should ensure that the following bid writing process is integrated into your business and functioning effectively:
1. Source Bidding Opportunities
You will need to know where to find bidding opportunities that are appropriate for your sector and the size and value of your organisation. You can source bidding opportunities yourself from a wide variety of online portals, or outsource to professionals such as ourselves!
For more information about How To Find Opportunities To Bid For Work, click here.
2. Hold A Bid Writing Kick-Off Meeting
Your bid writing kick-off meeting sets the foundation for your entire bid writing process.
In this meeting, you should assign roles and responsibilities to members of your team, plan your research (including scheduling further meetings and site visits), and establish deadlines for each section of your bid.
During this meeting, you should also create your bid plan. This should cover:
- The content you need to include in your tender response
- The evidence you will use to complete your response (e.g. case studies, client feedback, relevant data, and statistics etc.)
- The overall tone and voice of your bid response
- The style, format, and graphic design elements of your bid response.
You can find more information about The Key Things To Cover In A Bid Writing Kick-Off Meeting here.
3. Assign Roles And Responsibilities
Bid writing involves many roles and responsibilities, including – but not limited to – the Bid/Proposals Manager, Bid Writers, Subject Matter Experts (SMEs), and Graphic Designers.
You should assign these roles based on your team’s professional experience and skills. For example, your Bid/Proposals Manager should have experience in managing a team, analytical and problem-solving skills, time management abilities, and excellent written and verbal communication.
You can find more information about How To Build A Brilliant Bid Writing Team here.
4. Do Your Research!
To properly understand what the buyer expects of you, you will need to thoroughly research them. This will enable you to create a targeted and compelling tender response that ticks all the boxes.
Simply Googling your prospective client isn’t enough! You should also plan meetings and site visits with the buyer.
This is essential for two reasons; firstly, you can gain critical information from a meeting or a site visit that you may not be able to obtain online. This can prove essential for crafting a persuasive bid.
Secondly, site meetings allow your business to show genuine interest in your client, and to build a rapport with them. This may make it more likely that you win the contract being bid on.
5. Gather Evidence
Before you start writing your bid, you should know what evidence you are going to use to back up your claims. This can include case studies, client feedback, and data and statistics.
Do not leave this until the last minute! You may need to spend time going through your Bid Library to gather the materials you need, which could potentially put you at risk of missing the deadline.
Instead, by ensuring you have gathered all the evidence before you start writing your bid, your writers will be able to refer their written content to the evidence more easily, helping to prevent any last-minute panics!
6. Regularly Review Your Bid And Meet Deadlines
Put simply, if you miss the final submission date for any reason, your tender response will not be considered. As such, it is imperative that you schedule your bid review and proofreading process well in advance of the client’s deadline, and allow ample time for any final edits.
Plus, by regularly reviewing the progress made on your bid throughout its creation, you can ensure that your contributors are on track to meet their deadlines, and will have time to make any necessary changes well before the bid is due for submission.
Want to put in place a strong bid strategy that wins you more work? Contact our expert team!
