tender writing experts

tender writing experts

Mastering the Art of Tender Writing: Strategies and Techniques for Success

1. Introduction to Tender Writing

Taking part in a tender writing process and not knowing or following any key principles can be a real nightmare. If you have done this, you will be able to recognize our message. When you take part in a tender, you invest unneglectable resources to get the desired result. Amid this entire despair and paying needlessly all of these costs, you have the odds against you if you just follow the rules, complete the annexes, and give it a try. We often work with professionals whose objective is to take part in many tenders at the same time. As it is impossible to manage well, they do not win anything at all, in any of the tenders. Then, they come to us begging for help when tender writing time is finished. We are certain that managing to deliver a great tender is always better than delivering a quantity of poorly written applications. Winning a tender is not just about designing a process where you can participate. It is about proving to the contracting authority that you are the one who will better perform to achieve the objective they want you to.

The purpose of this book is to provide tools for nonprofit leaders to write the tenders that will give them the best chance of winning the contracts and deliver the best service at the same time. These tools will teach you to focus on the contract, on your core competences, and make a strong but flexible strategic alliance to win that specific contract. This book will provide you with the skills and emotional intelligence needed when setting up a partnership or alliance, and it will give you simple, easy-to-use resources to guide you en route through the entire process. These resources will help you to evaluate a tender, communicate your conviction to your stakeholders, facilitate the key alliance partnership meeting, and get your organization ready to implement the contract after the tender is won.

2. Understanding the Tender Process

The commitment evoked by a formal tender is the highest level of response, even though it doesn’t guarantee acceptance. When also compared to the protracted tempo of the working day, many commercial organizations’ offering is designed to provide the information the potential customer requires rapidly. The potential customer must decide whether it meets the required needs or not. With a formal tender, the quantity of information specified will be greater simply because ‘tenders’ are a means of producing a viable ‘shortlist’ suitable in quantity to be manageable. Granted that the ‘bidders’ need for comprehensive tender details is a certainty, some purchasers make no provision for supplier selection. This is a situation with which the buyer has to coexist; and in many cases, he creates by virtue of a ‘hasty’ specification handout enveloped by a tight milestone program, a process that constrains the bidders’ ability to respond in the most advantageous manner.

The tender process is becoming increasingly sophisticated, and many government organizations, as well as large corporations, requiring the procurement of goods and services exceeding a certain financial value, will, as a matter of course, put the work out to tender to ensure that they are getting the best value for money. The tender process and its associated documents must be clear and fair in laying down sound procedures and terms, both for the bidders and the organizations, large or small. A primary key identifying the major differences between the formal tender and commercial offer is the use of confidentiality by the organization. The commercial tendency is to deny information at initial contact in the belief that it will heighten the response. If sufficient time is then allowed to get all the information together, the costs involved may escalate.

3. Key Components of a Winning Tender Proposal

Understanding the Impact of the Tender Proposal: Of all the bidding proposals that a business, individual, or group makes in pursuit of professional life, the tender proposal is usually the most important and the largest. The writing and preparation of a tender proposal are critical to win or lose the tender bid. No matter what the proposed project (whether it is a large engineering project or a newly created software system), the responsible firm must write a proposal that is clear, succinct, and persuasive. The writing of the proposal is only the first step in this bid/proposal process, which could reach recognizably superior levels. To sell products or services, the seller drafts and delivers business/tender proposals. Customers respond in writing and vendors may solicit or select responses. In short, a proposal gives an argument against proposals leading to an argument against awarding a business tender.

Executive summary: The executive summary is often the only information in a tender proposal that a decision-maker may read and it is, therefore, of crucial importance. It is on the basis of the executive summary that the reader decides whether he or she wants to read the tender proposal or not.

Note: This section describes the key components of the tender proposal and the strategies and techniques that go into preparing them. Each component is considered as a separate function because each one requires a different approach in writing, planning, and presentation. These components can each be used to create a tender proposal for a specific tender in a tender box. Keep in mind that tender proposals are meant to persuade the reader to award the business contract to us. This is, there is no place in the tender proposal for the tenderer to put a tender proposal by way of a polite letter.

4. Writing Techniques and Best Practices

Make the important connections quickly, and don’t bury them in a lot of links, cross-references, or faunal paperwork. A proposal may have anywhere from 30 direct to several hundred indirect references to team and experience qualifications. These references need to be placed for high visibility on your primary deliverable, not buried in a matrix or individual resumes. There is a formal framework for any proposal to achieve and a Compliance Matrix is in place as well. Whether a short-term quick-turnaround professional services proposal or long-term multiple volumes covering a multinational client based around the world, a Compliance Matrix assures the writer that the client’s requirements have been addressed, all important points are in the proposal, and all content is in the right place.

Maintaining consistency of voice is critical, particularly in long and complex proposals. This voice will reflect the corporate brand and the usual messaging style that accompanies any external collateral. It will also capture the unique office or team culture that is very compelling to most clients—the idea that “you are working with Joe all the way”. This is often an advantage of small firms, but the writing must reflect it for the reader to internalize it. Remove extra words and sentences that do not add value to your proposal. Sentence structure, style, and beauty make the writing easy to mentally process. This is particularly important for technical and medical writing where readability is a significant risk. Remove redundancies, use active verbs, and maintain consistency. Make certain that the primary message is carried by the priority action verb in the first few words of a sentence whenever you discuss what the reader should do.

5. Case Studies and Real-Life Examples

– Clearly relate to the requirements of the RFT – Be specific and written in terms of the results achieved – Use metrics and statistics whenever possible – Be as recent as possible, and at least within the last 3-5 years – Allow for easy verification of the facts. This includes notifying your chosen examples’ references ahead of time that you will be submitting the project as an example. Make sure the examples have been completed successfully, and if they have not, exclude them from your tender submission. Expert authors use a system-level project management model called the Program Review and Audit. These psychological contracts are monitored from the top down in publicly traded companies using a program disclosed in their 10K reports.

The real-life examples you use should:

It is vital to use real-life examples of your actual experiences throughout your tender submission. Vividly describing your contributions, role, and results will give the assessors the ability to visualize what you will deliver if you are awarded the contract. Periodically making reference to specific examples will increase the credibility of your submission. For example, “In a similar project for ABC Corporation for the types of services proposed under this RFT, our company dramatically improved the systems in place, in some cases improving efficiency up to 80%.” Supporting your claims with specific examples of your results at other companies will separate your submission from those of your competitors, most of whom will fail to do this. In their absence, the claims of other bidders may be doubted.