Win More Bids: The Power of Effective Reviewing

Learn how a structured 3-stage review process (Pink, Green, Red) can transform your proposals, catch issues early, and lead to consistent wins.

This often-missed step is crucial for crafting compelling, consistent proposals that score maximum points. Learn why 80%+ of organisations miss out on this vital practice and how mastering it can give you the winning edge, even on multi-billion dollar deals.

Compelling CVs are critical to winning bids. Confidence and trust come from personal experience and demonstrating value, not just a list of past achievements. A CV should be easily digestible, allowing you to quickly assess the candidate’s suitability.

We want to get to a place with your bids and proposals where you submit the most beautifully written CVs that nobody ever reads - because they know and trust your people. 

Everyone is time poor. Are people really reading all of your tender submission content? In the public sector maybe, in the private sector - probably not.

In these time poor times, it's super important that we engage the reader and that we're as efficient as possible in getting our message across. So how do we make our content come alive within the constraints we've got?

Procurement people often tell us that they’re robots - that everything’s black and white, and that if you write the perfect bid you’ll win the deal. But that’s just not true. Humans make emotional decisions, and then crowdsource data to back up those decisions. So, if you attack them in clarifications and make them look silly - when they come to read your bid and score it, they’re going to start with a low score in mind.

A key aspect of positioning is to research an opportunity thoroughly - understanding as much as possible about the prospect, the opportunity, and the environment surrounding it is vital to successful engagement.

Understanding what the profile of your ideal or perfect client looks like is imperative to steering your business effectively towards success.

First of all, watch out - clients and customers are not the same thing.

Make sure you've got a robust bid plan in play on your bid. Whether you're a professional bidding person or whether you're going it alone or working in a smaller business that doesn't have bidding professionals – an absolutely critical enabler when it comes to successful bidding is having a bid plan.

In the end game of the competitive bidding phase, it is crucial to acknowledge that biases are inherent in human behaviour. Our biases influence our decision making, particularly optimism bias. Humans tend to underestimate the effort required for tasks like writing bids or bid qualifications and overestimate their chances of winning.

Nobody's coming to save you. No one's coming to do it for you. No one's going to make you rich beyond your wildest dreams or get that promotion. You have to go and take it yourself. You have to go and do that development yourself.

Personal Development is up to you

USPs have to be unique

The clues in the title, you can't be fairly unique. You can't be a little bit unique. You're either unique or you are not.

When writing bids or tenders - your unique selling points have to be unique to you. Nobody else can have them or touch it. You could do with at least one, but ideally two or three USPs, particularly for key tenders.

If you can’t put your finger on anything valuable that’s genuinely unique about your proposition - you’re probably not going to win

In this blog Jeremy emphasises the critical importance of compliance in both the public and private sectors. He stresses that compliance is non-negotiable, as failure to comply results in lost bids and can impact career prospects. He advocates for a system where bid professionals ensure compliance but are not solely responsible for the outcome - making sure the business systematically ensures compliance and quality.

Bid as little as possible! In this weeks blog post Jeremy covers how focus is everything when it comes to bidding for deals.

We have a guest blog post and accompanying podcast episode this week. Bid professional and AI enthusiast Michelle Bee explores the growing role of AI in winning work and bid writing and what it means for the future of bidding professionals.

The UK government released its national procurement policy statement on Thursday. It in effect states the overarching objectives that all public bodies should be aligned with in their procurements from the 24th of February onwards. In this blog, we pick out a couple of key points to note.

We are mobilising a new weekly blog, going out each Friday by email to our subscribers and posted in our thoughts section of our website. These will wrap up what we have found working with clients and government in the week, news and issues of the day and guest content from industry and discipline leading lights. Do reach out if you would like to be a contributor in the future.

When it comes to growing a construction business, we find a mixed bag of maturity in the use of best practices across the industry.

We have found the approach of the construction sector to winning work is traditionally less advanced than other sectors such as professional services.

We know that writing and pricing a bid isn’t an easy process. Here I share with you our top five things to avoid.