Preparing to write a tender
Tender Planning
Now that you have decided to go ahead, don’t start writing until you have thoroughly planned what you are going to say.
Assemble the team
The two main “players” in the bid management process are the Bid Manager and the Marketing Manager. In a small bid, these roles can be fulfilled by one or two people.
Someone also needs to handle “back of house” jobs: correspondence, documents, drawings, meeting minutes, approvals — distributing, compiling, and storing everything generated.
Plan your bid
The best investment of time is reading the requirements thoroughly and discussing them as a group, page by page. A shared understanding forms, and questions for the Buyer may arise.
Once the bid team is “on the same page”, planning in earnest can begin.
Set the strategy
Your bid strategy considers:
- Your existing technical capability.
- Customer requirements.
- Competitors’ capabilities.
- Potential team members.
- Any significant procurement aspects impacting probable success.
It maps out how you will present yourself so you score higher than the midpoint score on all qualitative criteria.
Plan the solution
Ideally, the planning phase should take no more than one-third of the time available to prepare the response.
The output from a planning session should be a task list with responsibilities and timeframes assigned.
Anticipate late tasks, and build buffer into the timeline to avoid stress closer to the due date.
Deliverable
Task list + owners + dates + buffer.
