Tendering for Dummies: First of all, that’s not you, but with this guidance you can develop powerful tenders and win contracts for your business.
To be open, I don’t even like the term tendering for dummies – you have great experience and have the capability to write tenders that reflects how good your business, venture or you are. Oh and has the strong potential of winning. You might be a beginner or want to improve how you write tenders, but this isn’t tendering for dummies. Therefore in this beginners guide we take you through what a tender is and provide you with the tools to help you consistently write powerful tenders.
What do we mean by Tenders?
While there is no single, agreed definition one useful description is that a tender is: “a formal written offer to carry out work, supply goods and/ or services etc, for a stated fixed price.” This differs from the term ‘procurement’ which is the other side of the coin and describes how the public sector and large corporates buy. As such these organisations will ‘go to tender’ for the sorts of goods and services they need.
Where do you find tender opportunities?
Good question, because there is no single tendering process with potential buyers using an extensive range of ways to advertise tender opportunities. However, this is about being smart and there are a few important places to tap into to get the right opportunities. Winning Tenders Academy offers a completely free tender sources guide that provides you with detail on where to find tender opportunities in the UK, Ireland and EU. Equally importantly, this easy-to-follow document sets out how to go about this in an effective way that does not take too much time – as I said above it is definitely not tendering for dummies after all. It’s quite simple, brilliant and free. Just one additional tip; Contracts Finder, the main public sector tendering source in the UK has changed its website domain slightly a few times and the latest version can be found here.
So how do you develop powerful tenders?
Simple, don’t reinvent the wheel. There are many templates, and model answers available that you can access that explain how you can develop and tailor your own powerful tenders. However, key is identifying the right resources – this is not about adapting an existing tender into a document that you submit. This is about resonating with your potential clients – developing a tender that is written from the perspective of the buyer; that fully meets their needs and all requirements and that scores higher than your competitors. Tendering for dummies leads to a generic tender that doesn’t usually hint the mark, these resources will guide you on how to develop a powerful, bespoke tender for you business – every time that will save you massively on time and more importantly offer a definitive edge. These templates and model answers are also highly affordable, just costing a few pounds/Euros and providing a sustainable resource for your future tendering.
How do we know these work?
In the last few weeks a small number of examples of businesses using the templates and model answers and winning public sector contracts included a social enterprise winning a contract worth £150k (stg) pa over four years; a tree maintenance firm winning a of contract worth approximately £1m (stg) pa over four years; a physiotherapy business winning a contract worth up to €40 pa and three professional services firms winning contracts of €18k (EUR), €18k (stg) and €27.5k (EUR).
Final Thought
Remember is definitely isn’t tendering for dummies. this is about developing powerful tenders, every time without pain and winning that tender. Click here for more information on these model answers and templates and best wishes on future tendering.
