What to do if you’ve decided to bid

What to do next.

• Assemble your team – work out who in the company is best placed to answer what sections or questions
• Set a timetable of what you receive and by when, make sure people stick to the times as over running will give you additional stress that you just don’t need
• Work out what your theme is and what you want to say after reading the questions

Read the documents again

• If there is something that you missed when initially thinking about bidding, that now means you have changed your mind, now is the time to stop, not once you have spent days working hard if it will come to nothing
• Create a ‘straw man’ of your solution or service, does it meet the requirements or the pricing model structure? Still happy, keep going…
• What questions do you want to know the answer to? If they are fundamental to you bidding then the faster you ask, the faster you get a reply
• What questions do you want to ask but realise the competition will know you are bidding? Work out how to ask it knowing they will be reading the response

How to answer the questions

It is easy to take some content already created and ‘cut and paste’ it to complete the response, though is it good enough? Here are some things to consider:

• Questions are rarely yes or no so break them down into their constituent parts. Make sure you capture every element- this is the only way to get full marks
• Have you remembered how the scoring will be done? You know where the most points are, so ensure you don’t skimp where the opportunities make a big difference
• Is there a word count? Aim to go over it by about 30% and get as much content in as you can. Once you have your base data, go back and ‘make it punchy.’ You should be able to trim around a third of the words this way
• Can you evidence benefits that others have received by using your products and services? Pepper your responses with testimonials to show you are that ‘safe pair of hands’