Have you noticed a trend with tenders recently? Increasingly often, in order to score good points, you are asked for examples, and in order to score top points you are asked for well-worked examples. Beware, this is not to be taken lightly.A training certificate, exemplifying, for instance, the qualifications of your staff, is not it […]

Invitations to Tender (or ITTs) can, at first glance, appear to be just another form to fill in. ITTs, as well as PQQs, RFIs and all those other abbreviated documents, often arrive when you are busy (as if you are ever not busy). You probably browse through them, just so that you have a rough

Anyone who has managed a sales force will know that sales people have a tendency to be bullish when it comes to sales forecasting. What better grounds for being bullish than a pipeline packed full with tender opportunities? However, if these opportunities don’t turn into business they are worthless! Unfortunately, many sales people fall into

You have worked hard at the tender, submitted your response and are awaiting the outcome – but there is no news! No news may be good news. (You haven’t been told you’ve lost it.) No news may be bad news. (If they are not talking to you they may be talking to someone else.) No

This was feedback recently experienced by an organisation on failing to win a tender. Actually, including all the appendices, the wordcount was very much bigger – but still not enough detail. So, should they have written more? Actually, by simply stripping out extraneous material they would not only have reduced the wordcount but also exposed

There are a number of reasons why a business may put a contract out to tender. They might be: Looking for a new supplier Obliged to (actually not wanting to change) Testing the market Looking for leverage with their existing supplier … or a whole host of other reasons If they are not undertaking the

If you complete tender responses from to time you may recognise this feeling. You might have previously created, in the heat of the moment, some material for a tender, submitted it and then forgotten about it. You are now doing another tender. You are pretty sure that the previously written material would be really useful,

Many SMEs would like to take advantage of the tendering opportunities that come from the public sector. In my view this is entirely reasonable, particularly given the government’s stance on making opportunities available to the smaller business. However, all is not that simple. You might think that a small business that provides an excellent service,

The outcome of a tender is binary. You win … or you lose. So is the outcome of any part of the tender process. You get through, or you don’t get through. There are no degrees of success. A marketing campaign, for example, could be fairly successful, relatively successful or not very successful. A tender