Bid Management

The Importance of Relationships When Tendering

3 minutes of reading

In its simplest terms, tendering is a formalised process for buying and selling. Everyone knows how much a good business relationship can help improve your chances of success when selling. But due to the formality of tenders, it can be difficult to even talk to someone once the tender is out – let alone build any decent relationships.

The Importance of Relationships When Tendering

Pre Tender Meetings (Tender Briefing Meetings) can be used to develop relationships during the tendering process. However, it should be your aim to start building relationships with your prospect well in advance of the tendering process.

Pre Tendering Relationships

Generally when selling higher value or more complex goods or services, you start trying to develop a relationship as part of the sales process; ideally you will have built a relationship before you try to make the sale. The reasons for this include:

  • Building trust
  • Understanding your prospect’s needs and problems
  • Your prospect gets to know your organisation’s abilities and benefits

Tenders are generally used for higher-value contracts. So, the same benefits of relationships that apply to selling can apply to tendering. Your relationship may also be able to influence the tendering process i.e. help the prospect in deciding what specification to tender for.

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Supplier Registration Service for UK Government – Simplifying Tendering

2 minutes of reading

A Supplier Registration platform was launched by The Cabinet Office in March 2013. The aim was to simplify the tendering process for public sector contracts

The Supplier Registration Service for Government

Previously, to bid for public sector and government contracts, suppliers had to register on many different systems to view, access and tender for business opportunities. This makes tendering more difficult – increasing time and costs.

The new centralised system aims make bidding for government and public sector opportunities easier and cheaper. The Single Supplier Registration enables suppliers to register just once to gain access to a range of contracts.

Full details at the Cabinet Office.

The new Single Supplier Registration platform was available from April 2013 for the health sector (replacing the existing SID4health system) and was extended across other sectors in the following months.

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Badly Written Tender Documents

2 minutes of reading

Do you ever wonder why some Invitation to Tender documents are so poor?

Badly Written Tender Documents

Maybe you think that ALL tenders are bad! That’s understandable. However, decisions on large purchases need to taken with care; that is why organisations use the tendering process. Furthermore, the public sector must follow rules which can make some tenders more complicated.

Nevertheless, none of that excuses:

  • Confusing / incorrect specifications
  • Too much detail requested
  • Irrelevant or overly complex questions
  • Overlapping or repeated questions – asking the same things over again
  • Excessively complicated instructions / procedures

Why are Some Tenders Written so Badly?

It’s clear that some ITTs are not thought out properly. There can be many reasons for this:

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The Alternative Bid and Tendering

3 minutes of reading

The alternative bid is a very powerful tool in winning tenders but it is often overlooked. Here is a quick guide on how it can increase your chances of tendering success.

The Alternative Bid and Tendering

What is an Alternative Bid?

In simple terms, it means offering something different to what is being asked for in the invitation to tender (ITT). For example, an ITT specifies using a particular brand of product, the alternative bid can be to offer different brand.

When to Use an Alternative Bid

Use only when there is a benefit to the customer. If the ITT specifies using Brand X but you are certain that using Brand Y would save them money, time or provide some other benefit then it would be good to offer an alternative using Brand Y.

Other examples of alternative bids include:

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