A checklist: 10 questions to ask BEFORE submitting your tender
You’re ready to hit the ‘upload’ or ‘send’ button on the tender you’ve worked hard on for the past month or so. Before you do that though, here’s a checklist of 10 questions you need to be asking and answering before hitting send:
1. Is your response compliant?
What keeps most tender project managers/writers up at night is: Is our response compliant? Do we meet/exceed the Eligibility Criteria?
Check through your response to verify your response ticks all the boxes to be meet the eligibility criteria specified in the tender. Make sure this includes compliance with financial, IT and professional indemnity requirements.
If your response is not compliant, you’ll likely fail at the first step!
2. Have you addressed all of the Evaluation Criteria?
Next up, have you addressed all of the Evaluation Criteria in the RFP? Keep in mind here that Evaluation Criteria are typically weighted, so don’t spend the same amount of time on each – some responses will need more of your time than others!
3. Have you provided relevant case studies?
Case study examples evidence your past successes and capabilities. Make sure that these are relevant - credentializing your previous experience and how you can add value to the current opportunity will go a long way to helping you win!
4. Have you included relevant referees?
You’ll be surprised how many times I’ve seen tender responses that include referees that have nothing to do with the area of expertise being sought! Make sure to include referees who not only have subject matter expertise relevant to the opportunity being sought, but are also senior enough to add weight to you submission.
5. Is your pricing competitive?
Regardless of what you might hear, pricing is a critical component of any bid. Evaluate your pricing strategy to make sure it is both competitive and profitable.
6. Have legal approved at the Service Agreement?
Next up: Have you run the draft Service Agreement through your legal team? Are there likely to be any issues? Do you need to negotiate any terms?
The answer to most of these questions is: Probably. So don’t leave this till the last minute!
7. Have you included all necessary attachments?
Make sure to include all of the requested attachments - financial statements, certificate of currencies for your insurances, referees, qualification documents for your team. They name it, you include it!
8. Have you conducted a final review and proofread?
Has your Red Team proofread and fact checked your submission?
Make sure to conduct a final review of the entire proposal to ensure it is coherent, concise, and free of errors.
9. Is this an email or portal upload?
Might seem minor, but important because if this is a portal upload it will take you a lot longer than a mere email response. Alternatively, if it is an email submission you need to look at how big your file size is to make sure it’s not going to be blocked.
10. Are your team available for the Beauty Parade?
In most cases, post submitting a tender you will be short-listed and asked to attend a presentation. Before this happens you need to make sure that all of the key stakeholders in your submission are around and available to present when asked. Otherwise you’ll likely lose your pitch at the last minute – which can be very annoying!
Happy hunting on your next tender opportunity and when all else fails, feel free to get in touch with us for a free 30 minute consultation to discuss some of the ways you can win your next tender opportunity!
