Bid Writing Skills – What is Bid Writing?
Bid writing skills & Bid Management are essential to the tender process, but what is bid writing and why is it so important? In essence, a ‘bid’ is another word for a tender. When tendering for work, you will nearly always be asked to complete a tender, or bid, that involves submitting a pricing document of some kind and a quality submission. The quality submission is usually a set of questions to which you write a response. Questions often cover topics such as; contract management, quality management, staffing and resources and other, industry-specific topics.
Honing your bid writing skills is key to success if you want to score highly on the quality aspect of a submission, but how do you go about that? Well, a good starting point is our free-to-use, online resource Tender VLE which features short, easily digestible videos covering the basics of tendering. We regularly upload new content which covers everything from tender terminology to hints and tips on how to write strong tender responses. However, to get you started, here are a few helpful hints.
Tackling your First Tender
Having bid writing skills isn’t just about the writing; before you attempt your first tender, do your due diligence. Make absolutely sure that you meet all of the criteria for the bid, such as:
- The financial and economic standing (i.e. is your turnover big enough? As a general rule, you should be annually turning over double the annual contract value as a minimum).
- Sufficient experience; do you have suitable contract examples you can use that demonstrate your ability to do the job at hand? If not, you may not be considered for evaluation.
- Having the correct levels of insurance in place is essential, if the Buyer discovers you do not hold the necessary insurance levels, you will be disqualified from the tender process.
Once you have established that you meet the minimum criteria for the bid, review the tender instructions carefully. Whether this tender is an SQ/PQQ, or an ITT, will determine in part how large and complicated it is. You can find out more about PQQ Tender Writing here.
Before you start to write, do the following:
- Read all of the tender documents carefully. Make a note of any inconsistencies in the information and raise a clarification with the Buyer (this is typically through the appropriate tender portal) as soon as possible.
- Make a list of everything you have to submit, from the quality document and pricing schedule to any forms of tender or other signed declarations.
- Plan out your workload. An experienced bid writer will produce an average of 2,000 words per day, but if you are new to tender writing then you will be writing less than this. Assume that you will write 1,000 words per day and use that as a guide to figure out how long writing the tender will take you. For example, a 5,000-word tender would take you 5 days if you are new to the process. Make sure that you are planning to finish writing your first draft at least a week before the submission deadline. This will give you a chance to review the written work (and ideally, have it reviewed by somebody else too), make any edits and polish it up without the stress of a looming deadline.
- Gather all of the information you will need. For instance, if you need to know how many staff will be deployed on the contract, try and find that out before you start to write the bid. Ideally, having the information in place before you start writing will save a lot of time and confusion further down the line.
Structuring your Responses
Once you have everything in place, now it is time to start writing your tender. Like anything else, great bid writing skills come with time and practise. But preparing yourself and working methodically will stand you in good stead to start with. Dissect each question by breaking it up into segments and use those as your guiding points for the response you are going to write. For example, you are presented with the question:
“What are your quality management processes? Include how you will monitor and audit contract performance. 500 words maximum”
Break it up! Your first section could be under the sub-heading Quality Management, where you talk about your company’s general approach to quality management (here it is incredibly useful to have ISO accreditations, such as ISO 9001, to prove your company’s commitment to these principles) for about 150 words. Your next section would be Monitoring, where you detail your monitoring processes and how you would implement them on this particular contract for approx. 150 words. Your third section would be Auditing where, as you can likely guess, you list your approach to auditing work and how you would specifically approach auditing the contract at hand, approx. 150 words. With your remaining 50 words, you can draw together the strands of your response and ensure all elements have been covered off.
Writing Style
An important aspect of bid writing involves how you write the tenders. Steer away from a colloquial style of writing; you want to present your company as professionally as possible. Avoid contractions (such as ‘isn’t’, use ‘is not’ instead) and excessive use of industry-specific jargon; the person evaluating your bid might be a procurement manager but not an expert in your field, so use of jargon may end up in them misinterpreting your response and marking you lower than you deserve.
Often, the best bid writing skill you can have in your arson is knowing when less is more. Avoid ‘waffle’ and write concisely and to the point. Whilst you do want your responses to read professionally, what is most important is conveying, in simple terms, your company’s experience and ability. Also, by cutting out unnecessary content you leave room for more relevant details about your tangible service offering.
Keep Learning
It might sound a bit corny, but the best way to improve your bid writing skills is to remain open to learning from the lessons that come along. Unless you are incredibly lucky, you are unlikely to see instant success from your initial bid writing efforts. Always ask for feedback from the Buyer if you are not successful and use the comments to improve the next tender you write. Always have your work reviewed by somebody else within your company and be open to suggestions. Most importantly, do not be afraid to ask questions or seek advice when it comes to competitive tendering.
If you are interested in learning more about our bid writing and bid management consultancy and how it could help your company, watch our free content on Tender VLE or see how we could help you by browsing our Services page.
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