Tender Submission Evaluation
Maximise your opportunities to win
How can you ensure your company wins this tender?
Your bid team is working on the strategy of how to present your company as the best choice that meets your client’s criteria.
You start writing the bid, the due date is looming. Management is putting pressure on you to win this bid, they say ‘leave no stone unturned.
You’ve put in the hard work to get to this point but is it enough to get your company over the line? What tender response will your competitors be submitting?
How does a tender submission evaluation work?
Using a strategic approach, Tender Evaluation assists you in exploring every opportunity within your organisation to excel at each of the tender criteria. We help your bid team maximise your evaluation scores, to boost the impact on your client’s evaluators and decision-makers, so you come out on top.
Your company only gets one shot at a tender response. Do it differently for this tender.
How does your tender submission stack up against the competition?
So, how do you score highly in your tender submission?
Our consultants review the main statements made by your company in your tender response documents and we score them. From your first draft, we tell you how your tender response is scoring against the tender criteria.
Our tender evaluation scoring is based on the following proven methodology:
1) How believable are the statements about your company?
Terms such as the “leader in the industry”, “the only company that can…” are easy to make and maybe true for your company. But, they just won’t cut it with large commercial and government tenders because these types of statements can’t be proven beyond a reasonable doubt by your Client’s evaluators.
2) Are you complying with the tender requirements and selection criteria?
We help you discover solutions that meet all your Client’s tender criteria, and how best to describe them to your Client’s evaluators. It doesn’t matter how well written your tender submission is or how competitive your tender price is: if your company cannot meet the compliance requirements of the tender, your company won’t make the shortlist.
3) What’s your competitive differentiation?
Most companies responding to the tender will be on par with your company. Some may even be ahead in terms of competitive advantages. But how well have you communicated your competitive edge in your tender response? How easy is it for your client’s evaluators to understand your competitive advantages?
4) Is your proposal readable?
Is it easy to read and scan? Tender evaluators have thousands of pages of tender documents to skim-read and score. Make it easy for them by providing a quick, scannable response that gets to the top of the pile, every time!
And we do all this before you submit your tender response to your clients.
How does the tender submission evaluation process work?
For best results, and to maximise your win rate, we always recommend you call our tender consultants before you start writing your tender response. This helps us to direct your team so you begin with clear guidelines as to the direction your tender response will take.
Searching your Client’s tender documents for all notes and conditions that relate to compliance requirements and selection criteria. We now have a comprehensive list of exactly what your company needs to prove to be compliant. Being non-compliant is the easiest way for your company to lose an important tender.
We help your Subject Matter Experts write their draft tender responses quickly by giving them clear directions; any delays in writing the first drafts is a sure-fire way to run out of time when your company is responding to a tender.
Once the first draft tender responses are written, our tender consultants will score your responses and provide line-by-line comments and guidance on how to improve your tender evaluation scores.
Your team now has an advanced base from which to work and improve every draft, until your final tender response is ready to submit. We may do this process several times through numerous drafts to keep your bid writers focused so your company’s tender submission matches the exact requirements of the tender.
Matt was recommended to us by another part of Diona for a must-win tender response. We found his comments thorough and specific on how we could improve our evaluation scores. He also provided general advice from his perspective as an experienced Evaluator of tenders
Cheong Low, Program Manager, Diona Pty Ltd
When is tender submission evaluation worthwhile?
Having a tender submission evaluator working with your bid team is always a good idea. Our Clients find it valuable to have an external expert uncover tender criteria crucial to give your company that competitive edge. As well, we help your bid team be productive and time-efficient by continually evaluating their responses against the tender criteria.
It also keeps the team focussed and held accountable for their responsibilities. It’s easy to get side-tracked and go off on tangents with the bid writing or distracted by the team’s other job obligations.
If your company is a Challenger in the tender response
Incumbent companies – that is, companies who are already providing the services to your Clients – have a competitive advantage. Incumbents already have a relationship with the Client’s decision-makers, the key influencers, and evaluators; they understand the client’s preferences; they understand how the client wants risks managed.
However, incumbents can also have disadvantages. Your Client may perceive them as expensive, overly contractual or lacking in certain aspects of quality.
This is the time now for your company to maximise its evaluations scores to ‘level the playing field’ against all competitors – especially incumbents – who may do anything to win the tender.
If your company is the Incumbent in a tender response
The most important thing is to not assume your Client’s decision-makers have remembered all the successes you had. And Clients tend to have long memories about disappointments your company may have contributed to.
Your tender response needs to maximise its evaluation scores by ensuring the good news – your company’s understanding of your Client, and learnings from working with them – comes through clearly.
If your company must win the deal
When we say, ‘must-win’, we mean ‘we must win this deal because it’s a good match for our capabilities and capacities, and it will underpin the success of our business for years’.
Clearly your tender response needs to maximise your evaluation scores to ensure that you are giving your company every chance to win.
Having Matt as our pseudo client-side submission evaluator provided our team with highly valuable feedback allowing us to focus and refine our offering to ensure alignment with the clients stated objectives. I would without hesitation recommend Matt to any bid team looking to maximise its submission quality and compliance.
Justin Skinner, Senior Bid Manager, Precontracts Infrastructure Services & Telecommunications, Ventia Group.