We’ve spoken to many businesses recently who are convinced that SMEs hardly ever win public contracts. The truth is that 25% of public procurement spend is with SMEs and most public sector contracts are won by SMEs. Plus, in these uncertain times the public sector can be a good, solid option.

If you’ve been unsuccessful with public sector bidding in the past, you may find our ten top tips useful. Here’s how to start winning public sector tenders:

• ️Read the instructions and tender specification. Highlight all the areas that demonstrate the buyer’s important factors. These will definitely be the evaluation criteria, (ie. how will they evaluate your response, and set against what?) and probably be key objectives, visions, key themes etc. Determine how they need the response to be completed and when they want it submitted.
• Read each question with your own questions in mind. Why are they asking this? What information are they looking for?
• Raise clarification questions in good time as there will be a clarification deadline. Once it passes, that’s it, no more clarification.
• Present the key benefits of your offering. Don’t be a feature-centric bidder. Your features will mean nothing without you explicitly presenting the benefit. Align the key benefits of your offering to their vision or key objectives. Spell it out.
• Don’t settle for the bare minimum. It will never win. If there are word limits, go as close to them as possible as this represents the importance placed on the question. Expand on your answers, give detail, but don’t blag or repeat.
• Keep the language simple. Remember that your intention is to clearly communicate the benefits that your organisation can bring to the contract. Unnecessarily elaborate words will not gain you extra points – if anything they might go against you.
• Write in bite size chunks with a clear heading structure. Use headers that are aligned to their key considerations. Make it easy for them to pick out the salient areas to ensure your response is positively evaluable.
• Where possible, evidence your response with testimonials and stats. Convince the buyer of your organisation’s strengths through experience.
• Have your submission proofread and reviewed by someone who has not been involved in the preparation. A professional, fresh pair of eyes can spot costly mistakes and weak areas and see it from the viewpoint of the evaluator – an incredibly worthy investment.
• Submit on time. Of course!The public sector is a fantastic foundation to build your business strategy upon, so we recommend that you explore the opportunities, at the very least.

  Please contact us if you would like to explore some potential public sector opportunities or have any bid you need help with – call 01392 247997 or email info@winningtenders.com.