Tender Writing
What is Tender Writing?
Tenders are competitive processes through which governments and corporations invite formal offers for completion of large projects under a contract arrangement. In Australia, any government contract over $250,000 in value must be appointed via a competitive tender process. Tender writing is the process of responding to tenders.
What Makes Good Tender Writing?
A well written tender should be client focused and identify ways in which your company can assist the organisation that is releasing the tender in fulfilling its business goals as defined in the Request for Tender (RFT) documents. Good tender writing is succinct, straight to the point and solves the problems the client identifies in their RFT. There is also a strategy to the way tenders are written so they are engaging to the reader, holding their attention while explaining the solution the bid response outlines.
How to Present a Tender
Tenders are evaluated by procurement professionals whose goal it is to achieve the best value for money for the entity releasing the tender, in addition to making sure the respondent can fulfil the contract they are tendering for. For this reason, you should try to focus on making it as easy as possible for the evaluators to find information, not confusing them with blocks of solid text and technical jargon. This could mean employing the use of subheadings, bullet points and other tools to make the response easy to read and able to hold the reader’s attention. When writing a tender, it is not your goal to impress the evaluators with your extended vocabulary. It is better to use easy to understand terminology and simple language. This is because we don’t know about the background of the people who will be reviewing your tender, so we need to use language that can be understood by anyone.
Considering Doing Your Own Tender Writing?
Writing your own tender responses may be a viable consideration for people with a reasonable level of writing skill. While tender writing is highly specialised, this should not put you off having a go yourself, especially if you have a background in professional writing and know how to research topics. If you have a qualification which involved written assessments and research, this would be a good background for tender writing. Writing your own tenders can definitely save you money and tender writing is a valuable skill for anyone who operates their own business. It is worth considering that you will be going up against professional tender writers with large organisations backing them.
Using a Professional Tender Writer
If you have a contract opportunity which you cannot risk missing, it is a good idea to engage a professional tender writer to represent you. Writing tenders is a specialised skill and not everyone has the ability to write successful bids themselves. This makes using a professional tender writer a worthwhile option, especially if you realise that all your hard work could amount to nothing if the tender response is unsuccessful.
Using a Tenders AZ tender writing professional has many benefits, outlined as follows:
- It takes much less time to outsource your tender compared to writing it yourself
- You can claim the cost on tax as a business expense
- Using a professional should give you better results
- The application has more chance of being successful if you engage a professional to write your tender
- A tender writer will help you identify “win themes” – reasons why your company would be selected for the tender rather than your competitors and
- A tender writer will help you navigate the pitfalls of the tendering process such as mandatory site visits, briefings, intent to respond deadlines and response requirements.
Save