Why Are My Tender Responses Falling to Win Contracts?

Tenders present a coveted opportunity to win contracts for your business. Beating the competition and winning a big contract can change the course of your organisation.

Are your tender responses failing to create an impact? It's possible that you aren’t approaching tender writing the correct way. In this post, we're sharing some general tender writing mistakes and tips to avoid them.

Failing to Understand the Requirements

Your first area of concern should be looking at the requirements. Failing to address the requirements accurately or missing out certain requirements might lead to immediate rejection. Therefore, take your time to understand a prospective client's needs and draft a response accordingly.

Using Too Much Jargon

Being an expert in your product or service, you cannot expect the same knowledge from the evaluators. Too much technical jargon might have the opposite effect and make your document difficult to comprehend. Limit technical terms and try using a language that an evaluator can easily understand.

Keeping Yourself in the Spotlight

Sure, a tender response is a way to showcase your capabilities and highlight your potential. But a prospective is not interested in learning about your achievements. They want to know how your capabilities can solve their problems. So, focus on drafting a solution-centric response.

Grammatical Errors

Even a simple grammatical error can bring down the credibility of your organisation. Before sending a response, make certain that it has been checked and proofread multiple times. You should get your team members to take a look at it as well.

Not Following the Format

Certain tenders, such as etendering NSW, have a set tender proposal format. You're setting yourself up for rejection if you don't adhere to this format.

Copying-Pasting

Have you never written a tender response before? This doesn't give you an excuse to copy and paste response blatantly. You can take inspiration from previous copy, but stay clear of plagiarising.

Including Unnecessary Details

A long, winding story is not something an evaluator is looking for. A persuasive tender response is to the point and includes all the necessary details without being lengthy. An evaluator probably has to analyse several responses, don't make them fish for relevant information.

Boring Copy

While your tender response doesn't have to be a literary masterpiece, it should be interesting enough to keep the reader engaged. By using formatting tools and including diagrams and graphics, you can make your tender response standout. These small details make a big difference.

Were you making any of these errors?  We hope our pointers help you improve your next tender response.  Good Luck.