How to tender without giving up your day job
Roshan Sahukar, Tender Specialist (Sydney)
A dynamic we often encounter as tender specialists is the age-old refrain from contributors and subject matter experts: “You know I have a day job, too?”. And it’s true. You do have a day job, and your challenge when there’s a bid on the books is to meet your KPIs and help your company win work. We know your role is important; without it, there wouldn’t be critical infrastructure such as hospitals and roads and airports (or whatever your particular specialty may be). But, as tender consultants, it’s our day job to ensure that our clients are putting their best foot forward when bidding for work. Tender specialists are practised in the art of juggling: multiple clients and multiple projects are our business as usual, and here’s how we see it.
In the world of construction, civil infrastructure, engineering and renewables (in fact, whatever your sector), the work you are doing right now is the result of you or someone in a similar role dedicating their time and energy to winning a bid that landed a contract for your company. Put simply, bid submissions are part of business development – the company’s equivalent of applying for a job – and if they’re done well, they keep you in business. Without successful bids, the work dries up.
A challenge we’ve seen more than once as tender consultants is subject matter experts (SMEs) who are so busy doing the main part of their job that they have a hard time prioritising the other part: to help their company win work. As tender specialists, this is tricky because we can see that if an SME could focus on the bid in its critical times, to allow us to help them craft a strategic, compliant and compelling tender response, they could soon get back to BAU: designing, building and ensuring the trains run on time. We know the reality is, though, that it’s often hard for an SME to take a step back from a demanding role, and dropping everything is usually not an option. All we’re asking for, therefore, is a mindset shift that means you see bids as an important part of your role and not an inconvenience or an afterthought. Think of it this way: a winning tender is an insurance policy for the future of your company and your role there, and is, ultimately, a huge benefit to you all.
Once you’ve achieved this groundbreaking mindset shift (any day now…!), here are a few ideas to make it easy on yourself so you can hit the ground running when the next bid rolls around.
1. Keep your CV up to date
You’re a highly experienced professional who has been with their company for so long the last time you updated your curriculum vitae (CV) was when you had hair. We regularly see very senior people with 20-30 years’ experience and no trace of a coherent CV. It’s often these same people, despite oodles of experience and an impressive array of projects stretching back through their career, who don’t like talking about themselves. This makes it hard to help them compile said CV, yet – for obvious reasons – you are the person most qualified to speak about your experience and expertise. Here’s an idea: take the pressure off ahead of that next tender and dedicate some time to updating your CV. That way, you’ll have a version you can tailor the next time your company puts you forward for a job as part of a tender submission. And, crucially, keep that shiny new CV current: save it to your desktop and update it with every new achievement, every qualification and every project you work on – and don’t forget to document the ways in which you added value on each job on that ever-growing list. Not only will you build a comprehensive record of your achievements, you’ll be high-fiving yourself come bid time when you can smugly hand over your impressive CV. For more ideas on CVs, check out our 7 top tips for tender CVs.
2. Create a library of case studies
Just like your own resume, a cache of case studies is like your company’s CV, a comprehensive encyclopaedia of the key projects your company has worked on, and better yet, completed. Make sure you capture the nuts and bolts of each project so you’re not scrambling to collate these details last minute: start and end dates (don’t forget to document months), key personnel, contract type, contract value, what you were hired to do as a company and how you contributed to project outcomes. There’s nothing worse, in the face of an imminent tender deadline, than trying to remember, under pressure, the finer details of a significant project from in 2021 and what exactly you delivered. Instead you’ll have a high-quality collection of reference projects to draw from, which will make your next tender submission far less stressful. Check out our two-step guide on case studies
3. Save down past submissions
When you complete a tender, ensure the bid documentation is saved on your company’s share drive – that way, when a new RFP lands on your desk, you’ll have a pool of data to draw from and you won’t need to reinvent the wheel for each job you bid on. (This includes your updated CV, a must-have on file.)
4. Stick to your commitments
Easier said than done, perhaps, but an important part of being on a bid team – charged with the important job of pulling together a tender submission to win work for your company – involves taking the job seriously and committing to doing it well. Even if you are stretched in a million different directions, try to stick to the non-negotiables to ensure that you can keep everything ticking along. This means: reply to and acknowledge emails, attend meetings, and observe the bronze, silver and gold deadlines for a bid. It’s not up to your bid manager or friendly tender specialist to remind you to turn up to meetings or make sure you’ve done your homework; it’s part of your job, and you don’t want to let the team down. We understand that urgent things come up, but sadly, we’ve been stood up for more meetings than we can count (sob!) because busy people aren’t prioritising tender submissions.
5. Be a good leader
It’s often the most senior team members, and therefore the busiest, that are involved with a company’s tender process. It can be hard to find time for a bid amid the intensity of a senior leadership position, but it’s an important part of your role and not one to take lightly. Senior leaders are important role models on a tender team. So, if you’re a lead author on a tender, you’re there to manage a team of writers, to make sure the question is being answered strategically within the deadline. You may have a writing team to pull it all together, but it’s your job to empower that team and lead them with confidence. If you can ensure you are across your allocated section of the submission, it will better allow you to support your writing team in writing a response.
Similarly, if you are responsible for reviewing content, you were likely allocated a section to review because your expertise and perspective are of value to the bid team. Be diligent about the review because a cursory glance at the content won’t give the team the respect they deserve and might even be the submission’s undoing. Ask yourself: has the team answered the question, is the point clear and has the response sold the company’s benefits to the greatest possible extent? It’s a reviewer’s job to test the content before the evaluators do for real upon submission so it’s important to review the content thoroughly.
We hope you jump into your next tender with enthusiasm and that all-important positive mindset. Tendering is a rewarding experience when done well – and another valuable skill to add to your up-to-the-minute CV. Tender Plus offers tender consulting services to assist you in pursuing competitive business. Check out more about what we do here.