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  • Do you have a personal brand for tender writing?
    • All freelance tender writers, no matter how closely affiliated they are with a company, know that it’s important to forge and maintain a personal brand for their industry. Having an established brand helps you to generate tender writing business in a number of ways, including making your work synonymous with a name which is trusted and

  • Flexible tender writing practices
    • When we work as freelancers in tender writing, it can often be difficult to step from one methodology to another. Each person whom we align ourselves with will have a different way of approaching each bid, meaning it’s sometimes difficult to remember exactly what each customer is looking for when they sign you up to

  • Are tender writing opportunities deliberately obstructive?
    • As a tender writer, have you ever had the feeling that the company you are developing a bid to is being deliberately obstructive? By this, I mean the sense that a firm are putting needless and unnecessary obstacles in the way in order to deliberately occlude your company from managing to develop a bid compliantly.

  • Upping your competitiveness in tender writing
    • Have you ever thought of the words which we use when we talk about the world of bids and tenders? ‘Qualifying’. ‘Winning’. ‘Success’. ‘Preferred suppliers’. All of these words demonstrate a simple tenet about our profession – it’s all about competitiveness. This sense of competition is the adrenalin-fuelled boost that keeps us working long in

  • Staying focused on tender writing
    • If you sometimes lack focus when you are faced with a large tender writing task, follow these simple tips to regain your sense of purpose and keep you on track for winning… Have a firm routine Understanding yourself and the way you work most productively can be invaluable when you are taking on large projects which could sidetrack

Are tender writing opportunities deliberately obstructive?

erase 300x225 Are tender writing opportunities deliberately obstructive?As a tender writer, have you ever had the feeling that the company you are developing a bid to is being deliberately obstructive? By this, I mean the sense that a firm are putting needless and unnecessary obstacles in the way in order to deliberately occlude your company from managing to develop a bid compliantly. Even as processes for bid writing become more streamlined, with online opportunities becoming more commonplace, and the need for submitting hard copies of formatted documents reducing, it seems that firms asking for bids are making the process as complex, frustrating and long-winded as possible!

Most tender writers will have had the impression at some time or another that the tender they are working on is nonsensical, convoluted, overly complex or simply damnably annoying. Sometimes it can seem that questions are so poorly worded that it is impossible to see how they relate to the contract being tendered for. At other times, even when the busy bid writer spends all their time deconstructing a question, it is frankly impossible to see if they have managed to produce a compliant and plausible answer at the end of the process.

Because of this, a number of organisations will lose points at the compliance stage, even if they have thrown all of their wits and resource at striving to provide the best possible response. No matter how many opportunities we may have to ask questions and have things clarified, even the responses to queries offered up by the bid requestor can seem as obtuse and complex as the questions themselves. Sometimes nothing but a very large G&T and a good night’s sleep will eradicate the sense that the company is out to get us as bid writers, in some sort of sick joke intended to wreak havoc, cause nervous breakdowns or just have a laugh at our expense.

The truth is, many companies simply don’t spend the time and attention on their bid requests that they should. With a potential hundred or more requests all having to be submitted at a time, on different platforms and within different industries, even the most well-intentioned company can struggle to provide clear guidance or carefully review each bid request to make sure that it actually makes some sort of sense and can be answered properly.

Many companies are so short on time that they will put up bid requests seeking compliance by using previous questions – some of which don’t relate to the actual contract being sought in any way. This can leave a bid writer scratching their head, wondering if it is a trick question or needs some sort of devious answer, when in fact it is simply a mistake. When the bid writer requests qualification on the question, the person who developed the original document may feel a little sheepish and try and explain the question away in some rational way that actually doesn’t help at all!

Because of this, take heart the next time you are faced with a question which is random, obscure, impossible or simply stupid. Somewhere in an office there will be the person who posted up the question, with a ream of paperwork to get through, waiting just like you for the time when they can put it all to one side and head back home for a much-needed glass of wine.

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