As anyone who as ever written a tender will tell you, it ain’t for the commitment-phobic. Putting together a logical, focused submission designed to give your business the best possible chance of winning that all-important contract is going to take a big chunk of your time and a significant amount of effort. For SMEs in particular, finding the resources to bring it all together can be mighty challenging. Fortunately, there’s an answer: invest in the services of a professional tender writer.
What do they do?
It’s the tender writer’s job to make your submission stand out from the pack by being:
Compliant – They’ll make sure you stick to every guideline, answer every relevant question, and submit your tender response by the deadline.
Coherent – They’re experts in developing focused responses that directly address each question in a clear and concise manner.
Competitive – This doesn’t mean saying you’re the cheapest; it means crafting your response in a way which makes it obvious you offer the best value for money.
How do they do it?
It’s all about forming a working partnership. The first thing a tender writer will do is spend time understanding your business and secondly, understanding why you think you should win. Their objectivity will be invaluable because they’ll challenge you to come up with the facts to support your answers for each question. Can this take a fair amount of time? Sure. But it’s time well spent.
Together, you and the tender writer will identify your strengths and weaknesses, positioning your argument to show your offering in the best possible light. SME owners are often surprised by how useful this exercise is because the information they gather can then serve their business in many other ways that go far beyond the immediate tender process.
The tender writer will also make judicious use of diagrams and images to showcase what your business can do and to ensure your tender appeals to as wide a range of assessors as possible.
Is employing a tender writer a good investment?
In more ways than one! Not least because:
- The likelihood of getting past the first cut is greatly enhanced by having a compliant, coherent, competitive submission – and that puts you way ahead of the game.
- Putting a tender together is time consuming and can take vital resources away from where they’re needed most. Hiring a professional allows your key personnel to keep on doing what they’re paid to do.
- Much of the hard work done for one proposal can be readily adapted for the next. It also forms a ready mine of information for award submissions and industry recognition, so you get more bang for your buck.
- A great deal of the information you put together for your tender can be helpful in many other areas of your business, such as inclusion in company brochures, marketing material, sales aids, your website and so on.
- The ATO generally allows SMEs to claim the cost of a tender writer as an operating expense, even if you were unsuccessful in winning the contract.
There’s no doubt that tender writing is a specialist skill. So, next time you’re thinking about submitting a tender for a contract that would make a real difference to your business, why not ask a specialist to help you?
For help with tender writing, copywriting, proofreading or editing any of your business documents, contact Proof Communications on 02 8036 5532 or 0411 123 216 or head to the contact page.