At The Tender Team, we have strong experience helping our clients writing winning government tenders. This extends across all industries from construction and maintenance to health, IT, defence and the community sector. Government contracts certainly have their advantages some of which include:
- Minimal risk of bad debt – the government is generally quite reliable when it comes to payment.
- Certainty of time (they are often 3 – 5 year contracts)
- Opening doors and opportunities for future contracts with government
Although there are challenges, Government tender and contract opportunities are generally a great opportunity for businesses across Australia to secure revenue. Our team has written successful bids to all levels of government from local to state and federal government. In this article, we will cover ten tips and strategies you can employ to help you win more government tenders.
1. Comply and follow the instructions
You need to ensure you submit a compliance response. When you respond to a government RFT or RFP there is limited flexibility in how you can response. You are able to put forward an alternative bid, however, that’s only if you put forward a conforming bid first.
There will be a lot of compliance requests built into the RFT, from policies to insurance and other obligations. You generally need to make sure you tick every box. Answer every single question. Attach all the required documentation. Fully complete the response schedules.
The reason is simple. Procurement teams at all levels of government general use decision gates when reviewing tenders. They will firstly look at compliance, before going into detail and looking and assessing your complete tender. You need to strictly comply in order to get to the next stage and avoid the potential for disqualification.
Word counts are another sticking point which many of our clients have issues with. Governments use electronic software to check wordcounts so these need to be on-point. Finally, as part of the tender writing process, they will generally ask for policies such as environmental, WHS, modern slavery and quality management systems. It’s ok to use generic documentation but you need to ensure you tailor it to the opportunity where required, particularly for health and safety.
2. Interpret the questions correctly and provide a comprehensive response.
When you read government RFT or RFP questions you need to focus on each word within the question and ensure you are interpreting it correctly. This is because this can influence your entire response. For example, we were working on a Council tender where the client was asked to ‘demonstrate’ their experience. The word demonstrate, does simply mean describe and a brief description of previous experience wouldn’t suffice here.
Instead, demonstrate means to provide evidence, detail and how you would apply experience to a given situation. When responding to tenders from the Australian government, or even the NSW, Queensland or other state governments, be sure to interpret the question broadly and answer accordingly.
You also need to provide a response to every question, even if the same thing has been asked earlier in the RFP. This is because you need to score well across all questions in order to get a good weighted score as an outcome.
3. Respond to and answer the question
Government tenders are quite rigid and many businesses make a simple mistake when writing bids to the Government – they cut and paste content or don’t respond directly to the question. We understand the temptation. Your businesses might have some excellent services to offer which really set you apart.
You want to write about these in the bid at every opportunity, and use previous content from other bids. The problem is that the government will only award marks based on what answers their question.
Your response needs to be on-point and tell them what they want to hear. You need to write concisely and in simple English. This makes it easier to mark and they don’t need to read through generic content in order to find the response they are looking for.
4. Be a safe pair of hands the government is looking for in a supplier
There is a an old saying that nobody was fired for hiring IBM. It generally applies with government tenders and it’s always a good idea in your tender to convey that you are a reliable and safe bet. Government procurement is essentially charged with getting value for taxpayers. There is strict accountability and they are generally highly focused on quality control and credibility.
This is one of the reasons they are so thorough in their tenders and ask about complaints handling and community engagement. You need to show that you have robust quality assurance processes in place and that you have a safety-focused culture.
Most importantly, you need to highlight as much of your government experience as possible even if it is experience of your personnel in previous roles.
5. Work within the response schedules they provide
Government tenders, across the country including in NSW, Qld, South Australia, WA and NT generally provide returnable schedules. I.e. response schedules that you can complete in order to submit the tender. It’s tempting to amend these response schedules and work within your own format which is more presentable. However, just like providing additional generic marketing material, this is generally not appreciated by procurement teams.
Work within the response schedule provided.
6. Don’t use generic content.
This applies to marketing material or general material from your website or other bids. Local councils, state and federal government procurement teams don’t like reading generic content. They want to read responses that are tailored to the tender and project. They want you to be direct and concise. Directly respond to the question and make it simple and easy for the readers to find the area. Concisely and simply detail your key points of different and what outcomes and benefits you will bring to the contract.
Ask The Tender Team for assistance
Our team is has strong experience helping businesses write winning tenders and bids to government If you would like to discuss your next tender opportunity, contact our team to explore how we can help you win.
