When you are bidding for your next must-win tender or bid, it’s a great idea to conduct a comprehensive review or audit of your tender response – at second draft stage or prior to finalising your draft. The reason is simple. In order to win government and private sector contracts, you need to score well across all criteria and submit an exemplary bid in what will surely be a highly competitive process.
A detailed tender audit or review will help you identify areas of weakness and turn them into strengths – thereby helping you win.
How a tender, proposal or bid review will help you win
A tender review will help you:
- Identify any spelling and grammar errors in your bid.
- Ensure your responses to each question directly answer the question and address any issues raised in the question.
- Ensure your bid is compliant and you haven’t missed anything. When you are running your business and have to write a bid, it’s easy to get distracted and take your eye off the ball.
- Achieve best practice – by challenging your responses and ensuring that your writing is concise, positive and evidence based.
- Win more tender and increase your tender win rates.
- Improve the overall quality of your proposals and introduce graphics and infographics that ensure a professional look and feel.
- Create a bid library and boost your tender efficiency. We will point out what content is generally repeated and can be incorporated into a bid library to make you ‘tender ready’ for future bids.
Can I review my own tender?
Yes. It’s a good idea to review your tender or even have another person in your office or organisation review. Alternatively, you can contact our team here at The Tender Team and we will conduct a review for you. When we conduct an audit or review, you get the benefit of all our knowledge, expertise and the opportunity to learn what best practice is and improve your bid.
What is the difference between having my tender proposal professionally review and reviewing it myself?
The key difference between reviewing a tender yourself and having one of our tender writers in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane or across Australia review the tender is that you get to tap into our know how and experience.
When you engage us to review your tender or bid, our professional tender writers will read the RFP documentation and then review your response. We will identify areas for improvement and then provide you with an example of how to improve your writing to ensure it’s a best-in-class response.
You tap into our wealth of experience gained through writing tenders and bids for over 14 years across a broad range of industries. We know our way around tender and RFT documents and have been in countless feedback sessions giving us insight into what works and what doesn’t.
An independent and fearless review. When you engage us to review your tender, we are fearless and independent. This means there is no discomfort in giving constructive feedback. We will provide direct feedback that addresses any issues. There is no workplace politics and we are completely objective in our review and response.
We cover all aspects of the tender for A-Z. When you engage us to conduct an external review, we will review the tender response in its entirety. We can also review specific questions, if you require, as opposed to the entire bid.
How to complete a tender review?
When review your tender, bid or proposal, no matter what business you are and in what part of Australia, we generally follow the below methodology. If you are looking to review your tender or bid yourself, you can adopt this methodology as a framework for your review (or call our team of experts).
Get across all the tender requirements
This is the first step and a very critical one. You need to read the tender requirements and also any addenda or addendums that have been issued. You need to create a checklist of the requirements and review the scope of work, evaluation criteria and formatting and submission instructions. These are all critical as the scope of work will give you an understanding of the project and help you read between the lines in terms of what they are looking for, the evaluation criteria will be used in the review to help you ensure the responses are comprehensive and you score well, and the formatting and submission requirements are critical for the bid to be accepted.
It is also important to develop a gut-feeling for the tender. In order to successfully respond to an RFT (Request for Tender) you need to read between the lines and develop win themes that align your key points of difference to what the market and RFP is looking for.
Check the template response and structure
Your responses need to be simple and well structured. In addition, you need to ensure that you have used sub-headings and bullet points where possible, so the document is easy to read for the procurement team. The structure is also related to the tender as a whole. It’s important in the review that you check the overall tender structure. Key areas to review include:
- The covering letter: It needs to be personalised and brief. The writing needs to flow and you need to highlight your intention to submit and possibly one or two key selling points that are relevant to the client needs. If there is no cover letter and you are permitted to write one, you should write as part of the review.
- Executive summary: We have written many articles and blogs on executive summaries. In general, it’s important to ensure that it is direct, concise, client focused and that it summarises why you should be selected for the job or project. The executive summary also needs to be ‘punchy’ so don’t waste unnecessary words on general marketing writing.
- Methodology: Check that it is detailed, reflects the scope of works, and demonstrates that you have thought through the project in full. You need to ensure timelines and deliverables are practical.
- Pricing: We usually review the pricing to ensure that you have comprehensively and correct completed the pricing proposal. However, if you are auditing your tender on your own, you can review the pricing in its entirety to make sure the price is reasonable and also ensure you have completed the pricing questions correctly.
More on fees and pricing for a tender
When you are reviewing the pricing provided in a tender, you need to ensure you are delivering value. That is the first step and also often the easiest one. The next step is even more critical. You need to ensure that you are writing and have clearly showcase how you will deliver value in your response. It’s one thing to put figures on a sheet. It’s another, and a better to approach, to put figures on a sheet and supplement this with explanations in your bid about how you will deliver value and why you have priced the tender like you have.
You should also check for, and add any, potential value-added services as part of the bid.
Compliance and regulatory
When conducted a tender audit or review, we always check for contract compliance and regulatory compliance. This is usually relatively straight forward – i.e. checking that you have all the appropriate licences in place. For example, if we are writing a bid for an electrical company, we would check you have the appropriate electrical licenses depending on the works, and also that you have traffic control certificates or any other documentation.
The key point to review is in the contract. You need to make sure that you meet the insurance requirements and that you are comfortable with any risks to the business. Sometimes there are onerous insurance or liability provisions in a contract. We pick up on these in a tender review where possible and ensure you are aware of and comfortable with them.
Proofreading and editing
AI or a simple spell-check will do the basics here. For something more advanced, you should read the tender and tighten the language to ensure it is concise, direct and personable.
The Tender Team tender audit and tender review service
Our team provides a comprehensive tender review and audit service for businesses across Australia. We can help you with specific questions, or review your entire bid. All of our audits and review are conducted by our founder, Jason Cooney, or one of our senior writers with direct experience in your industry. We have strong experience in government tenders and well as private tenders. When we review your bid, we will tailor our review to your client. I.e. We will take a different approach depending on if it is a local government (council) tender, state government or federal government RFP.
You will get an independent set of recommendations and instructions on how to improve your tender which will generally cover suggestions on:
- How to clearly express and integrate your win themes
- How to ensure you showcase the benefits your submission offers clearly
- Ensuring your key messages are interwoven throughout your bid
- Where to insert graphics and infographics and how to format your tender or bid to ensure it is polished.
- Practical examples on how to improve your content and case studies to ensure they are all evidence based.
- How to ensure your tender is robust
The cost, fees or price for a tender review
We are able to review your tender based on a fixed fee or hourly rate. When you send through a copy of your draft documentation, we will conduct a quick scan of the documents and then provide you with a fixed fee or estimated hours to review your tender for you. Contact our team today to discuss how we can assist
Frequently Asked Questions about our Tender Audit and Review
Is there a consultant in Australia that can review all of our previous tender and bids and create us a tender library?
Yes – Here at The Tender Team, our Director, Jason Cooney, who leads our bid review team, can conduct an in-depth deep dive into your previous tenders and bids to understand where you can improve and how. We can then help you draft ‘best practice’ and prototype responses to all common questions which you can then use to tailor to future responses.
Call our team on 0410 448 770 or email info@thetenderteam.com.au to discuss further.
I need a tender review and audit to find out why we are losing tenders. We are a construction business in Perth and Victoria. Is there a tender writing consultant that can assist?
Yes certainly. At The Tender Team, we have over fourteen years experience writing construction tenders and bids and are able to assist with a complete review of your upcoming bid.
Can I get you to check my tender and ensure it is all correct before I submit it? We have offices in Sydney and Brisbane and we also have operations in Darwin. This is a government tender.
Certainly. We can check your tender to ensure it is compliant. We have experience across many industries including health, defence, mining and community services. We do suggest that you provide us with ample time prior to the deadline so we have time to conduct a thorough check and that you have time to review the tender.
How do you audit the tender process? Can you help us restructure our sales and bid writing functionalities? We are a large, national firm.
Certainly. We have experience developing bid teams and functionalities. The Tender Team Director, Jason Cooney, will review your tender process and interview key team members. We will then provide improvement and suggestions on how to streamline and improve your tender process including adopting software and AI where possible.
How to evaluate a tender?
You can evaluate a tender by reading the response and cross checking it against the evaluation criteria. You need to mark each individual question. When we review your bid, we undertake this process to ensure you maximise points where possible.
