To secure a government or private sector tender you need to:
- Score well across all questions
- Comply with the mandatory requirements
- Submit an exemplary response that adds value
One of the best ways to ensure compliance and make sure you score the maximum possible marks across all the evaluation criteria is to undertake a comprehensive review of your RFP or tender response.
Why an independent review by us will help you win more
A detailed tender audit or review will help you identify areas of weakness and turn them into strengths – thereby helping you win. Prior to engaging a professional team such as ourselves to assist with your bid, ask yourself the following key questions from our sample review checklist such as:
- Does the executive summary directly address the key pain points of the client?
- Have you integrated win themes throughout the bid so they read coherently?
- Are your statements and claims made throughout your bid supported by evidence?
- Do you comply directly with the mandatory criteria?
Our team of bid writers here at The Tender Team, will help:
- Review your bid or tender and make suggestions for improvement.
- Ensure you comply with requirements and score well against the evaluation criteria.
- Develop ideas for win themes and value added services to help you win.
- Flesh out your response where required with additional detail.
- Identify where evidence is missing or lacking in your response.
- Ensure your bid directly answers each question.
Our team will:
- 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
Call our team today on 0410 448 770 or email info@thetenderteam.com.au to arrange a review and feedback on your must-win tender.
The difference between having us review your tender and reviewing it yourself
It’s always 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.
Key advantages and differences of having our tender writers complete the review include:
- We bring insights into what works and what doesn’t for different tenders and industries – some of which have bid to the same organisation or government department.
- We have industry experts located around Australia in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth.
- We provide examples of how to improve your writing and what best-practice looks like (from an external perspective).
- We provide a fresh perspective and often have multiple experienced tender writers from our team provide input on how to improve your bid.
- You tap into the 100 years combined experience of our team.
- We bring insights from in-house roles held across multiple roles in ASX listed corporations.
- We have attended hundreds of meetings with procurement teams and know what government departments are looking for.
- We bring fresh ideas about innovation and IT solutions that you may include in your response.
- We are completely independent and fearless. We provide constructive feedback that is objective and free from any internal politics.
Our team is able to complete a review for specific questions, or your bid and tender as a whole. We have reviewed tenders for clients across Australia including in Brisbane, Darwin, Sydney and Adelaide.
Our proven methodology to review a tender or bid
Our team of tender writers follow the below methodology (which you can adopt) when conducting a tender review:
1. Create a tender requirements checklist
At this first critical step you need to:
- Read and review the tender requirements and any addenda or addendums.
- Create a checklist of the requirements.
- Review the scope of work, evaluation criteria, formatting and submission instructions.
- Create a ‘read between the lines’ list of key trends, topics of points that need to be addressed.
- Develop win themes based on your positioning within the market.
2. Check the RFT and RFP 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.
3. Ensure you explain how your pricing proposal delivers value
When you are reviewing the pricing provided in a tender, you need to:
- Ensure you are delivering real value and explain that value.
- Provide a detailed explanation of your pricing and any key benefits it brings (e.g. fixed-price certainty).
- Explain who your level of service or quality justifies any pricing (e.g. higher than market).
- Include any value added services and explain their benefits as well as quantify their value.
4. Regulatory compliance
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.
5. 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 reviews are conducted by our founder, Jason Cooney, or one of our senior writers with direct experience in your industry. We bring our extensive conducting tender reviews across Australia including a tender review in Sydney, Bid audit in Melbourne and tender review in Perth to ensure our review is tailored to your local area and the specific needs and themes of the geographic area you are targeting.
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
Meet our Director, and your lead reviewer, Jason Cooney
Our Director takes a hands-on approach to all tender and bid reviews we undertake for clients. He works closely with our team members to bring a combined approach to reviewing your bid or RFP response and providing feedback.
Jason is well regarded for his ability to quickly read through a tender and get the gist of what the client is looking for. He takes the time to provide detailed and constructive suggestions for improvement, transforms writing into compelling text, and offers insights into the way government and private sector procurement personnel think.
Jason also prides himself on fast turnaround times ensuring he meets our clients needs for urgent reviews where and when required.
Increase your tender success rate: Transparent pricing for a tender review that helps you win
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 aim to provide a fee proposal to you within 2 hours after reviewing the bid. We offer two forms of pricing for your tender review:
- Hourly rate. We use track changes in word to provide feedback and charge you based on an hourly rate. We report in half-hour increments.
- Fixed fee. We provide a fixed fee and conduct a detailed review that covers reviewing your draft RFP proposal, making comments and providing feedback on the entire bid, providing a summary report and a 15 minute phone debrief / explanation.
Contact our team today to start the review process with us.
A track record of success
We have a 95% bid review win rate. I.e. 95% of the tenders and bids we have reviewed for clients across Australia have been successful. Examples of our successes are provided below:
Case Study 1: Tender Review in Brisbane for National maintenance bid
Our team conducted a bid review for a large building maintenance businesses with a national footprint. It was a must-win tender response and although they had comprehensive in-house bid writing capabilities, they wanted to get an external review to make sure everything was on track.
We trusted their compliance capabilities and went straight into the challenging parts of the response. One issue we identified which was fixed and resulted in our client scoring well, was that even though they were national and put forward a national bid, they hadn’t done enough to address the regional and remote locations of some of the buildings and how they would maintain them. We wrote a sample response for one regional building and they used this template for the remained.
Another key point they had overlooked was for product liability insurance. We alerted them to this issue so they could speak with their broker and ensure they submitted a compliant response.
Case study 2: Tender review and audit in Melbourne for a leading law firm
A leading law firm in Melbourne was bidding for an Australian Government panel. They were concerned about the quality of their bid since it was written a by junior member of their business development team. They also wanted to increase and develop the skills of their business development team and the specific team member that wrote the tender.
We reviewed the tender and found that is was mostly sound and correct. It was also compliant. However it was not good enough to score well and be successful. We provide a range of feedback across the tender one what could be improved, and held two 1-hour conversations with the team member to provide further explanation.
We then undertook a second review and provided additional feedback ensuring the bid was brough up to best-practice standard.
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.
Client testimonials
Jason and the team at The Tender Team reviewed our tender at Bronze, Silver and Gold stage (first, second and final draft). We were very happy with the review they provided at each stage as they added value at each stage and thought through the tender. Their review is very thorough and when they provide feedback they provide it in a positive and constructive way. When they reviewed our drafts, they came up with new ideas about what we could do to enhance our bid, and they pay particular attention to the scoring and the marking criteria. It’s like having it evaluated before it’s evaluated.
They looked at it from the procurement team’s perspective and provided insights into how they look at bids and what we needed to do to win. Finally, they came up with excellent suggestions, and examples, of infographics and graphics. Where we were weak on some questions, they wrote a model response for us which we could adapt! Overall, it was a very positive experience and I would recommend them to any business who wants to ensure their bids and tenders are in line with industry best practice.
Terry M | Top Tier Construction | Australia-wide
We used Jason from The Tender Team for a tender review and he was excellent. Quick and response, he told us everything we needed to fix and improve and how to do it. He uses track changes and comments and clearly explains everything so it’s easy to act on his feedback. I would recommend a bid or tender review to any business who wants to make sure they haven’t missed anything in a tender response or has a must-win tender they are working on and wants to ensure it aligns with everything the competitors may do and more.
Claudia S | Professional Services | Sydney
Our in-house team writes most of our tenders and bids and if we have capacity constraints we use The Tender Team. Recently, we solicited the services of The Tender Team, in particularly Jason, to review one of our drafts and provide feedback. It was a must-win tender which we were completing ourselves, so we though it was worth getting them to have a look over it. It was well worth the investment. They found two critical errors and gave us feedback which not only helped improve the quality of our tender, but also up-skilled our internal team.
Another and impressive points is the way in which they deliver their feedback. It’s constructive and direct, but they include a lot of compliments about the draft as well which was critical for the moral of our in-house team.
I would recommend to any organisation, in just about any industry, that if you want to see where you stand in terms of your proposals or tenders, get one of the consultants at The Tender Team to review you draft.
Isaac C | Regional Manager QLD & NSW | Construction Industry
