The Tender Team Archives - The Tender Team

Is your key client about to go out to tender? Here are some tips to prepare for a tender coming up on the horizon.

prepare for a tender, bid or proposal Tsaks Jason Cooney

It is often a daunting feeling. The moment you find out one of your major clients will be putting their legal (or other) services out to tender and knowing that a significant portion of your yearly revenue will be at risk.

With the RFP or RFT not being released yet, there is some preparation you can do to ensure you are best prepared to submit a compelling bid and retain the client. In this article we provide you strategies on how to prepare for your next tender or bid to ensure you put forward a winning bid.

Get all your references and supporting evidence lined up

Most local, government and federal organisations do not permit you to communicate with government representatives through the tender process. Therefore, prior to the RFP or RFT being released, it’s a great opportunity to gather references and stats. This applies to when you are the incumbent service provider.

For government tenders across Australia, such as tendering to the Department of Defence, or the Department of Human services, or even your local Council, you can prepare for an upcoming tender by:

Organising quotes for key contacts in Councils that illustrate and support your claims of good work and service.
Prepare statistics on customer service levels and how you have met KPIs.
Gather any supporting evidence and letters from supporting organisations and sub-contractors.

Ensure you are compliant with the current contract requirements

After two or three years servicing the same client under a panel, it’s easy to overlook some of the more basic and less relevant contract requirements. You may provide exceptional legal services and not comply with the reporting and administration requirements of the contract. This often goes unnoticed until tender time, when the client completes an internal audit of your compliance with the contract requirements.

Therefore, if there are quarterly reporting requirements and other protocols to comply with under the contract, it’s a great idea ensure you comply with these and quickly rectify the issue if you aren’t.

Gather evidence of positive feedback

Don’t worry – even us tender writers make the same mistake. Clients provide positive feedback, however, we are so busy working on the next tender we don’t get a chance to file it and record it in a central depository. Now is the time to start the process as you don’t want to be running around and scrawling through emails at the last minute.

Instruct your key relationship holders as well as team members to search for and gather feedback from the client and store in a central repository. The next step is to ramp up your client communication and request their feedback. Use your discretion around when to ask for feedback and record the feedback for use in the tender.

Make any lateral hires and line up any consultants

If you are looking to make a lateral hire, or put forward a consultant to boost your capabilities in a particular practice area, it’s best to start having these discussions prior to the tender being released. This takes the rush out of making any agreements, and also puts you in a strong negotiating position.

It also helps ensure there is a seamless approach to the preparation of the tender and everything is organised (profiles for their CV for example).

Start preparing your content

It is important to be careful here. Nobody wants to do a whole lot of work for nothing and you can never predict exactly what questions will be asked in a tender. However, it’s a good idea to start thinking about major cases which you will like to showcase, and your win themes for the response. What similar clients do you have, where have you delivered value to the client that you really want to showcase and in which practice groups.

It is a good idea to start collecting and preparing information on key cases and organising your CV’s. Plus review your bid or tender for last time and make sure you are delivering on what you promised.

Deliver value-added services

Value added services are important and hopefully you have been providing value added services over the course of the contract / panel. It’s not too late to start if you have overlooked this. Whitepapers, legal updates and workshops are a great way to provide further value, as are any innovative IT solutions you can provide. Keep track of what you deliver so you can talk about these in the tender.

Focus on the relationship

This one goes without saying and therefore we’ve left it till last. Your relationship with the client should be in a healthy position, and no news is good news from here on in until the tender. Some internal controls around who should be communicating with the client and on what level are important and can help ensure you keep the relationship on track right until tender time.

Conduct detailed competitive analysis to prepare for your RFP

It is important to keep a finger on the pulse of what your competitors are doing. A good approach is to identify your key competitors and create a table listing the key criteria in most tenders (experience, key personnel, methodology, points of difference). This will help you to gain an understanding of the competitive landscape, and respond to your tender by putting forward your key win themes and points of difference in a way that makes your bid stand out from the crowd.

There you have it – prepare, position and profit!

We provide tender and bid writing services to companies who are looking to get that edge. We service all industries from defence to medical and construction just to name a few. If you want to prepare for your next tender and would require some help, contact out team. We assist companies across Australia including in Sydney, Perth, Brisbane, Canberra, Adelaide, Darwin and Melbourne as well as all regional areas.

3:50 pm By Jason Cooney

Winning Proposals – What supporting documentation do you need

For any first time or experienced tenderer, there are a number of boxes you need to tick to create winning proposals. One of the key requirements, especially when completing Government tenders and bids, is the requirement for supporting documentation.

For any tender, preparation is key and a tender library or library of previous material and plans will stop you from having to re-invent the wheel. Our team has completed hundreds of federal, state, and local government tenders. Some of the plans and supporting documentation we are able to assist with includes:

WHS Management Plans
QMS Management Plans
Contract Management Plans
Business Continuity Plans
Marketing Plans
Transport Management Plan
Workplace Management Plan
Chain of Responsibility Documentation
Modern Slavery
Ethical Procurement Policy
Indigenous Participation Plan
Environmental Plans
Task Appreciation and Methodology
Local Industry and Capability Plan
Indigenous Procurement Policy
Workplace Relations Management Plan

What do you need to do to win?

Another key ingredient to creating winning proposals is a proper understanding of the competitive landscape. You need to know or be able to accurately estimate the following;

Competition – Your most direct and relevant competitors and the level and range of their services (budget or premium?)
Pricing strategies – Will your competition undercut you or propose a significant markup in their tender response to demonstrate high quality and value? While tenderers will never know the competition’s exact pricing strategy, an ability to reasonably estimate a competitor’s costs alone is enough to determine one’s own unique pricing model for the tender.
Services – A tenderer needs to be aware of their own services and most importantly, how they can be adapted or delivered to best serve the selection panel/procuring team’s requirements. The Tender Team will be able to readily assist on this aspect as we craft in collaboration with our clients a tender response that adequately covers all of these areas.

These factors will ultimately help drive your key differentiators and ‘win themes’ as well as propose a sound strategy behind your proposal.

Throw in a lot of hard work, bid writing techniques, innovative and tailored graphics, and well thought out content and you have all the ingredients for winning proposals.

The Tender Team consultants are on hand to help you every step of the way in your journey to creating winning proposals. We provide:

Writing
Editing
Proposal project management
Win themes, ideas, and initiatives

Call our Director, Jason Cooney, Directly on 0410 448 770. Our service extends across Australia and New Zealand.

3:10 pm By Jason Cooney

Real Estate Copywriting

Many real estate agents and property developers opt to complete their own real estate copywriting, rather than using a professional copywriter. Here are some key ingredients for standout real estate copywriting that we use to get you on par with some of the market leaders in the property industry.

If you require assistance with your real estate copywriting,

Identify your target market

Are you selling a city apartment to downsizers, or a large family home close to prestigious schools to wealthy Asian families?

Maybe you are selling to investors who are simply looking for a safe return for their self-managed super fund. Either way, your target market will drive the style of your real estate copywriting. Wealthy families look for safety, prestigious schools and location. For these attractive clients, emphasising quality and top tier public amenities is first and foremost. Price is not necessarily an issue with wealthy families and the requirement for household amenities such as tennis courts, spas, saunas and more differs from other property buyers. Wealthy families in particular benefit from copywriting services as they have the means to afford any and all expense in selling their current property or looking for a new one.

Investors also look at strata fees and distance to public transport, whilst downsizers often look for 24/7 security, lifestyle features and convenience. Demographics such as age, financial status, family size and others determine for copywriters what exactly they need to target. What is important is to ensure that the features that are appealing to your target market are highlighted in your sales copy. When drafting real estate copy, keep in mind that simple English is best and a focus on readability is absolutely key. We always engage in short, snappy copy to engage our potential audiences quickly and deliver the benefits of our client’s property or other services.

We can turn your sales descriptions, IMs and appraisals often in less than 24 hours, and they will be ready to upload to relevant websites such as realestate.com.au and domain.com.au. We write each property listing or description with perfect grammar, tone and style, and ensure you don’t get caught up for hours writing copy for each listing. Our clients often underestimate the amount of time and effort for effective copy that not only is memorable but clearly covers all features of a property. We’ll even personally attend the property where possible to ensure we capture all the key points and reassure your vendors that a copywriting professional will be all the difference between a sale and no interest.

Establish a neutral tone

To put it simply, avoid the use of clichés. They have no real place in real estate copy as such terms are usually overused and provoke no reaction from the client. Clichés essentially make your real estate copy look cheap and distract the reader from the message you are trying to convey. They do not differentiate your product from the crowd, and lack innovation. Forget about advertising a ‘renovator’s delight’ or ‘ready for improvement’. Instead, focus on a factual yet elegant style of copy that delivers to the reader the all-important info while conveying a mental image that would induce them to want to live there. At heart, the copy should be a representation of the property that will encourage any interested party to enquire and simply know more.

Keep it simple

Resist the temptation of using overly formal or complicated words when writing real estate copy. Instead focus on writing in a clear, concise and exciting manner. A large percentage of buyers are from non-English speaking backgrounds and don’t like reading through (or simply wont) overly complicated language anyway. Keep the copy exciting and engaging and forget about the fancy words that no one except the writer may know the meaning of. It is always the purpose of the copy to present the basic features of the house below in an entertaining and memorable manner;

Bathrooms
Living Rooms
Kitchen
Gardens (Both front and back)
Bedrooms
Outside deck/patio and pool

In addition, good copy goes hand in hand with beautiful pictures taken of the property with good natural lighting and furnished rooms. Copy is only one part of the marketing approach for any property but an important one that must never be underestimated.

Call us for help

If you are too busy to focus on real estate copy, call us to complete it instead on 0410 448 770.

7:51 am By Jason Cooney

Case Studies for Legal Tenders

When using case studies for legal tenders, it’s important to go into detail. Clients are increasingly looking for legal service providers to demonstrate the following activities to win with their bid response;

How to project manage large matters
Allocation of mundane tasks to lower-level personnel
Outperform the competition
Take an innovative approach
Focus on early resolution and be responsible and sensitive with fees.

So, what can you do? Especially if you’re a first-time legal tenderer aiming for a contract that will help expand your law firm and bring you towards the next level.

We provide help for writing winning legal tenders.

Case Database

The first step we at The Tender Team advise our legal clients to perform is to start a proper case database. We recommend to all clients that the prospect of being forced to solely rely on their memories for relevant case studies in response to a tender is never a good one. A case database is an organised series of cases categorised into appropriate areas of law for efficient and easy future reference. Time is money and any legal firm looking to expand will need a proper case database to appropriately attend to multiple tender responses at once without any loss in accuracy or attention to detail. In many ways, The Tender Team will be comfortable in pushing forward clients who already have a case database system in place, one that is constantly adhered to and monitored. These sorts of clients who are already organised with how they handle their internal functions are more than able to convey themselves effectively in any bid response than those who are simply disorganised.

For example, if our client project manages a long-running case, and develop a database of documents for future cases which will occur with the same client, note the case in the tender database along with any and all relevant administrative tasks. In doing so, The Tender Team will be able to perform our tender writing services with 100% accuracy, being able to rely on more particular observations and facts to provide a substantive response. Good case studies summarise all aspects of a case to its current point of completion. No details are left out so that when we start writing winning legal tenders, our responses encompass all aspects of how our clients handled that matter and are in a strong position to handle the tender’s matters as well.

Legal Experience

However, what if the tender asks to outline our client’s legal experience?

The Tender Team are able to assist by outlining this experience through a comprehensive list of case examples which show our clients’ exposure to a range of different entities and a special focus on the type of client we are ultimately pitching for;

ASX 200 Public Companies
Government departments
Private corporations

Our clients then select one or two feature case studies, which highlight their unique points of difference as a service provider (e.g. high partner involvement, expertise, depth of resources) and go into detail, give a brief synopsis of the case, the method, situation, action, outcome and results. Furthermore, we always encourage our clients to personalise the case study to place their personnel in the best possible yet factually accurate light.

Legal experience, in particular, can’t obviously be faked. We will make an honest appraisal of a client’s chances. We help to prepare, formulate and submit bid responses in consultation with our legal clients so that all aspects of our response are strengthened to distinguish ourselves from the competition.

Legal based work is highly competitive and The Tender Team are experts at crafting flawless bid responses for both private and public government tender evaluation panels.

Call The Tender Team now on 0410 448 770 to speak with our expert tender writers on our case studies for legal tender services. We provide around-the-clock service, at great rates.

Is your key client about to go out to tender? Here are some tips to prepare for a tender coming up on the horizon.

Get all your references and supporting evidence lined up