Bid and Tender Writers in Sydney

How our team of bid and tender writing consultants can help you win contracts in Sydney and NSW

Our Sydney based team of five experienced and expert bid writers  have tender and bid writing experience in all industries including:

• Construction
• Medical
• Trades and building (HVAC, Electrical, Plumbing and many others)
• Facilities maintenance
• Professional services
• NDIS and disability
• Medical
• Defence
• Community and Social Services
• and many more.

Our offices are located near Hyde Park, a short walk from Museum Station in Sydney. From here we services our Sydney and NSW based clients – and deliver bid, tender and proposal writing services to businesses and organisations large and small.

Our team are a friendly and hard-working group of consultants with top tier in-house experience in multiple ASX listed companies and Tier-1 law and accounting firms. We bring a combined 120 years bid and tender writing experience with ASX-listed companies and other large professional services firms before becoming consultants and leverage on this extensive experience to give our clients  winning edge. We understand what best-practice is in bids and our sole mission is to help our clients in Sydney and across New South Wales write winning bids and tenders and secure government and private sector contracts. 

Our key capabilities include:

• Writing tenders, bids and proposals. This extends across all industries and includes writing detailed methodologies and programs as well as supporting documentation. 
• Finding tender opportunities for you. Through our tender notification service, we can help you find, and qualify suitable contract opportunities. The bid or no bid process is critical in tenders as there is no point in allocating resources to respond to an RFP you have no chance of winning. 
• Identifying win themes and interweaving these into your proposal. These are looked at from an outside-in perspective, the win themes align with the needs of the client. 
• Project managing the tender process from start to submission. Our team will create a checklist and tender response plan so the tender remains on track and is submitted on time. 
• Designing infographics and graphics that clearly convey your message: Our in-house graphic designer based at our offices here in Sydney specialises in graphics and infographics for tenders and proposals. We will ensure your bid not only looks great, but also conveys key messages graphically. 
• Assisting with complex government bids: Whether it’s City of Sydney Council, any NSW Government Department such as the Department of Health, or a federal government department, submitting large complex bids are always a challenge. We can assist with the bid management component of it (as well as writing of course), ensuring that all stakeholders are engaged and managed, joint-venture or external partners are included and coordinated, and mandatory criteria are complied with. 
• Developing supporting documentation: Including safety, environmental and quality documents, as well as a range of other documents depending on the requirements of the bid. 

Our expert tender writing consultants will help you:

• Write your bid or tender
• Review and improve your existing tender 
• Develop a tender library (to make tendering and bidding more efficient)
• Proofread your tender prior to submission and add in professional graphics and infographics. 

What we do to help you win government and private sector contracts in Sydney and across NSW

Case Study 1

• Legal Services Panel Win: Over the years, we have helped many clients write and win legal tenders for government and private sector panels. For example, we worked closely with a Sydney based law firm with regional offices in Newcastle to assist with their bid to Transport for New South Wales. They had a solid government practice but were feeling threatened by larger law firms and the competition they would bring. In addition to helping our client write the bid, we helped them strategise their win themes and figure out what to focus on.
  • Strategy we employed to help them win: We worked with our clients to identify two key points of different which they should focus on. The first was the total amount of specialist lawyers they had. This was critical as in larger firms, including large accounting and legal firms, there may be large numbers of consultants put forward in bids, however, more often than not they are not specialised. We demonstrated that although our client had a small team, they were all specliasts in the proposed practice Area. Secondly, we talked about the regional presence of our client and how this would enable them to provide legal service more seamlessly across regional and remote NSW. Both these points were critical to their success. 

Case study 2

• Facilities Maintenance Contract (Education) – Contract win: Our client was a large facilities management and maintenance provider looking to secure a contract with a Catholic School Education group with three large campuses. Our client provided cleaning and security services. Although they had a quality service offering, they had limited supporting documentation and lacked general branding and presentation in their proposal. The school had a sophisticated procurement process with a number of levels of board approval required for review and sign off of the winning contractor. The tender had a short turnaround time of 14 days and had invited a number of much larger service providers to tender.
  • Strategy we employed to help them win: We worked with our client to quickly create the supporting documentation, as well as build on their existing content with graphics and infographics to bring their bid up to a winning level. We identified that they needed to stress their performance to date was exemplary, and that they over-complied with supporting documentation and internal systems and processes. Finally, when writing the bid, we presented our client as an organisation specialised in servicing the education sector which was very appealing to the procurement panel. 

Case study 3

• Large construction company – tender library: We began working with a large construction company based in Sydney that was tendering for different opportunities on a daily and weekly basis. They had good quality submissions and a strong team of internal bid writers. We helped them create a tender library. They were producing great bids, however, they were inefficient and did not have a central depository of information and content. This meant that a bid that would normally take one week to develop would end up taking two or three weeks. The time was mainly lost to bidding inefficiencies.
  • Strategy we employed to help them win more contracts: We created a tender library for the company and trained their staff on how to use it. This enabled them to bid for more opportunities and to increase their overall bid quality. Over a period of three months, they reduced their bid preparation time by 60%. There was no decrease in quality. The opposite. They were able to spend more time perfecting their bids. After a year of the tender library being implemented, they had increased their success rate by 22% and managed to reduce the amount of time spent on bids to 1 FTE. 

Why our Sydney based team is best placed to help NSW businesses

Being based in Sydney and regularly travelling across NSW provides us with a number of key advantages. We have our finger on the pulse of the market and understand the political context of what the NSW Government and are local governments are doing. We are also well placed to write local engagement and participation plans. For nearly all government tenders in NSW, you need to put forward a comprehensive plan of how your proposal will benefit the local economy.

We can write these quickly and effectively as we understand the state, understand the city, and understand the types of local employment issues that typically arise. When we write, we write with a ‘Sydney and NSW look and feel’ and ensure the reader and procurement teams quickly understand that your business is submitting a highly localised bid. 

We can also attend your offices as required. This is generally not required for most of the bids we work on. However, from time to time, it’s a substantial benefit. Printing and submitting a bid is no problem, and we can visit your offices and sit next to subject matter experts in order to extract key information.

Our team of bid, tender and technical writers in Sydney understand the local economy, the major industries, and the way local and the NSW State Government procures. We have helped ASX listed organisations tender for billion-dollar construction projects, as well as local businesses in Randwick bid for a small Randwick City Council contract. We’ve been helping local businesses win more work for over ten years.

Our team was born and bred in Sydney and over the years, we have travelled extensively across regional NSW and gained an understanding of the types of bids and tenders regional NSW businesses are looking to win.

Small businesses are often described as the engine room of the economy, and we have helped many small and medium businesses secure contracts with government and private organisations. 

Areas We Service

We service businesses across New South Wales from our offices in Sydney. We have clients locally, including in Randwick, Belmore, North Sydney, Canterbury, Cronulla and Silverwater. Although based in Sydney, our team of consultants have comprehensive experience assisting clients based in rural and remote NSW including Bathurst and beyond. Our team has helped businesses win contracts with a many government departments and private sector clients: 

• NSW Aboriginal Land Council
• City of Sydney
• City of Wodonga
• Albury City Council
• Blacktown City Council
• Campbelltown City Council
• Hornsby Shire Council
• Sutherland Shire Council
• Waverley Council
• Griffith City Council
• Hunter’s Hill Council
• Inner West Council
• Wollongong City Council
• Tamworth Regional Council 
• North Sydney Council
• NSW Department of Health
• City of Ryde
• City of Parramatta
• Department of Education
• Department of Communities and Justice
• NSW Ministry of Health
• Department of Premier and Cabinet
• Department of Transport
• Family and Community Services and Justice
• Transport for NSW

Regardless of if you are located in the Sydney CBD, like us, or in Byron Bay, we know Sydney, we know NSW, and we have experienced in national tenders. Therefore, our consultants are well placed to help you win your next tender or bid.

How we help you win more RFPs, RFTs and contracts

When you employ us, we will employ a range of methods to achieve bid and tender best practices. These can be appointed by your in house staff and include:

• Use of graphics and infographics to ensure strong aesthetic appeal and to graphically communicate complex solutions.
• Sentence and writing structure to make it easier for the reader and ensure key win themes are communicated.
• Development of win themes and telling a good story that communicates and differentiates your bid or proposal from the competition.
• Bid / No Bid decisions to ensure that you allocate resources to opportunities that will deliver results.
• Adoptive positive language and the active voice throughout your bid.
• Drafting detailed and compelling content that is based on evidence and clearly articulates your capability to deliver the tender.
• Actively project manage the bid from start to finish.
• Demonstrate your local knowledge. Whether you are writing a tender or bid for a contract in Bankstown, of the City or even Mosman, you need to localise your bid a demonstrate your knowledge of the local area and the challenges facing the local area. For example, if you are bidding for a contract to provide medical services, and there is a high percentage of the population that speak Arabic, then you need to talk about your arabic language and translation skills. Other local issues can also be critical. For example, if you are bidding for a local Council contract to build a public toilets, being aware of local dates, such as festivals and family days are important because you may come up with a methodology that will result in a faster build and have the toilets ready for that specific day. Sydney is a large city with many different areas and suburbs each with their own needs. Take the time to research the needs and challenges facing residents and businesses in your local area or the area you are bidding or tendering to operate in, and then ensure that you incorporate key insights and any challenges into your proposal as well as strategies for overcoming them. 
• Write a tender that is focused on winning and delivering. This is also important as most tenders and bids are highly competitive in Sydney with many companies looking to secure contracts. It’s a dynamic economy. The tone and writing style of your proposal or RFP response must be one of excitement to deliver the services and confidence to win. You need to show that you are writing to win and are confident that you have the best possible service or product. Don’t forget to back these claims up with facts and figures. 

Arrange a quote for help to write your next tender or proposal 

Call our Director today on 0410 448 770 or email your RFP, RFI or RFQ documents through to info@thetenderteam.com.au and we will provide a quote.

Our team of bid writers in Sydney are based in the Sydney City and help businesses across Sydney and greater Sydney win contracts and write bids and proposals. Our Director, Jason Cooney, was born in Sydney and resides in the inner city. He loves helping Sydney businesses win contracts and we are proud to be a Sydney-based business ourselves. 

Our Fees and Service

We offer:

• Fixed project fees
• A strong depth of resources
• Industry expert consultants
• A library of templates to enhance your response

You can read more about our fees here.

Seven strategies to help you win more tenders in Sydney and across NSW

When we are working on your bid or tender, our bid writers will employ a range of industry leading strategies to help you increase your success rate and win your bid. Some of these (which your business can also adopt when writing tenders and proposals in-house) include:

1. Developing win themes and integrating them throughout your bid including in your executive summary. The executive summary is the perfect opportunity to win over the reader. Sometimes, aside from the pricing, some of the review team will only read the executive summary. Therefore, it is critical to take the time to draft a quality executive summary. This is an opportunity to put your case forward as to why you should be selected. It’s also an opportunity to summarise your key points of difference and win themes and introduce key personnel. When you develop your win themes, ensure they are client focused. It’s tempting to develop win themes based on self-focus, i.e. what you think you do best. However, the client will be looking for someone that provides the best solutions for them and the executive summary will be the first part of the bid they read. It is important for you to put them into a positive frame of mind and put your best foot forward in terms of providing sustainable long term solutions to their problems and positioning your business as the preferred supplier. 
2. Persuasive writing. We will ensure that the text we draft is engaging. Regardless of if you are a large corporation bidding for a multi-national project, or a small business aiming to secure a local council contract, the reader wants to read a good free-flowing story in each response that is informative and compelling. We recommend adopting the active voice throughout your bid, and backing all claims up with evidence where possible. it’s also important to structure your writing in a way that is easy to read and understand throughout your tender or proposal. Use headings, sub-headings and lists to convey information in an easy to read manner. Regardless of if you are writing a bid to a local Council or local government organisation, a multinational private enterprise with offices in Sydney City, or even a government department located in Parramatta or outer Sydney, the procurement processes and personnel generally take a similar approach want to read positive, easy to read and even ‘scan’ tenders and bids. 
3. Use graphics and infographics to get the message across. People read and interpret information in different ways. Some prefer to read text, whilst others absorb information through images. It’s important to have both in order to appeal to different potential readers’ interpretation styles. When you are developing your tender or bid, and you need to convey complex solutions to a problem, regardless of if it’s a building methodology or even IT / Technical bid, you can develop a graphic or infographic to summarise your proposed solution in an easy to understand manner. The same applies to team charts and case studies. 
4. Develop a bid library or some kind of central information repository. This means you must manage the transfer of information with ease and fluidity. It’s a good idea to store all of your previous tender documentation in one easy to access location (with a backup of course). Information and content such as case studies, responses to general and common questions, key personnel CVs or financial data and insurance policies should be easy to access for reuse and tailoring. It is always greatly beneficial to utilise efficient information systems in order to remain focused, remain efficient and remain on the path to tender success. When you are writing a bid or tender, especially for larger bids, it can easily become chaotic and there is usually considerable writing required. Having a solid base of information to work from help speed up the proposal and RFP response process without compromising on quality. 
5. Use simple language to write winning bids: Do not write in a manner that would grant a PhD and instead focus on delivering your intended piece of information across with as much simplicity as possible. It is as Leonardo da Vinci himself put it: “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication”. You are not looking for a grade, nor are you looking to be commended for your linguistic mastery. Instead, you are looking to create business opportunities, and are competing with many others. For this reason, you must incorporate simplistic language use coupled with a positive tone in order to achieve the best results. Our tender writers believe the key to successful tenders is not to convolute the language through the use of complex and inter-changing paraphrases and linguistic lingo, but instead to incorporate simple, easily understood, and positive language to portray clients in an exemplary light.
6. Localise your bid and showcase your local knowledge: It’s easy to write about Sydney when you are from Sydney. The same applies to regional NSW. For example. when it comes to scoring well for the local content section of a regional NSW Council or local government organisation, our writers who grew up in regional NSW and often visit regional areas generally take charge of the writing. The sample allies to different parts of Sydney. Some of our writers are more familiar with North Sydney, whilst one of our team members is from the Shire. Either way, if you want to win, you need to localise your bid, demonstrate insight into the needs of the local area you are proposing to undertake work in, and tailor your bid to the local area. You also need to put forward a plan that demonstrates your commitment to local businesses and any social courses. That means, engaging local suppliers, listing the suppliers you propose to engage and also identifying potential employment opportunities in Sydney or the area you propose to operate in. Our bid writers in Sydney will assist with this, and will also identify potential charities or social causes you can support which will or may enhance your bid. 
7. Back up what you write with evidence. This is critical and needs to be implemented throughout your bid. The reality is that businesses exaggerate their capabilities in tenders all the time. This can sometimes (but not always) help them be successful. We generally don’t adopt this strategy, although we certainly do recommend our clients focus on their strengths and strong points when writing their bids. Procurement personnel are generally experienced buyers that know how to review a tender and read through any fluff. They also like evidence as it provides credibility to what they are reading and builds trust in their minds. Therefore, include as much facts and figures, including from as many third-party sources as possible, throughout your bid in order to score well across the qualitative criteria. 

If you have an upcoming proposal you need to prepare for, or have a submission to respond to with only a few remaining until the deadline, we are here to help. As a boutique consultancy, we are available 24/7, and have lightning-fast turnarounds if required and will take the stress and workload off you in peak periods. We can also assist in the preparation of CVs, profiles and expertise, ensuring you have a standout template ready to work from when a Bid hits your desk.

Testimonials from our clients

Jason and the team at The Tender Team are great. They take the time to understand your business and figure out what you need to do to win the tender. In my view, they are the best tender writing consultancy in Sydney and NSW. They know how the different government departments procure, and they are responsive and are very good writers. Their graphics skills are great and I have been happy with all the tender they have written for us and a number of them have been successful.

Jennny S | IT Company | Sydney

Thank you Jason and all of you at The Tender Team for your help with this maintenance tender. This was a big one that we had to win and retain – as if not, we would certainly have had to lay off staff and would have lost our largest government client. Your team not only did a good solid job writing the tender response for us for this building maintenance and facilities maintenance contract, you also come up with so many innovative ideas on what we could do for the client to help our bid and win the bid. It’s amazing that the client mentioned the initiatives once we had been awarded the contract as something they were impressed by. Thank you team you are the leading bid writer in Sydney and NSW in my eyes!

John B| Building and Facilities Maintenance | Sydney

Thank you Jason and The Tender Team. With our in-house tender writer on leave we were in a bit of a tough spot. I am surprised how quickly you were able to understand our systems and start writing the tender. Jason – you were in here at 9am and were working on the first draft of the tender by 11am. Not once was I uncertain or worried about the process. It’s obvious that you understand how law firms work and how to write legal tenders and you certainly plugged a gap for us. The bid was successful and some parts of our tendering processes which need improvement were improved by you. Thank you for all your help.

Susan T | Mid-Tier Law Firm | Sydney 

We didn’t realise there were specialist tender and bid writing consultants in Sydney such as The Tender Team. This has certainly made our life easier especially since you understand medical terminology and the health industry. Thank you Jason and the rest of the team for helping us with this latest bid and the past five bids. We don’t write enough bids to require an in-house tender writer, but we do require some continuity of service so you are the perfect fit. Most importantly, we are winning a fair few of them so we’re vary happy.

Jeffrey P | Medical Services Provider | Sydney

Thank you for your help with the tender response. I’m happy with how everything went. You guys know about how to write and win tenders in Regional NSW and remote NSW and it shows. I was happy that you understood our industry, region and business and fingers crossed for the result. We did a very good comprehensive job of the tender and I think the result will be positive. 

John H | Excavation and Civil | Regional NSW 

Jason and the rest of the writers at The Tender Team have got to be one of the best team of bid and tender writers in Sydney in my view. They are really good communicators and know how to write. When you are in the middle of a complex tender, they manage to stay organised and focused on winning and work as one with our team. We have engaged their services on multiple occasions, have had winning results, and they have always been professional. Jason is available round the clock and is really dedicated to helping us win. 

Sarah B | Professional Services | Parrramatta