Word count
The first thing to bear in mind when writing a tender is that word counts are absolute. In other words, there is no flexibility understated word count and if you exceed this limit, you will be penalised. The penalty could be that the text in excess of the stated word count is not considered, or it could even mean that the whole response is discounted. Either way, you will lose marks by exceeding the stated word count.
It’s important, therefore, to check your word count as you’re going along and make sure you express all of your points, and the supporting evidence where appropriate, clearly within the word count.
In order to stick to the word count, you have to edit the response once it’s complete to bring it in line with the word count, by rephrasing sections or even by cutting some of the text. The best and easiest way, however, is to create a response outline with estimated word budget for each subsection and then monitor the word count as you go. This way, your final response is likely to be about right and will only need minor editing.
Clarity
Many people seem to get caught up in using complex, highly technical language or adopt a convoluted or rather vague writing style. This may be lack of time, lack of confidence or an idea that a tender has to sound ‘clever’. Either way, these writing features get in the way of what is being conveyed and weakness the response. If the evaluator can’t understand the points you’re making, you will lose marks.
Another important step towards achieving clarity is ensuring the general quality of your writing is strong. Poor sentence structure, grammar, punctuation and spelling serve to confuse and cloud the messages you’re trying to convey and, again, may result in you losing marks.
Try to write tenders using clear, straightforward terms using language that is accessible to an ‘intelligent lay’ audience. Avoid using technical ‘jargon’ and where industry-specific terms are essential, ensure you define them as there is no guarantee your tender will be evaluated by a sector or subject specialist. Also, try to avoid overly ‘wordy’ forms of expression, avoid repetition and ensure your response proceeds in a logical, understandable manner.
Ultimately, achieving clarity, for all of us, is about having the time and being prepared to critically review and re-write. Once you’ve completed a response, ask yourself whether you have conveyed the information you set out to, whether you can follow the points you make and whether you could be any more straightforward. Then, ask someone else to read it and provide feedback as it can be difficult to rigorously critique your own writing.
Completeness
Questions in tender documents can be quite complex and there will often be a number of distinct points you need to attend to. The risk of this is that your response is partial in that one or more of the points may be missed in the response. For example, a writer will pick up on the first of three points devote the whole response to that single point. Or, perhaps more commonly, a writer will see the element of the question they have experience of or feel comfortable and will stay safe, again, devoting all the available word count to that area.
The consequence of this scenario is that your response will achieve a low score because the evaluator is unable to allocate the marks available for the elements of the question that have been missed. Therefore, you must ensure your response covers all aspects of the question.
Ensure your response is complete by using the simple but effective strategy of creating a response outline before you start writing. It is important to ensure the outline structure accurately reflects the scope and content of the question, therefore, start by closely reading the question and highlighting the key elements or components. Next, use these to create the response structure, for example, by creating bullet points or sub-headers or notes in the margin. This structure, derived directly from the question, will help to ensure your response covers all of the key points required.
Relevance
You must ensure that your written response is directly relevant to what is being asked. Relevance may be lacking for two main reasons. Firstly, often people write about the things they want to say or the things they feel comfortable with or knowledgeable about, rather than what is being asked. For example, people will often report what they feel are their current strengths, rather than report how they will deliver exactly what is being asked for. Secondly, it’s easy to miss the context or main requirement of the question. For example, a question may relate to a specific scenario or context, such as a time frame or staff group. In both of these cases, the response will score poorly because it does not report the information being asked for and for which the evaluator can award marks.
Close reading of the question and highlighting the part of the question that denotes the scope, the context or the focus is an important way to increase your likelihood of producing a highly relevant response. The other thing is, it’s important to critically review your response once it’s complete and ask yourself if you have answered the question appropriately and if your proposals for the contract really do address the requirements of the commissioners.
Detail
Poor scores in tenders are often the result of responses that lack detail. Responses that lack detail do not provide the specific information required or do not enable the evaluator to assess the feasibility of proposed arrangements or adequacy of current procedures. Equally, and perhaps more accurately, vague and superficial responses suggest plans that have not been fully worked out or even that have been ‘cut and pasted’ from previous tender submissions. In any case, lack of detail significantly threatens the score that may be achieved.
As a general rule, and notwithstanding the constraints of word limits, try to be as detailed as possible. If you’re writing about your current procedures, describe each step or each component. If you’re reporting experience and track-record, be specific and, where possible, quantified (5 years’ experience rather than several years’ experience or 20% growth rather than significant growth). If you’re describing proposed plans, relate them to the specific contract locality and its demographic features, geographic features, organisational context etc.
Feasible
We can write anything on paper. Absolutely anything. However, the evaluator will assess all aspects of the feasibility of your proposals for how you will deliver this contract. Therefore, you must make sure everything you’re proposing to offer is do-able, within time, within budget, within available staffing resources and that it is permissible within the prevailing regulatory and legal constraints. If you breach these, or any other test of feasibility, you will ring alarm bells for the evaluators and you will be unlikely to scoring highly.
Make sure you ‘sense check’ your plans as you develop them, as you write them and, finally, once you have written them. Make sure everything you propose is feasible, affordable, allowable and legal. Particular areas to pay attention to as the financials to make sure everything you’re proposing is reflected accurately in your costing model, and your implementation plan to make sure you really can get this thing up and running within the time scale required.
Evidence
It’s important you substantiate your claims and your plans with supporting evidence in order to ensure your tender sounds authentic and believable. So, if you’re writing about your experience and the great things you’ve achieved in other contracts, provide the evidence. If you’re writing about company procedures, show the evidence they are effective and if you’re writing about your proposition for how you will deliver this contract, show the evidence that your plans are feasible and achievable. Remember, the evaluator can only make their judgement based on the information you provide in your tender and without the supporting evidence they have no way of assessing that your claims are valid or that you can deliver what you propose. Without supporting evidence, your tender will come across as weak and superficial.
‘Evidence’ can be defined in a number of ways and perhaps a useful way of thinking about it is ‘the reason you can write what you’re writing’. So, if you’re stating that you have an effective Quality Assurance System, what’s the evidence, why are you able to make that statement? Do you have audit data, client/customer feedback, or quality control data that ‘evidences’ the efficacy of the system? If you’re stating you have the experience necessary to deliver this contract, why are you able to make that statement? Do you a success story from a previous, similar contract or national accreditation in an area directly relevant to the work involved in the contract? If you’re proposing a particular feature of the contract delivery arrangements, why are you able to make those plans? Have you considered local demand, population profile, staffing or shift arrangements or transport logistics?
Benefit
What benefits do your plans offer for the commissioning organisation? Very often, providers will describe their plans, thoroughly and diligently, but forget to highlight the benefits they bring. Either, the writer feels that the benefits of their plans are self-evident or they think the evaluators will work it out for themselves or, more usually, they simply haven’t considered the prospect of writing in this way. However, is incredibly important to spell out clearly the advantages and benefits of your proposition, your service model, your company, your experience or your expertise. Describing the benefits within your tenders helps to interpret your proposition for the evaluator and helps them see what it is they are, potentially, buying.
You have ten years of relevant experience? So what? Tell the evaluator why this is important and how they benefit from that experience. Your proposal reduces business travel by 20% compared with the standard delivery model? What are the benefits of that to the commissioners? Don’t assume they will see if for themselves. Take the time to spell it out – we’ll do this, it will achieve this and the benefit to you is this.
The other important consideration about identifying benefits is that they must be relevant and valuable to the commissioning organisation. There’s no point offering a benefit they don’t want or don’t value. Take a bit of time to research the commissioning body, understand their concerns and their needs and try to tailor your proposition to offer benefits that address these.
Added Value
Finally, you need to consider how and where you can add value to your proposition. If you read the evaluation information provided in the ITT documentation, you will see that full marks are reserved for responses that ‘demonstrate clear added value’ or ‘go beyond the requirements for this tender’, or some other such wording. In other words, simply giving strong responses to what is being asked may not be enough to get full marks or, ultimately, to win the contract.
So, how can you add value? Well an important point is that it doesn’t necessarily have to be by ‘doing’ more. Added value could come from your expertise and experience in the field, your way of working, your company ethos, or your shared history with the commissioner. In more specific terms, added value could be that you will recruit a local workforce to deliver this contract, thereby investing in the local economy and bringing new jobs to the region. It could be that you will create opportunities for people who were long-term unemployed or young people not in employment, education or training (NEET) or it could be that you will facilitate remote working to reduce travel, thereby reducing the carbon footprint of the contract.
Added value is the collection of features you and your company, and your planned way of working, bring to the contract over and above what is being asked for; the corollary benefits of your proposition. Take time to consider these, talk to your colleagues about what they are and then make sure your flag them up strongly and clearly throughout your tender.
If you would like us to evaluate your tender and give you constructive feedback before you submit it, please give us a call for a no-obligation quote.
Other useful resources available on our site:
Tender Writing | Tender Evaluation | Case Studies
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