Client facing or consulting - a perspective on tendering

3 min read

By Tania Field, Senior Tender Specialist, Sydney

I’ve spent much of my career working client-side for well-established and well-respected organisations, working directly with people involved in business strategy, acquisitions, and development. I have spent over two decades investing my time, energy and focus to contribute to and become a part of the fabric, and to deliver to the objectives of these organisations, and I’m proud of that commitment.

Recently I made the switch to consulting, for another well-established and well-respected organisation, and have a new-found appreciation for looking at business problems from the outside in. In this new setting I’m now able to step back, observe and apply an independent and critical view on what good looks like, and work hard to facilitate the ambitions of clients while embedding best practice tendering. I also have unlimited access to a group of respected tender specialists that can also exercise that same unbiased, critical thinking approach.

Successful tendering is not a one-person job, it is a joint effort, a wide contribution of ideas, content, and approaches. It’s also made better by diversity of thought. My role as a consultant is to diplomatically guide clients through a process, a methodology, a solution, filtering through the abundance of content and producing a compliant and compelling offer. Always treading a line that cultivates trust, demonstrates understanding and pushes the envelope. I proffer an opinion and idea because I have practiced insight, skill, market knowledge, and hold an enviable unbiased view. This combined with unfettered access to a client’s tender team and content specialists, allows me to interrogate, curate and deliver something really well done, perhaps even special.

The degree of that success really depends on being able to perform as an integral part of the tender team. Confidentiality and non-disclosure agreements provide the construct and opportunity, and it’s further made possible by supportive clients, who are happy to facilitate an inclusive partnership, to consistently achieve the best outcome. And those that understand this, and there are many, appreciate the benefit of this relationship.

I am still humbled to be invited into a client’s business, because I know how special this is, to be invited in. In return I willingly collaborate and share my skills readily. I also exercise a dogged focus because I want my clients to win. That hasn’t changed in the transition from client-side to consulting.