Make it look pretty: forget what you think you know about tender writers
Roshan Sahukar, Tender Specialist (Sydney)
One of my favourite things about being a tender specialist at Tender Plus is bringing our clients along on the tender writing journey with us. What we do as tender strategists and writers and project managers (all of which – and more – falls under the job description of a tender specialist) is frequently met with head-scratching and general bewilderment from a client’s bid team at kick-off. But it’s often not very long before they start to realise the genius of having a team of seasoned tender consultants on board.
We do so much more than formatting
As tender writers, the initial response we might get from our clients’ subject matter experts is “Oh, you’ll make it look pretty”, or “You’re here to fix our formatting”. While our talented tender management team does actually do both of those things to a certain extent (especially if you replace “pretty” with compelling and “formatting” with compliance), our skills are far more diverse than we often get credit for initially. I say initially because while a client’s bid team might take a while to realise our value, they usually get there in the end and when they do it’s a great feeling. Yes, as tender coordinators we do design a polished tender template that is easy for evaluators to follow. And we do work with graphic designers to turn our clients’ technical solutions into meaningful graphics that look great on the page. And we do present our clients’ tender responses in an attractive and logical way to really sell their solution. But these things are not all we have to offer. And I love having a front row seat to the evolution, the journey of realisation, that our more sceptical clients find themselves on during a tender process.
You are the experts. And we’re the tender experts
For starters, we have a knack for getting the best out of our subject matter experts. Whether you’re a last-minute, fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants kind of operator or a straight-A student type who puts the work in early, it’s likely our tender specialists have worked with a personality like yours and we know how to coax your team into creating the best tender response for your business.
Secondly, while we may not be experts in the subject matter like our clients are, it’s very likely that we’ve worked on a similar tender for one of our many high-profile clients. At Tender Plus, our team members are not experts in building hospitals or rail infrastructure or defence projects, but we are experts in writing strategic, compelling and compliant tenders for all of those things. While our clients may not realise that immediately, if they are struggling with an approach and need some help, they soon realise that our vast and varied tendering experience is actually quite helpful to them in formulating a winning response.
Another step on the journey towards tender writer appreciation is the day a subject matter expert realises they haven’t written a word and they have a looming deadline. Blueprinting is a failsafe method that eliminates the terror of a blank page and a blinking cursor. The sooner we can engage our subject matter experts in their tender documents, the better, and our blueprinting process is the key. Blueprinting is the way we structure a tender response to comply with the tender requirements. It allows the subject matter experts to see at a glance what the tender requirements are and gives them a structure to follow while also ensuring nothing is overlooked. This allows the subject matter experts to begin to think about the question and allows them to start to fill in the blanks. They often find that the rest of the content flows from there. So, where a subject matter expert might otherwise experience blank-page paralysis, the simplicity of our tried-and-tested blueprinting process means the client is never actually faced with a blank page.
The best bit
By far my favourite part of the client journey is when it dawns on our subject matter experts that our work, as tender specialists, is indispensable. It might be when they realise that, though they are an undisputed world expert on a certain topic, they absolutely need our help distilling their vast array of detailed technical knowledge into a paragraph that an evaluator can understand. Or perhaps it’s the morning they are sitting in a meeting room with colleagues who have differing views on how to answer the question and they’ve reached an impasse that only a high-level diplomat (or, as it turns out, an experienced tender specialist) is equipped to resolve. Or it might be the day they realise they are ten pages over the page limit and need help cutting the content down without losing precious technical detail and risking non compliance. The pleading look in their eyes says it all. As does the email they send with the simple subject line: “Help!” And when we do lend our expert assistance – and we will – the moment they depart from “what do you even do?” and arrive at “we couldn’t have done it without you” is the sweetest moment of them all.
Need professional tender writing or tender consulting services? Tender Plus offers tender management and support in Sydney, Brisbane, Perth and Australia wide. Click here to learn more about what we do. It’s so much more than formatting.