Tendering is one of the main procedures used by buyers to award contracts to suppliers. Many companies rely on these tenders to achieve their business goal or increase their numbers. However there are 5 recurring mistakes that are often made by bidders that you can avoid in order to improve your success rate in this area.
1. Lack of training of the response coordinator in the trade
A person who appears to be best placed to handle tendering responses is often referred to. Either she is chosen because she has more time and / or she knows the file better. It can be a sales representative in charge of the file, its Director or a simple agent in charge of coordinating the technical and financial offer to present to the potential customer. For the most part, they have not received adequate training to carry out their tasks. A training of the person in charge of the file allows him:
- to have the tools of management of the answers to make more fluid the internal processes of management of the documents and the decisions (Go / No Go, validations, approval ...)
- to avoid running at the last minute to submit in time often very complex offers to coordinate and arrange
- Make attractive offers to deposit and easy to exploit by the buyer
- to be much more likely to win opportunities
- to do the debriefing properly even after losing an opportunity to improve the work
- to better review all documents (technical, financial and schedule) in a minimum of time
- to avoid endless meetings without any real added value on the file
2. Last minute: no action plan or not respected
The work done at the last minute has the disadvantage of "stressing" the whole Department in charge of the file and even the people of the other entities of the company. To give a good image of the company and especially of the Commercial Department in charge of the bidding documents, real efforts of continuous improvement should be provided to design tools to manage the tasks to be done to meet the time to all the requirements of the customer.
3. Abnormally high financial offer
Buyers sometimes complain about this fact. In addition to the fact that the tenderer of such an offer has a very low score in the evaluation of financial offers (which may represent 30 to 40% of the total), they reject this type of offer for the following reasons:
- the tenderer does not seem to have enough experience in this field and therefore does not know the market prices
- the tenderer did not take the time to clearly identify the need expressed in the specifications, which explains an overvaluation of his tender
- the proposed solution does not simply correspond to the expressed needs
To avoid appearing "amateur" it is necessary to study well its offer especially when one is new in a business.
4. Do not be aware of the opportunity before the release of the tender
Here we have to be clear, we can win an opportunity that we just read in the ads (newspapers, websites ...) but it is more likely that companies that are aware of the files well before the release of the call offer win the markets in question for the following reasons:
- They know the file better and therefore save a lot of time designing their best offer possible
- They are familiar with the client (business, process, urgencies, priorities, budget ...)
- When noting bidders during the evaluation of the tenders submitted, many of the members of the commission in charge of the client's tenders could feel more comfortable giving the companies they deserve additional points of well-deserved know well and have taken the time to properly qualify the opportunity before its release to the public.
5. Do not deposit one or the requested documents
This point joins the second error (activate at the last minute). When you run in all directions at the last minute to submit your bid within the time allowed, it may happen that we forget to submit a document or we do not have enough time to conceive properly.
The objective should be to be able to supplement its offer with relevant documents and not required in the specifications.
Now that you know the 5 mistakes to avoid when submitting a tender, all you have to do is make sure that your file meets all the required criteria.
Soon, we will show you how to respond to a call for tenders.
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