A tender bid writing company, Snap Edition Ltd, conducts a Q&A with Phillip West from business continuity firm Continuity West. Continuity West is one of Snap Edition’s SME clients and in this interview, they discuss the pros and cons of being an SME new to tendering.
Phillip West, Managing Director for business continuity contractor Continuity West, discusses the pros and cons of being an SME new to tendering with Caroline Duncombe, Business Development Manager for tender writing firm Snap Edition Ltd.
Caroline: So Philip, what was the initial reason you decided to invest time into looking for tender opportunities and preparing tender bids?
Philip: Some advice given to me many years ago was toa invest at least 90 minutes a day in marketing activities as this is the key to building a successful business. These were (and are) wise words. However, due to the nature and size of our business, we found that conventional marketing is time consuming and it’s often difficult to get good results, especially when cold calling other businesses. After discussing our options at length, we concluded that, when an organisation puts out a tender request, they are already a qualified lead and looking for the services we offer, making a sale inevitable. A closed audience – what could be better? We just needed to figure out a way to increase our chances of having the winning bid and it’s here we meet the first con. Rather than trying to convince a potential client that they need our services on a one to one basis, we are in direct competition with other key players in our industry, who all have the same objective in mind. As a result, for every contract we undertake an initial assessment to identify the odds of winning the contract (or other work as a result of it). If our odds are very low due to the competition having a better fit, it may not be in our interest to continue.
Caroline: Do you feel that your chances of winning tender contracts are improving as time goes on? What do you attribute that to?
Philip: There are a number of pros worth mentioning here. Firstly, a change in the way that SMEs are perceived in the UK in general has led to the Government pledging to award 25% of their public sector contracts to SMEs by 2015 in an effort to encourage this sector to thrive. This is mainly due to recent rises in employment rates being directly attributable to the number of self-employed businesses that have started up in the past couple of years. Of course, the larger companies are still usually better at putting their tender bids together due to experience and more resources, but they often bid without the mechanism in place to provide the goods or services. This creates another pro for SMEs as there may be subcontracting possibilities available. We have been knocked back on a tender only to find one of our much larger competitors have been given the contract and they are then scouring the market place for help in providing the infrastructure to meet what they have promised. So by engaging in the initial process, you can also be ahead of the game when the sub contracts are negotiated. This can work very well in our favour as we find we only have to provide a bite-sized bit, but it is enough to get us into the market and provide both work and testimonials for the future.
The other pro worth mentioning here is of course experience and feedback. All public service organisations are obliged to provide feedback to organisations that bid for their tenders (and most private sector organisations will too). We always seek and welcome feedback and use it to turn a rejection into something we can use to learn from with lessons that will help us to win the next one.
Caroline: Do you feel that tendering has created opportunities that you may not have experienced otherwise?
Philip: Indeed, and not just in terms of the examples provided above. We once looked at bidding to provide a testing exercise to the Food Standards Agency; however a requirement was knowledge in the food production industry. We are good at putting an exercise together, but have no knowledge of the food production industry so we approached an organisation to see if we could collaborate on the bid. They agreed, but shortly after we assessed the bid and discovered who our competition was along with who we thought the preferred provider would be, we decided it was not in our interest to proceed financially. However, the organisation saw that there was an opportunity to work together to provide a service to other organisations in the food production industry, helping them to prepare for potential problems in the future. We have recently signed a non-disclosure agreement and are creating a joint package to provide a bespoke product – the sum of which is better than either of us could have offered alone.
Caroline: Once you had won one contract, did you find it easier to secure others?
Philip: Yes, a good example relates to a contract to supply occasional trainers to Public Health England for teaching emergency preparedness. We were successful and won the contract. Emergency preparedness is one of our core areas, but this was a new venture in the world of health. Some months later we were bidding for a contract to provide crisis management software to an NHS body. Being able to reference our contract with Public Health England made our case much stronger which led to improved confidence and us winning the contract – one contract helped lead to another.
Caroline: What made you decide to invest in a professional tender writing company like Snap Edition?
Philip: The first time we were approached by a company to ask us to bid for their tender, we were going to just fill in the boxes and hope for the best. However another wise person said ‘get someone with experience in the tender writing industry to help’, so that’s exactly what we did and it has proved invaluable. To start with, there is a language to tendering that we don’t fully understand. On those occasions when we have not succeeded, it’s good to share the feedback with your professional writer so between you, you can ensure that the next application is so much more powerful. As we said at the beginning, there are many more pros than cons, but only if you engage with open eyes, use professionals to help you, don’t expect instant success and have the wisdom to use the feedback to make your next bid stronger.
For more on business continuity specialists, Continuity West, visit www.continuitywest.co.uk. For more on tender writing specialists, Snap Edition, visit www.snap-edition.co.uk.
