Smart tips for writing winning proposal for government tender!

You are an SME, working really hard day in and day out to grow your business and hence the sales pipeline for it. But does your sales pipeline include government tenders too? If not, then clearly you must start working towards this immediately.

But as an SME, do you also fear that you won’t be relevant or large enough to apply for a government tender.

Let’s look at some statistics, for you to change this opinion!

The central government of India has mandated the PSUs, under the public procurement policy, to procure at least 20% of their government tender purchases from SMEs.

Another example is of UK government which is already on track to double up the proportions it directly spends on SMEs by 2022. While, this number was only 6.5% of total government expenditure that got directed to SMEs in 2009, its trending to go up to 13% by 2022.

So what do all of these data and information point towards. Clearly SMEs are winning government tenders, by following a methodical approach and being consistently involved in the entire process end to end, and not dropping it mid-way.

Here are few tips to follow for your SME, when you choose a government tender notice to start working on your tender proposal document:

1. Meet the buyer for more info on the tender notice — Tender notices are not that simple to understand, that’s another reason lot of people shy away from even picking up the government tenders to work on writing the proposal documents. That’s why it is highly recommended to meet the relevant people at the buying authority end, and clarify your doubts and queries.
2. Meeting them will always provide you with deeper insight and their main intention of releasing the tender notice. This will help you when you sit down to write the proposal, as then you can put correct amount of weightage to respective sections accordingly.
3. Respond to every question — Once you have got more understanding on the requirements of the buying authority, then start writing your proposal. Be very sure to go through the entire document carefully, and respond back to each and every single question/query with precise information.
4. Just trying to put up standard pre-drafted response will not impress the buyers. They go through so many proposals, and can make out the fake from real information.
5. Art of writing — This is more to do with the fact that how well are you able to use the similar language as the buying authority. We are not talking about heavy jargons or complex English here. Using the similar terms as used by the buying authority, will very quickly break the ice, and also helps them understand your responses better.
6. It’s almost like the manner in which you respond back to someone’s question in person. Keep it simple, direct and use the buyers words to communicate.
7. Supporting document checklist — Another important piece for completing the tender proposal. Make sure you have made a simple checklist of all the necessary supporting documents that will be required while submitting the tender proposal. Stack them in the progressive order as per the responses in the proposal document and attach them together when submitting your final proposal to the buying authority.

“Take a print of below checklist and paste it on your working desk”

Follow the below checklist to avoid rejection:

1. Always have your documents in one of the following formats only — PDF/XLS/RAR/DWF
2. Ensure that you have collected all the important documents that need to be attached with the bid proposal. Missing out on even one document that has been asked in the tender document, will draw you towards rejection.
3. For clear and legible scanned documents, always follow — 75–100 DPI during the scanning process of documents.
4. Ensure that you click on “Freeze Bid” Button to have the bid submission process completed. If you have not completed this step, your bid shall be considered incomplete/invalid.
5. Once you have downloaded the tender document, Follow the BOQ template as is, don’t try to modify/edit it, else you may face rejection.
6. Just enter the relevant values and bidder name.
7. In case you are making offline payment of EMD, ensure that you have the scan copy of same submitted during the bid submission, otherwise your bid will get rejected.
8. Always submit your bid well before the submission end date and time (as per the server system clock), any delay in submission will not be addressed later on.

If your SME would like to get more assistance in understanding the above article better, and need help with tender response techniques; Bidassist team would be more than happy to connect with you and help you further. Our team will help you in shortlisting and working towards a winning strategy for government tenders.

Reach out to us on 1800 102 9586 or you may write to us at contact@bidassist.com .

Originally published at bidassist.com.