Using evidence in bid responses

How do you earn those elusive last few marks on a tender to give you the edge over the other tenderers? I believe that the answer is not to spend hours on making your submission look pretty, but to spend those hours gathering specific evidence to support your response. And there are four quick ways to do this, says Red Bid Director, Carolyn Rogers.

Facts and Figures

Try not to use general claims such as, “we have one of the highest placement rates in the financial services sector in NSW” . Say instead, “we have placed 126 candidates into 21 financial service clients in NSW in the last 6 months. "

Likewise saying, “62% of our successful candidates are generated via our existing networks, ” is far more compelling than “most candidates are sourced via our networks. "

Reinforcement

When responding to a question about commitment to sustainability – anyone can put together a response that says, “we work with an environmental partner or we use reusable mugs, ” but winning bids support these statements with photos of the mugs or attach emails/letters from the environmental partners as evidence of these practices in action.

Internal business process improvements

Take time to include in your response solid evidence of improved internal business processes. Examples of these can be:

Back all of these up with numbers, charts or tables demonstrating the business improvements.

Increased revenue or profitability

Decrease in customer complaints

Results of employee engagement surveys year-on-year

Training and development

Case Studies

These need to be specific, relevant, easy to read and jargon free. A good case study will tell a story rather than include a bullet pointed list of actions. Make sure you include relevant data and specific numbers – it's far better to say, “we advertised on SEEK, LinkedIn and our website within 2 hours of receipt of the role and received 99 applications in 3 business days, ” than it is to say, “we advertised the role. " Where possible ensure the case studies are less than 12 months old and contain details of a referee so that the claims made can be independently checked.

One final hint

Ty not to populate your response with old testimonials – a testimonial only has true resonance if it is relatively recent, can be checked by the bid evaluator and is relevant to the bid itself.