Bid consultancy

Fix what’s making bidding harder than it needs to be

From bid/no-bid decisions and review processes to team roles, systems and strategy, we help you find what is getting in the way and put a better way of working in place.

Tell us what’s going on
Women working together in a business meeting
Quick sense check

What are you trying to solve?

You do not need to work out which service you need before you speak to us, but this should help point you in the right direction.

You have a developed live bid

You want an independent evaluator view before the submission goes in.

That sounds like our Bidsmithery™ Bid Review →
Something in the way you bid is not working

You want to improve the strategy, process, decisions, systems or wider bidding function.

You’re in the right place →
You have the result and feedback

You want to understand what happened and what to take into the next opportunity.

Have a look at Bid Debrief →
You want the team to build capability

The goal is skills, confidence and helping people become stronger bidders themselves.

Explore Training & Workshops →
What brings people here?

Something about the way bidding works is getting in the way

Sometimes it is one obvious issue. Other times, it is a collection of small frustrations that have slowly become part of the process.

“We bid for far too many things.”
“Every tender somehow becomes urgent.”
“Everyone reads the ITT and specification differently.”
“The evidence exists. Somewhere.”
“Nobody is quite sure who owns what.”
“We are not learning enough from the bids we lose.”
If any of those sound familiar, there is probably something useful for us to look at.
Where is the friction?

A bid problem can start long before anybody opens Word

We can look across the full bidding journey and work out where time, information, ownership or decision-making starts to fall apart.

01
Find
02
Qualify
03
Decide
04
Plan
05
Draft
06
Review
07
Submit
08
Learn
If one stage keeps making everything after it harder, that is usually a pretty good place to start.
Consultancy packages

We kept getting asked for these, so we made them easier to buy

Some bidding problems come up again and again, so we’ve pulled those into defined consultancy packages. Click any option to see the kind of work we can cover.

We can help you:
  • Review how bid/no-bid decisions are currently being made.
  • Agree practical criteria your team can use consistently.
  • Balance strategic fit, evidence, competition, capacity and commercial reality.
  • Create a decision process that works without becoming another form nobody uses.
  • Give the team more confidence to say no when an opportunity does not stack up.
We can look at:
  • How opportunities currently move through the business.
  • Where handovers, approvals and reviews slow things down.
  • Who is being brought in too early, too late or not at all.
  • Where work is duplicated or constantly recreated.
  • A practical future process that fits the team you actually have.
Depending on what is relevant, we can review:
  • Roles, ownership and responsibilities.
  • Pipeline and opportunity planning.
  • Bid/no-bid governance.
  • Review and approval processes.
  • Evidence, reusable content and knowledge management.
  • Systems, templates and tools.
  • How wins and losses are being used to improve future bids.
We can work through:
  • What the buyer appears to care about most.
  • Strengths, vulnerabilities and evidence gaps.
  • Likely differentiators and win themes.
  • How the response needs to position the organisation.
  • Areas that need attention before drafting gets too far ahead.
  • Whether anything should change before more resource is committed.
We can help you:
  • Work out what content and evidence is actually worth keeping.
  • Identify gaps and outdated material.
  • Separate reusable evidence from answers that should not simply be copied.
  • Create a structure people can genuinely find things in.
  • Make useful proof easier to bring into future bids.
We can help you:
  • Work out what you are already doing that is relevant and worth talking about.
  • Identify the priorities, evidence and outcomes that strengthen your positioning.
  • Make commitments clearer, more specific and easier for an evaluator to understand.
  • Create a practical structure your team can adapt when relevant questions appear.
  • Connect what matters to your organisation with what the buyer is actually asking bidders to demonstrate.
Need something more bespoke?

We can build the consultancy around what is actually going on

Plenty of bidding problems cross more than one area. You might have a process issue that is partly about the team, partly about systems and partly about decisions that were made years ago and never revisited.

Tell us what is happening, what you have already tried and what needs to be different by the end. We can then scope the smallest useful piece of work around that.

A two-hour problem does not need turning into a twelve-week project.
Two women working through business documents together
What should be different afterwards?

Consultancy should leave you with something useful

The point is to make the way your organisation bids clearer, easier and more effective, with changes your team can keep using after the consultancy ends.

Better bid decisions

Spend time on opportunities that genuinely deserve the team’s attention.

Clearer ownership

People know who is responsible, when they need to be involved and what they need to deliver.

Less deadline drama

Build realistic internal milestones so every tender does not become a last-minute emergency.

Reviews with a purpose

Give reviewers a clear job instead of sending the same document to everybody for “thoughts”.

Evidence people can find

Make useful proof, examples and results easier to locate and use when the next opportunity lands.

Learning that stays

Use what you discover to make future bids easier rather than solving the same problem repeatedly.

What this can change

Sometimes the biggest win is knowing which bids deserve your time

Small team reviewing documents together
Small team · Training & education
Bid/No-Bid Reset

“We stopped bidding for everything we could deliver.”

We used to bid for anything we knew we could deliver, but as a small team it was taking up far too much time.

When we lost, it really affected morale and left us wondering whether we should be bidding at all.

Melissa helped us put a proper bid/no-bid process in place so we can focus on the opportunities actually worth pursuing, which has saved us so much time and made bidding feel worthwhile again.

LT* Managing Director, Training & Education Provider

Some clients are happy for us to share that we have worked together and celebrate the result, while others prefer their relationship with Bidsmithery™ to remain completely private.

Your tender documents, commercial information, consultancy work and the fact that you are working with us are treated as confidential from the outset.

We only share a client relationship or result where we have permission to do so.

Consultancy pricing

Clear starting points, with the scope agreed before we begin

Some consultancy fits neatly into one of the packages above, while larger or more specific pieces of work need to be scoped around your organisation. In both cases, the work and cost are agreed before anything starts.

Defined consultancy

Fixed-scope packages

Packages from £1,495 + VAT

For a defined piece of work such as the Bid/No-Bid Reset, Bid Process MOT or another package with a clear starting point and outcome.

  • Clear scope agreed before we begin.
  • Defined output and outcome.
  • Fixed price for the agreed package.
  • Practical recommendations your team can continue using.
Bespoke consultancy

Scoped around your organisation

Bespoke work from £1,995 + VAT

For work that needs to be shaped around your team, bidding function, strategy, systems or a combination of several areas.

  • Start with what you need to improve.
  • Scope only the work that will be useful.
  • Agree the project and fixed quote before work begins.
  • Bring in trusted specialist support where the project genuinely needs it.
Larger projects, multi-team reviews and work requiring additional specialist input are scoped individually.
VCSE organisation with under £1m turnover?

We have different rates for eligible charities, CICs and other VCSE organisations below £1m annual turnover, so the standard consultancy prices above may not apply to you.

See VCSE support
Bid consultancy FAQs

A few things you might be wondering

No. Tell us what is happening and what you want to improve. If one of the defined packages fits, we can use that as the starting point. If the issue crosses several areas, we can scope something more bespoke.
Yes. We can look at how opportunities are currently qualified, who makes the decision, what information the team is using and whether the process is helping you focus resources on the opportunities worth pursuing. From there, we can build a practical approach your team can use consistently.
Yes. That can include how opportunities enter the business, bid/no-bid decisions, planning, contributors, evidence gathering, reviews, approvals, submission and what happens after the result. The scope depends on the size and complexity of your bidding function, so we agree what is worth looking at before the project begins.
Yes. We can look at how opportunities, evidence, previous content, templates and useful information are currently being stored and used. The goal is to make useful material easier to find and reuse without ending up with a library full of generic old answers that nobody quite trusts.
Absolutely. Consultancy is often most useful when there is already plenty of internal expertise but the team wants an independent view of how the function is operating. We can work alongside your bid lead, SMEs, leadership team or wider contributors without replacing the people who already know the business.
That can happen. Sometimes the work identifies a capability gap that would be better addressed through a workshop, mentoring or team development afterwards. We can recommend the most useful next step without automatically turning the consultancy into a larger project.
Yes. If your team needs regular strategic input rather than one defined consultancy project, ongoing support may make more sense. We can look at what you need and whether The Partnership or another ongoing arrangement would suit the way your team bids.
Bring us the messy version

Tell us what’s going on

You do not need a consultancy brief or a perfectly diagnosed problem. Tell us what is happening, what is frustrating the team and what you would like to work better, and we can work out where experienced support would be most useful.

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