Know when to bid, when to walk away, and how to plan a winning approach. Practical bid strategy advice from Bidsmithery™, written by an experienced bid writer and evaluator.
What is a bid writing storyboard for UK tenders with mixed criteria? A bid storyboard for UK tenders is a one-page planning tool that maps your tender response before anyone starts drafting. It turns the ITT questions, scoring criteria, and weightings into a clear structure so your team knows what to say, where to say…
Can UK contract award notices help you understand why a competitor won a tender? Yes, to a degree. UK contract award notices don’t show the full scored responses, but they do contain enough information to help you work backwards and identify patterns in what buyers reward. Ever looked at a competitor win and thought, “What…
What is a bid assumptions log? A bid assumptions log is a one-page record of the key things you’ve assumed to price the contract. It states what you included, what you excluded, and what you need from the buyer to deliver at that price. It prevents pricing clarifications because it removes “silent” assumptions. The buyer…
How do evaluators read a UK tender in the first 90 seconds? They don’t “read” it like a brochure. In the first 90 seconds of UK tender evaluation, evaluators usually scan to get their bearings, confirm you’ve answered the question, and decide how easy you’ll be to score. That early skim is about structure, signposting,…
If you’ve ever pressed submit on a UK tender and then had that quiet moment of doubt about whether everything was actually included, you’ll understand why this matters. A tender compliance matrix is one of the simplest tools you can use to reduce that risk.It doesn’t have to be really long, just one clear page…
You can be brilliant at delivery and still get a “thanks but no thanks” email. Annoying, isn’t it? Evaluators score what’s on the page, under time pressure, against the published criteria. If they can’t find it fast, it basically doesn’t exist. Below are 10 very real, very fixable bid proposal mistakes that sink good organisations,…
Every tender looks tempting at first. A shiny contract value, a neat deadline, a buyer with an official logo. Lovely. Then you open the pack and it’s 94 pages of gobbledegook and the questions don’t match the spec. Classic. If bids, tenders, or grants pay your wages, time is your most expensive resource. So let’s…