Tips to improve your bidding strategy

Winning a bid can often come down to the strategy and approach you use when putting together and submitting your application. Often, factors are overlooked or areas of a bid are misunderstood. Being clear on your strategy and ensuring it's inline with what's industry approved can help increase your chances of winning work. Reading articles and asking for help could be your greatest advantage. Be aware of what people are looking for and the do's and not's of bidding. 

1. Understand what your business is worth

Often businesses don't assess their skills accurately before submitting bids and under evaluate their worth. Don't miss out on quality projects and more profit because of a dodgy evaluation. Ensure you give yourself enough time to do the evaluation and seek help if you're unsure. 

To assess the worth of the skills your business possess you should conduct:

• A thorough staff appraisal 
• Performance evaluations 
• Staff interviews
• Skill assessments 

Take these results to compare and determine what levels of expertise you can bring to a project.

2. Don't bid too low

Many business are under the impression that to be competitive in a highly saught after contract you must submit the lowest bid of the pool. This is a detrimental mistake which can sometimes indicate to the developer that your business isn't aware of how bids work or that you haven't submitted many. On the other hand, if your low bid is successful, you'll lose out on a great deal of profit which you would have earnt had you bid based on the true value of your business.

Receiving an undervalued bid tells the developer that:

1. The contractor may not have the ability to deliver on the project.  
2. The contractor is careless in their approach to the bidding process which could reflect on the quality of work they'll produce.

Delivering a bid that is calculated and correctly valued will increase your chances of winning work. 

3. Use the technology available for estimating 

Outdated spreadsheets or hand calculations just won't cut it these days! There is an long list of programs such as Clear Estimate, Plant Swift, Quick Bid and more which will helps you produce an accurate and well presented bid. 

Submit a competitive bid presenting your business' capabilities to it's full capacity. Following these tips will help guide you in setting the right price for your work. We have created an eBook with 10 tips to successful tendering to give you additional guidance when submitting a tender application.