bid avoid mistakes tips writing is the work of answering a buyer’s questions well enough to win the contract. That means the selection stage, where you prove you are allowed to compete, and the award stage, where you prove you should win. Since the Procurement Act 2023 took effect on 24 February 2025 the selection stage is framed as conditions of participation under section 22. You will still meet the older selection questionnaire on procurements that started before that date.
What can outsourcing offer to you and your business?
Outsourcing bid-writing is a great idea because it can save you so much time which can then be spent on other important tasks. To ensure a bid is effective and likely to be successful it needs to be written specifically to specifications set by the buyer, addressing criteria that often are hard to discern amidst the jargon used by businesses. By passing the process of writing a bid onto a qualified specialist you are also passing on the headache of deciphering confusing documents to somebody who does it daily.
A specialist bid writer works to a buyer’s specification and scoring criteria every day, which is the difference between an answer that reads well and an answer that scores. Structure, evidence and answering the question actually asked are what a buyer marks. Writing professionally takes a great amount of skill and practice, something you may not have in your tool kit or something you simply don’t have the time, energy, or space on your to-do list to fit in. By outsourcing your bid-writing to a professional you are giving yourself the very best chance to win a bid and in turn, generate profit and growth for your business.
So what can a professional bid-writer offer you and why should you use one? Read on for more information about what outsourcing your bid-writing to a professional can offer you and how it can improve your business.
Qualification and Experience
Professional bid writers are experienced professionals who write successful bids day in day out for a number of businesses. This means they are incredibly qualified to write a bid for you and you can ensure you are trusting your bid-writing to a professional service who are aware of what makes a successful bid. They will likely have written successful bids like the one you are writing before and have confidence in their ability to approach a bid to make it successful. This is one of the main reasons why outsourcing bid-writing is a very wise decision for a business looking to grow. You are placing your approach to a tender in the hands of experts who are experienced and will be able to write a more successful bid for you and do it more quickly.
Research
Experienced bid-writers will take time to thoroughly research you and what your business has to offer in order to accurately populate a bid with information that will attract the business you want to tender with. They will be experienced and understand what works well on a bid and tailor their research accordingly. They will also complete research into the company that will receive your bid and ensure that they fully understand who they are and what they require so the work they do for you will appeal to the needs and interests of that business.
Strategy
With experience comes efficiency and a knowledge of how to make the best moves to ensure a bid is successful. Bid-writers will, as they learn about your business, streamline a winning strategy to place you as the most attractive offer for a tender. They will work to outscore all the competition for a tender and make your business stand out from the crowd. They are able to do this because they will have worked on similar projects before and have learned from these experiences to perfect their own techniques to secure tenders for their clients.
Response writing
A bid-writer will be a master at how to structure and draft a bid for you and will understand exactly how to refine a response to fit what a business requires. Bid-writers are experienced in sifting through the jargon of a complicated invitation to tender and a tricky to understand PQQ. They can navigate through the lingo expertly and get to the heart of exactly what a business is asking for, then using what they know about your business through their research structure a response incredibly well to ensure that it meets their criteria, no matter how hard it is to figure out exactly what that criteria is. They will know exactly how to present you and what you can do to have maximum appeal to a business and ensure you are presented as the efficient and professional option for a tender that you are.
Review & refine
Bid-writers will also be confident in their ability to review and refine their own work, going through it with a fine-toothed comb to ensure it looks its very best from a buyer’s perspective. Bid-writers are experienced and know what works best, understanding what a buyer will respond to. This means they and their representatives can and will peer-review a bid they have written from a buyer’s perspective to ensure the bid will be appealing to the intended audience. This is something that you and your colleagues may only have a limited and biased ability to do and so could be unintentionally overlooking major gaps and errors should you internally complete a bid.
These are just a few of the main reasons why outsourcing bid-writing can be a great move for a business serious about winning tenders and securing lucrative contracts which will stimulate growth. Find out more about JGP’s bid-writing services here.