Could you be taking on too many responsibilities?

Bid submissions can often be handled like a hot coal, with just one person eventually assigned to handle a submission in isolation. This inevitably leads to issues, misunderstandings or an underestimation of the time and resource required. You need to have the right people engaged and contributing to the bid from the beginning, and across the breadth of a business, in order to fully represent its capabilities.

Too often we also see organisations respond half-heartedly to too many bids. You need a robust process in place for deciding whether to bid and then for the opportunities you do pursue, ensure that you give the bid your best effort.

We consistently find a direct correlation between the level of resource employed in preparing proposals and success rate. In short, bids should be a collective business effort, the more effort you put in, the better the outcomes.

Are you feeling swamped with bid writing tasks?

Responding to bids is a group effort, and as the person responsible for the bid, you will need to effectively manage your workload and team to deliver the best results. If you are feeling overloaded with tendering tasks, try answering the following questions, and thinking about who is responsible for your answers:

Do you get support from the key people needed to write your bids?
Do you get access to all the information and documents you need, and are they stored centrally for easy access?
Do your teams know what they have to achieve and by when?
Do your teams know how their work impacts their colleagues and on-time submission?
Are your bid teams motivated and engaged?
Do you have processes in place to track responsibilities and actions?
Do you delegate work that could be done more efficiently by other people?

You can use your answers for the above questions to identify why you are feeling swamped with work, and what actions can be taken to lessen your workload. Do you need to work on your project planning or does your organisation have to think about how they are resourcing bids?