Five questions before you bid on a tender.
Bidding on everything costs more than letting a few go, but nobody can walk away on a hunch. This is the shortest grid that makes the decision explicit. It does not decide for you: it forces you to decide, and to write down why.
- Ten minutes, two people, the day the tender lands — not the night before submission.
- One answer per criterion: yes, no, or “we do not know”. “We do not know” counts as a no: it is information, not a shade of grey.
- Write the reason in one line. That line is what has value in six months, not the score.
- 01
Have we already delivered something comparable?
You will discover the scope while producing it. The pricing will be an estimate, and the margin will follow the estimate.
- 02
Do we know this client, or someone who advises them?
You are bidding to a stranger, against competitors who may not be strangers. An existing relationship moves the outcome more than the quality of the bid.
- 03
Will the decision rest on something other than price alone?
If the lowest bid wins and you are not it, the preparation is already lost the moment it starts.
- 04
Do we know who decides, and have we been able to speak to them?
You are writing for a scoring grid whose real weightings you cannot see.
- 05
Could we actually deliver it, on the dates announced, if we win?
Winning work you cannot deliver costs more than losing it, and you pay for it on the next projects.
How to read it
Two “no” answers out of five, and the cost of preparing probably exceeds the expected return. Three, and the question is no longer whether you bid, but why you are still considering it.
That threshold is not a mathematical rule and comes from no study: it is a starting point. Keep the grid across ten bids, compare it with what you actually won, and move the threshold. Your own history sets it, not us.
- It does not replace a director’s decision. A bid with two “no” answers is sometimes worth taking, to get into an account or to fill capacity — as long as that is said out loud.
- It says nothing about the quality of your bid. It says whether one should be written at all.
- It is only worth anything if you write the reasons down. A grid full of ticks and no sentences will teach you nothing in six months.