Bids, Tenders and Proposals: Winning Business through Best Practice (Bids, Tenders & Proposals: Winning Business Through Best)

Follow the client's instructions. If you choose to do something different, you have to justify it convincingly.

Keep bids direct and to the point. The right choice of style will strengthen your image as the right source of professional advice.

Apply a structured approach to managing the development of the bid. Remember, in asking you to prepare a bid the client is setting you a test: the quality of your response will be seen as a proxy for your performance of the work.

Don't feed clients data they have already. It's your ideas and your insights that are important.

Recognize that the client sees your work as part of a process to be translated into action, not as an end product in itself.

Don't commit yourself to an unrealistic work plan or lead the client to expect results you cannot deliver. Show you have thought the programme and its challenges through.

Put energy and enthusiasm into your writing. The contract is important to the client and it has to be seen as important to you.

Keep a close eye on quality all the way through the development and writing of the bid.

Understand what the client values. Make this a strong feature of your bid. Add value by offering more.

In competitions for service contracts and consultancy there is seldom a second prize. The winner usually takes all. To write a winning tender it is not enough just to be the best value for money: you have to demonstrate your value throughout the bid and communicate it to the client emphatically and irresistibly.