Creative tender for promotional merchandise

The tender in question was for a new client, who, until recently had been completing their tender submissions in-house. They wanted assistance to secure a promotional merchandise sourcing and services contract (providing branded goods such as t-shirts, mugs, keyrings etc.) to a large, national charity. This was an important tender bid for the organisation and the client wanted to maximise the chance of success, so sought out professional bid writing support.

The submission required 18,000 words of narrative across 90 responses, with approximately nine days allocated for completion. To meet this tight deadline, two bid writers, Joel and Kate, were assigned from our team to the project to draft responses covering a range of topics including:

• Data protection
• Environmental
• Supply chain
• Corporate social responsibility
• Innovation and technology.

The sector area was quite niche and required the bid writers to conduct detailed research into the sector, the buyer and the client prior to interviews to ensure they had a good foundation on which to build. By following the quality assurance processes in place at Executive Compass a bespoke tender was completed for the client.

Challenges of the tender

• Client engagement – initially, the client was very busy, and paired with the short deadline, this provided quite a challenge to the information sourcing part of our process. This is a vital step to ensure our information is all correct and that we can draft a bespoke tender response that meets the needs of the end client. Once we explained this and reiterated our process of interviews and information sourcing, the client understood, and provided significant industry knowledge through two telephone interviews of an hour each.
• Tight deadline – working within a short time frame required excellent communication between the bid writers and the client, and also effective project management by the bid writers. Joel and Kate proactively shared information with one another and worked over the weekend to ensure the responses were completed with sufficient time for the client to review and suggest amendments.
• The number of questions – the layout of this tender was unusual in that it was spread over 90 questions with word limits ranging from 50 to 1000 words. This meant that we had to be extremely selective on the information included in some responses, while having more generous word counts to respond to questions such as supply chain diligence. This was challenging as our client had a lot of information that made them stand out in their sector, but some of the word limits and the nature of the questions meant they had to be concise and respond to what the buyer was asking for.

Outcome

The tender was submitted in July and an outcome has yet to be issued. However, so far, the client is extremely happy with the submission and the level of detail that was included. They have since completed a further two bids with us, enabling us to build our knowledge of the client, enhancing the quality of future bids as we build a strong relationship.

To learn more about how Executive Compass can support you in the bidding process please visit our tender writing service page or contact our team directly.