Bid win themes are one of the cornerstones of strong, persuasive and evidence-based bid writing. They allow you to meaningfully differentiate your tender from the authority, demonstrating you are best placed to deliver against the scope of works.
Our team of expert bid writers are highly experienced in incorporating clients’ win themes across all industries and sectors, including construction, health and social care and facilities management. Read more below to learn about bid win themes and how they can support a successful submission.
What are bid win themes?
Also referred to as USPs, bid win themes are recurring elements within your responses to the quality question set. Bid win themes are highly dependent on your company and the services you provide, but could include:
Value for money
Different from simply pricing keenly, value for money could be added value, such as offering an extended aftercare period or assigning staff to undertake non-contractual duties.
It could also comprise cost savings, where the functional specification is met at a lower cost – for instance, by completing scheduled works faster than the specification dictates or using ‘equal or approved materials’ to provide savings at a lower unit price.
Incumbent supplier status
In this instance, you may be bidding for a contract or framework as the incumbent provider. You can effectively leverage this to your advantage by demonstrating your existing knowledge of the contracting authority’s processes and procedures, the local area or assets, and key performance indicators.
As an incumbent supplier, you are ideally positioned to prove you are the safest, most risk-averse choice when awarding the contract.
Tailoring works or services
Making the works or services you deliver bespoke to the client and their stakeholders is another excellent win theme. For instance, if you are delivering a service in tenanted properties, your bid win theme could include how you tailor this to vulnerable residents, including the elderly or those with a disability.
Including a brief case study of where you have tailored services under a previous contract of a similar size and scope could be useful in demonstrating your experience and expertise.
Innovation
Buyers will always look favourably on suppliers looking to introduce innovative techniques in service delivery. This could include a client portal on your job management system, allowing the buyer’s representatives to monitor works in real time and reducing administrative burden on both ends.
Innovation should always be compliant with the specification – double check that your proposals align with the requirements of the authority.
Other items in the tender documents
When reading the tender pack during the project, you may notice particular highlighted areas which are implicit key priorities or ‘pain points’ for the contracting authority – for instance, customer care or meeting emergency response times.
You can address these directly within a relevant response, showing attention to detail and a thorough understanding of the contract requirements and the buyer’s expectations.
How to choose bid win themes
Above all, it is crucial to remember that bid writing is a competition. You are likely competing against dozens of other organisations for the contract and the difference between a winning and losing tender will likely come down to a handful of percentage points.
As such, choosing strong bid win themes are a critical way of ensuring your bid stands out from the pack. Remember, evaluators will be reading many consecutive submissions and simply meeting the requirements of the specification will usually not suffice to produce a winning bid.
Choosing bid win themes should form part of your bid planning and ‘capture planning’ sessions before writing commences. This ensures they are smoothly integrated into responses, avoiding a haphazard or clumsy approach to referencing them.
By organising bid win themes through features (e.g. a particular offering which differentiates your business) and benefits (what outcomes will be achieved), you will make it easier for evaluators to award marks.
Example bid themes within tender responses
Above all, bid win themes should be relevant to the question being asked. There is no point including content around value for money within a business continuity response – it will cloud the issue and takes up valuable space where you could have earned marks by including more pertinent information.
To summarise, this should be smooth and flow with the content provided in the response, as with the examples below:
- ‘… Three years’ experience as the incumbent provider on the current contract will facilitate a seamless mobilisation and implementation period, supported by knowledge and familiarity with the council’s assets, building register and KPIs included in Appendix 3…’
- ‘… During scheduled works, operatives will also be empowered to complete small repairs and maintenance tasks up to the value of £100 (e.g. broken/cracked sockets or light switches), increasing resident satisfaction and reducing the need for repeat visits…’
- ‘… Our current contract for Newcastle City Council has resulted in average resolution times of four hours for emergency call-outs, effectively evidencing our ability to exceed the six-hour response time for this contract…’
Support with bid win themes
Our bid and tender services can help you by identifying win themes across the submission:
- Pre-bid consultancy and capture planning, where bid win themes can be developed prior to the writing stage of the tender
- Bid writing services, where our information-gathering calls with your subject matter experts are strategically designed to capture, develop and expand upon win themes and USPs
- Bid review service aimed at strengthening and enhancing tender responses produced by your own subject matter experts – certifying that win themes have been deployed appropriately.
To learn more about this or any of the other bespoke, tailored bid support we provide, contact us today at info@executivecompass.co.uk or 0800 612 5563 for a chat and free, no-obligation quotation.