Business Writing With Buzz

Rosemary Gillespie - Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Once you've read all the Request for Tender (RFT) supplied by your prospective client, the chances are that you will have many questions.

Sometimes your prospective client will be open to your inquiries as this helps them to correct any omissions and / or errors in their RFTs, clarify the conditions of tendering or refine the scope of services. This was precisely the case with a large Commonwealth Government tender we assisted a client with recently. 

Asking questions reduces the risk of you making too many assumptions about what the client wants. When you do this, you risk the worst case scenario of misunderstanding the client’s needs.

Larger organisations and all government bodies are also very keen on ‘complying tenders’. So, if you are unclear about any questions asked in the RFT or the tender process, ask for clarification. Otherwise, your tender may not fully comply and you could be evaluated as “a non-complying tender”. This means your tender will not be considered, even after all your hard work.

Asking questions – and ensuring that your tender responds properly to the client’s questions – ultimately ensures that your considerable investment in preparing a response is not wasted, and that yours is deemed to be a “complying tender”.

Who Do I Talk To?
RFTs include details of a contact person to whom you can direct your questions. The client wants to track all queries and to provide considered and prompt responses – and ‘one gateway’ is the management process that ensures that enquiries are answered. Ultimately this may ensure that the tender process is not corrupt.

It is vitally important that you contact only the nominated person so you cannot be eliminated from the process for soliciting.

Pertinent Questions
If you have a question, ask it! If the client’s response prompts other questions, ask them!

All government organisations and some private and public ones will periodically circulate questions asked by prospective tenderers with answers to all registered tenderers. That way, you can see the concerns and queries of other tenderers.

The Earlier The Better
The earlier you ask your questions – the better! This gives you the maximum amount of time to prepare your tender. Check the RFT document – it will often provide you with a ‘cut off’ date for asking questions – after this, you are on your own. Don’t risk being left in the dark with a big question dangling – unanswered.

Think Outside The Square
When preparing your response to the RFT, you might want to consider asking questions about the project to stakeholders other than the client, and these may be mentioned in the RFT.

Early engagement with these stakeholders will give you a real sense of who you will be working with / against in delivering the project. Asking open questions to identified stakeholders could just give your tender the winning edge of understanding.

I Need More Time!
If you want to ask for an extension of time for lodging your response, don’t wait until the day before the tender is due. In all but the most unusual of circumstances, your request will be denied.

If, however, the client’s responses to tenderer’s questions change the scope or services required, ask for an extension and outline the reasons why. If the client considers that the majority of respondents do require more time, then a request for a reasonable response will often be favourably considered.

For more help with tender writing, contact Rosemary Gillespie on 02 9314 7506 or 0411 123 216.

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Rosemary Gillespie - Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Tendering is all about finding a great match. Businesses and governments want to ensure they engage a supplier who meets (or exceeds) all of their requirements – and they will usually have many suitors.

You, as the potential and successful suitor, need to evaluate if you should respond to the tender opportunity and, if so, ensure that your proposal will be the most favourably evaluated.

First - Check Your Eligibility

There are usually a swag of tender documents, especially if your prospective client is a government organisation. The one to read first is the Request for Tender (RFT). This outlines the scope of services the client is seeking and their selection criteria – among other important information.

All government RFTs and those of many public and private companies will include the contract you will be expected to sign if you are successful. With government RFTs, this is usually called the Draft Deed of Agreement. It is vital you read this carefully to check you can accept all the terms.

Ask yourself:  Are the terms and conditions of the contract acceptable to you? Are they commercially fair?

If not, consider your options. There will usually be a form for you to complete to confirm your compliance with each contract clause. If you are not comfortable with a clause, this form is your opportunity to suggest an alternative. Remember, however, government organisations are more comfortable with businesses that comply with a Draft Deed of Agreement in its entirety.

Now is the time for you to be brutally honest about your ability to undertake the project:

Do you want to work for this client? Have you heard good reports about them? Can you demonstrate that you meet all of the selection criteria or a large part– with additional bonuses?

If you are ticking all of these boxes, get set to start.

If not, consider another response strategy. One is to put together a team in which your role might be the Principal Consultant or a Sub-Consultant. This can be a winning strategy.

Tick Off the Selection Criteria

Clients include selection criteria so they can measure your capabilities. They usually include:

General – such as how you comply with the Draft Agreement and your risk profile

• Technical – such as your demonstrated past experience, ability to perform the requirements, and others, such as your commitment to environmental sustainability and OH&S
• Commercial – such as your organisation and its financial capacity, pricing and insurances

Formal tenders and government tenders will be assessed by a selection panel. To be successful, you must clearly demonstrate how your organisation meets all of the criteria.

Keep the list of the criteria handy when you write your response. It will remind you of what they are and to incorporate them into every section of your document.

By doing this, you will make it easy for the selection panel to ‘tick off’ your compliance and easily evaluate your ability to meet the selection criteria.  

You might also consider including any qualities in addition to the identified selection criteria – but be careful that they have a direct relationship to the project or client’s overall business.

One final note: assume nothing. The selection panel cannot evaluate your proposal on what you consider to be ‘general knowledge’ or ‘individual relationships’. You should include this in your proposal as it will – at the very least – facilitate the evaluation process.

Response In…

Once you’ve lodged your tender, you are now in the evaluation period.

The selection panel is responsible for evaluating all the responses. Members may be employees of the client, independent experts or a combination of both. This process can take many weeks as it may involve a number of meetings of the selection panel and interviews with tenderers. Be prepared to respond to queries and / or present to the panel during this time. Scores are adjusted – and re-adjusted - during this process.

Finally, at the end of the evaluation process, the (re-) evaluated scores are put together and given a final evaluation. The Chair of the selection panel will provide a report and a recommendation and follow due process to enable the winning tenderer to be accepted.

If At First You Don’t Succeed…

Businesses and government organisations that issue RFTs want good responses – and have their eyes on future opportunities. If you were unsuccessful with your response, then the RFT may outline a debriefing process.

This is your opportunity to meet the client and hear first-hand about your tender’s strengths and weaknesses – and how you can improve your response for the next opportunity.

For more help with writing tender, ring Rosemary Gillespie on 02 9314 7506 or 0411 123 216.

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Rosemary Gillespie - Monday, June 06, 2011

For every reader who spends thirty minutes pouring over every word of your document, there are five (maybe more) who won’t get past the first page.

Reading styles affect how much information people take in
Why is that? Because people have different reading styles. Some people (let’s call them nerds) love detail – the more the better. For others, if a document doesn’t give them the key points at first glance, they will be off looking at something else. Given the length of their attention span, we’ll call them gnats.

Unfortunately for us writers, a lot of business people are gnats, just through lack of time. Give a CEO a 50 page tome and watch her glance at the first page, then toss it in the bin. However, there are exceptions. People in technical or procurement roles are paid to get into the detail, and will scrutinise every word of your proposal, brochure or report.
 
Which means that when you have to write a business document, you have a dilemma – how to engage both the nerds and the gnats?

Different documents for different readers
One answer is don’t. You can provide a summary document (as many companies do for their annual reports) that alerts gnats to all the key points they need to know, but keeps them well away from the withholding tax calculations.

However, that is not always possible. Tenders, for example, are likely to be read by both senior management (probably gnats) and technical or procurement teams (almost certainly nerds). They will look at your document from very different perspectives.

Give skim readers sign posts
Given your technical people will be happy to load up your document with as much detail as they can, the biggest issue you, the writer, face is ensuring the gnats don’t get swamped.

Readers who like to skim need sign-posts to direct them to the information that is most important to them. Some writing and graphic elements that work for gnats include:

• Executive summaries: always put the most important information or message first.
• Headings and subheadings: a reader should be able to get a sense of the content just from reading the headings (look at this article as an example). Then they can dive into anything of interest.
• Pullout boxes that highlight key facts
• Graphs and charts, ideally with key points highlighted
• Photographs to demonstrate features or show the team
• Pull quotes: quotes that illustrate your key messages help to engage
• Bullet points and lists: have a look at our previous article on using these effectively
• Lots of white space: given skim readers are more visual, white space will help them absorb your content more easily.

With a few of these tricks up your sleeve, you will leave a great impression with that CEO gnat as well as their team of nerds.

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