“Clearly, we wanted CCF to be in the best position to win the council bid, and that was our core objective. But with BiD Masters on board, we also gained in ways we didn’t expect.”

Jade Luke, Founder, Customer Care First

 

Scaling customer service excellence training

 

Jade Luke is on a mission to transform the face of customer service. Since founding Customer Care First (CCF) in 2016 to deliver customer service training for large organisations, the company’s focus has widened to include helping managers champion a culture of customer service excellence.

 

CCF develops bespoke training programmes for both private and public sector organisations, with notable experience in global financial services, facilities management, luxury retail, and healthcare.

 

Having scaled quickly, Jade was keen for CCF to secure larger projects that enabled her experienced team to provide the most impact. But that came with more complex bidding processes the company wasn’t equipped to tackle alone.

 

 

Struggling to navigate formal bids

 

Like many SMEs, CCF had discovered the hard way how difficult effective bid writing can be.

 

“A few years ago, we attempted to bid for a large, council project,” explained Jade. “We were really excited about being invited to tender, then quickly daunted by the amount of work involved.”

 

Undeterred, Jade and a colleague devoted an entire week to creating what they thought was a good quality proposal. “Feeling our way in the dark, we decided to focus on providing lots of ideas around our training programme, assuming that’s what they’d want to know about,” she said.

 

CCF didn’t win the bid. And now, the company appreciates it didn’t understand what the questions were asking for, so responded in an untargeted way. “We honestly felt we’d submitted a great proposal, so when we didn’t win, all that hard work felt like a poor return on investment. The whole experience knocked our confidence and left us thinking what’s the point? We could’ve spent that week doing other things to develop the business,” said Jade.

 

Jade also recounted another unsuccessful bidding story, where they’d left what amounted to an enormous amount of work far too late. In the end, it wasn’t worth starting.

 

“We were frustrated because we didn’t know how to handle significant tendering opportunities. And yet, our skillset clearly suited these larger projects perfectly. Crucially, we were struggling to communicate our capabilities through a formal bidding process that required far more than details about our product offer,” said Jade.

 

 

A council training opportunity not to miss

 

The turning point came when a large council invited CCF to tender for a significant training project.

 

“We had the initial conversation with them, and once again, it felt really exciting,” said Jade. “But we’d scaled rapidly in recent years and simply didn’t have a spare week to create the proposal. We also didn’t have the expertise to thoroughly understand what the bid required from us. It felt like an impossible load.”

 

Jade’s mentor had previously introduced her to Juliet, a writer who also worked for BiD Masters. The connection didn’t seem significant back then, but at this point, she wondered whether it might help deliver the council bid more effectively. And so, Juliet introduced Jade to the BiD Masters team.

 

 

Handing the reins to BiD Masters

Jade first chatted with Emily at BiD Masters before she referred her to Chris, who would help create CCF’s proposal. Very quickly, she felt they were making a “sensible decision”.

 

“Hiring BiD Masters felt like it would give us the best possible chance of winning,” said Jade. “They clearly knew what they were doing, and Chris even had experience working for a council, so he already spoke their language. But most attractive to me was BiD Masters’ flexibility around how we could work with them.”

 

Emily explained that BiD Masters’ support could range from providing bidding advice to completing the entire proposal.

 

“As soon as Emily said they could do the whole thing for a fee that felt affordable to CCF, a small but scaling business, we thought, yeah, that’s the one! Personally, my anxiety dropped once I knew someone else would take the reins. At the end of the day, our expertise is in training, and we don’t want to distract that energy with complicated tenders. It therefore makes perfect sense to rely on bidding specialists when required,” said Jade.

 

When agreeing a budget with BiD Masters, CCF acknowledged their team wouldn’t be drained by an entire week’s work. “That clearly saved money, but it also felt empowering. We could handle significant bidding opportunities without impacting our busy training schedule,” she said.

 

 

Productive and collaborative

 

CCF passed all the council’s bid documents on to Chris at BiD Masters. Interpreting a huge amount of information before breaking it down into actionable steps, he then established the response questions before sharing exactly what he needed from CCF.

 

“The time we gave to the bid was productive because Chris used his experience to tell us exactly what to collate. We didn’t waste days deliberating or working on the wrong thing. And once he had everything he needed, Chris went on to draft the bid, leaving the CCF team free to focus on running the business,” said Jade.

 

Jade also appreciated Chris’ ability to discuss the bid outside her daily schedule. “We’d sometimes talk at random times like 9pm, which was really useful as I was running the business during the day. Everything was collaborative and transparent, so we never lost trust in the process with Chris at the helm,” said Jade.

 

 

Getting to the next round

 

Having submitted the best possible proposal they could, CCF was invited to deliver a presentation in person to the council. Again, feelings of excitement were quickly followed by overwhelm. So, the company leant on Chris.

 

“When CCF got invited to present, we immediately thought what a perfect return on investment. BiD Masters has done its bit and got us through the door. The rest is up to us. But I then felt anxious about our presentation, so Chris offered to review it as he knew what they’d be looking for. He was so encouraging,” said Jade.

 

Chris also highlighted some key questions the council may ask CCF. One grey area was the company’s current accreditations. Its customers had never asked for several the council were highlighting. But as CCF scaled at pace, it was now clear these additions would be necessary when targeting much larger projects.

 

“Chris had looked at the scoring and knew this area would be important to them and said they’d pick it up in the questions. This hadn’t even occurred to us, so it was amazing to be able to prepare our response beforehand and not be caught out on the day. Chris even worked through how to respond, encouraging an honest and open approach. They did indeed ask the question and welcomed how frankly we answered it.

 

The presentation went very well, and we couldn’t have been more prepared given Chris’ advice and the time we spent reflecting on it ahead of the day,” said Jade.

 

 

Added value whether you win or not

 

Having worked with BiD Masters, one thing that struck Jade was the additional value her business gained whether they won the bid or not.

 

“Clearly, we wanted CCF to be in the best position to win the council bid, and that was our core objective. But with BiD Masters on board, we also gained in ways we didn’t expect, such as Chris highlighting opportunities to strengthen our documentation and helping us achieve this.

 

For example, we’re now safeguarding accredited because we know it’s important to these types of organisation. CCF is also moving towards being CPD accredited, and we’ve enhanced a bunch of other policies and procedures. This will all make the next bid more straightforward,” said Jade.

 

As CCF is a small business, Jade appreciates, first-hand, why engaging a bid specialist may seem like too big a leap of faith for some. But she would urge any scaling SME to consider the impact of having a more effective bidding process in place.

 

“Tenders must follow a specific process, and they require a specialist type of expertise. You can’t just highlight what a good product you have, because that’s already a given. The buyer wants further information to decide whether they’ll spend money with you. Leaning on BiD Masters for support means you don’t have to guess what questions the buyer wants you to answer or how to position your response. Instead, bidding specialists provide clarity from the outset.

 

Most tenders are portal-based now, which means buyers are purely looking at your business, not the people in the process. Even the best salespeople can shake in their boots because your relationship efforts don’t matter at this point.

 

As an SME, you must therefore think and talk like an established business instead of one or two people. And only professional bid writers like BiD Masters can help you do that,” concluded Jade.