Bidding for a new contract is hard work. You’ve got to analyse the Request for Proposal (RFP), liaise with your subject matter experts, gather content and evidence, then write the eventual tender documents.

So, if your bid is unsuccessful, it can feel like a waste of time. But only 43% of bids win contracts, so it’s inevitable you’re going to miss out sometimes.

And there’s more to bidding than winning or losing. Much more.

We’ve helped many clients evaluate why they were unsuccessful on a bid. These lessons can provide ample opportunity to improve your process and your future chances of winning new business.

Here are five ways to ‘win’ from an unsuccessful bid and gain every opportunity from your experience. By doing so, you’ll be far more likely to secure the contract next time.

#1 Document lessons learnt

Many businesses have a process for evaluating bid failures. This is a great way to establish and document lessons learnt to improve your future bidding activities. Depending on your internal team, the bid manager or head of bidding may lead this. Alternatively, you may involve external specialists.

You can proactively run several ‘lessons learnt’ sessions. We recommend carrying out what we call a Retrospective Review straight after submission. Many companies do but then forget to run a second session once the decision has been announced. We call this the Decision Review.
During a Retrospective Review, you want to focus on the bidding process up to submission. Discuss and document what worked and what didn’t so you can use these learnings next time.

The Decision Review is slightly different. You may wish to discuss further areas such as your proposition, pricing, and capabilities.
We’ll discuss how to do this in more detail, but for now, understand the value of documenting your lessons learnt. Also remember to share it with your team so they can act on the information, otherwise the document is pointless.

#2 Request and analyse feedback

Buyers inviting tenders are generally happy to provide feedback once they’ve made their decision. It’s important to ask for this feedback whether you’re the successful bidder or not.

The most obvious piece of feedback to request is a breakdown of your score against their evaluation criteria. By analysing this, you can understand the answers you lost ground on. If you then need further explanation, go back to the buyer.

Beyond your bid score, you may want to ask for feedback on broader issues relating to your bid proposal. How did they perceive your capabilities? Was your pricing in alignment? What were the issues holding you back?

Both quantitative (bid score) and qualitative (perception and opinion) feedback is crucial to understand how you can improve for next time.
In fact, by asking for feedback, and listening carefully, you may develop your relationship with the buyer ahead of a future tender opportunity.
In addition to asking for feedback from the buyer, collate as much factual information as you can about the bid and those businesses that tendered for it.

This type of information can support your longer-term strategic plans. And by documenting it as part of your review process, you’ll better understand the positioning and capabilities of the businesses you’re competing against before you bid against them again.

#3 Conduct internal interviews

As part of your lessons learnt process, it’s helpful to invite everyone involved internally to a general debrief. In this way you can share your learnings from any feedback and hear their thoughts on how the process went.

In some circumstances, you may also want to conduct one-to-one interviews with key internal people. This enables you to dive deeper into certain areas and gain as much insight as possible.

Again, conducting the internal interviews is one thing, collating the learnings and sharing them with suggestions for improvement is another. Always consider how your learnings can help to improve your bidding process and success rate in the future.

#4 Document actions from your learnings

Before you tender for another opportunity, document how you want to improve your bidding methods and state who will carry out each improvement.
For example, you may have discovered your evidence (such as case studies and past work examples) was insufficient and of poor quality. You’d therefore want to enhance your bid library to include more extensive evidence that included metrics and customer insight to enhance it. Document this goal and establish who is responsible for delivering it, and by when.

Another action may be to re-define your internal bidding roles or liaise with your SMEs differently. Whatever you need to do, ensure you document this clearly, allocate the right people, and put a timeframe in place.

#5 A continuous improvement process

Your business may have grown. Legislation could have changed, and customers may have fresh requirements. The bidding process you first established may not work now. It’s therefore important to constantly review and improve what you’re doing.

Without having processes in place to continually improve, you risk being left behind as your competitors do exactly this. To deliver the best possible, most relevant, and highest scoring bid proposal, you must constantly review how you’re creating it, who’s involved, and whether anything needs to evolve.

We encourage our clients to do just this using our REWARD^® approach to bidding.

The ‘wins’ beyond winning

Winning new business may be your ultimate goal, but you won’t achieve that on every bid opportunity. Remember the 43% average win rate. Thankfully, every time you submit a tender proposal, your business benefits in several ways.

Enhanced visibility

By tendering for contracts, you’re increasing your company’s exposure to new clients and signalling to existing clients you can do more for them. Every tender showcases your capabilities to people within the businesses you’d like to work for. However, the quality of your bid determines the quality of your exposure, so don’t submit a poor quality document  just to get noticed as you may get noticed for the wrong reason!

Enhanced client relationships

When it comes to your existing customers, the bidding process lets you engage with them further, perhaps getting to know new sites (and new people) within the group. This interaction is sure to improve your rapport with a valued client and poise your company to discuss future opportunities with them.

Refined proposition

Going through the process of preparing a bid requires you to assess and convey your service clearly, highlighting the value you’re able to deliver. Without the need for a tender document, you and your team may never find the time to do this fully.

Deeper market insights

By remaining involved in the bidding process, and analysing feedback following evaluation, you stay on top of market trends, customer needs, and competitor approaches. This provides excellent market intelligence to help your business grow.

Winning, whatever the outcome

There’s no doubt you ‘win’ from bidding, whether your proposal is successful in securing new business or not. It doesn’t happen without your business having a solid review process though, and the determination to learn from feedback and action improvements.

Companies that take the right approach and see the bigger picture will perform better on future bids. We’ve seen this happen time and again, so we know it works.

Should you need help with your bid reviews, or advice on how to set up your lessons learnt process, we’d be happy to chat.