Tender Debrief: Lessons to be learned from your submission

Tender Debrief: Lessons to be learned from your submission

Submitting an accurate and compliant tender document doesn't always end in good news. Sometimes, despite the best efforts, the outcome may not be in your favour.

Don't be disappointed. Take the decision on board and investigate how you could have improved your response. You are quite within your rights to request a debrief from the buyer. This provides the opportunity to discuss the response in detail and gather feedback on areas that could enhance future opportunities and increase the winning ratio. The aim of the debrief is to find out from the buyers viewpoint, where a solution can be improved and in doing so, provide greater clarity of your capabilities, credibility and value-add components for future tender opportunities.

The first area of discussion in a debrief should be the evaluation criteria and the weighting applied to each sector. Although pricing does play a part, it's generally not the only area that gets you short-listed. You must also demonstrate to the buyer that your organisation has the capability and credibility to perform the job, otherwise your good price does nothing.

By understanding the weightings applied to the evaluation criteria, you will recognise areas of performance that are critical to the buyer in appointing a quality supplier. You will also begin to identify sections where you may not have provided sufficient focus that was critical to the buyer. As an example, your methodology and process to managing the buyer could rate higher than information about your company background.

It's acceptable to ask who won and why they won. From this, you can compare your operation with the successful supplier and identify some of the basic differences between the two businesses. Grasping the key values important to the buyer that were clearly acknowledged by your competition will help in identifying ways that you can increase your level of offerings to exceed that of your competitors.

TenderSearch highly recommends you find out exactly what marked the successful supplier as a short list candidate. Areas such as in-depth industry experience and account management programs are some key points that make the buyer feel special, as though they were the only client of the supplier. Often the tender response is the only chance of selling your business to a potential buyer, so you must get this right to ensure that you move to the discussion stage.

Break down the details of the document and ask the supplier to identify key strengths and weaknesses evident in your proposal. Ask questions about how they assessed your account management program, delivery schedule, implementation plan, pricing and industry experience. Their feedback, regardless of its content, will only help in refining and improving your next response. It also helps in targeting areas of your solution that require reworking or reassessing so you present your capabilities in the best possible manner.

Ask the buyer how they perceive your organisation overall and if they see any areas they believe need improvement, particularly regarding ability to service the needs of the buyer in the future. You may not have the work now, but the debrief presents an ideal opportunity to start your pitch for future work.

Finally, solicit any further information you can from the buyer such as the possibility of your organisation working with them in the future and offer other ways for you to assist them now. Give them as much information as possible about your organisation and its offerings. Use this as a chance for promotion and relationship development.

From the debrief process you will gather valuable information that may seem disparate and unrelated from buyer to buyer, however if you look at it from a holistic point of view, you'll notice that the weaknesses in your document will generally fall into two areas, a lack of capability to perform the job, or credible reference material to support your capability claims.

Feedback from the buyer about your solution will help you understand why you may have been unsuccessful this time. It will help you to refine your future responses and help you to win more business through the tendering process.

As published in TenderSearch Magazine - Spring/Summer 03 Issue