Chapter 8: Managing the Bid

Overview

As soon as you have decided to compete for a contract, you need to organize yourself to produce a bid that does justice to your abilities. If you work on your own and write straightforward bids that mostly take the form of a letter, the task of bid management may involve only keeping a clear head about the way you use your time, structure information and deal with business documents. Your chief concerns will be to make sure that:

• your assumptions about the effort the work will require and the price that will make your bid competitive are correct;

• the bid appears a presentable document;

• it is submitted by the deadline.

When you have to coordinate material from other professionals as well as writing your own input and at the same time keeping fee-earning work going, or if the bid is likely to be a complex document, it becomes clear that bid preparation is a procedure needing to be managed as strategically as any other business activity. How you go about this procedure can be critical to success.

The key is to have it planned out well beforehand and to follow an approach that is systematic - leaving nothing to chance, cohesive - bringing the document together as an integrated effort, and deliberate - progressing in a confident and fully considered direction. Bid management on these lines enables you to make the best use of resources and improve quality and consistency while cutting preparation costs. In short, it brings higher productivity and greater success.