Being good at what you do doesn’t mean you’re good at explaining why someone should pay you to do it.
It’s an uncomfortable truth of competitive tendering: excellent organisations sometimes submit weak bids. They have experienced staff, strong services, satisfied customers and an impressive track record. Yet their proposals fail to communicate those strengths convincingly. Meanwhile, a competitor with a less impressive track record may produce a clearer, more compelling submission and win the contract.
In a competitive environment, bids are frequently won and lost on small margins.
Here are ten reasons why capable organisations write bids that don’t do them justice.
1. You assume your reputation will speak for itself
Your organisation may have been around for a while. It may be well known to the commissioner or funder, have excellent relationships with relevant stakeholders and enjoy a strong reputation.
But evaluators must assess the evidence presented in the specific tender response against the published evaluation criteria. They can’t award marks for things they know about you but which you haven’t explained.
The lesson: Never assume the evaluator knows what you know. Make your strengths explicit and provide good evidence.
2. You describe what you do, but lack detail on how you do it
This is a common weakness. A bidder promises to deliver a person-centred service, maintain high standards, safeguard vulnerable people or work collaboratively with partners. All good stuff. But how? Who will do what? What processes will they follow? How will performance be monitored? A response that simply repeats the requirements of the specification is unlikely to score highly.
The lesson: For every important commitment, ask whether you’ve explained how it will be delivered in practice.
3. You don’t answer the question properly
It is easy to write a plausible response that doesn’t fully answer the question. Perhaps the question is followed by five bullet points with elements you must cover. If your response only addresses four, you will lose marks. Or perhaps the question asks for examples, but you only provide general assurances.
The lesson: Break each question into its individual requirements before drafting. Check the completed response against every requirement and the evaluation criteria.
4. You confuse experience with evidence
“We have extensive experience of delivering similar services.” This is a common statement, but it’s only valuable when you explain what it demonstrates. For example, an organisation bidding for a supported housing contract might cite its performance in improving tenancy sustainment or helping people move towards greater independence.
The lesson: Use relevant facts, figures, outcomes and examples to turn experience into persuasive evidence. Make the connection with the proposed contract explicit.
5. You write about your organisation instead of the commissioner’s needs
Some bids describe the bidder’s history, values, achievements, and so on, all of which may be impressive. But the commissioner needs detail on how you will meet their particular requirements.
A strong response is written from the commissioner’s perspective. It demonstrates an understanding of the service specification, the people who will use the service, local circumstances, operational challenges and desired outcomes.
The lesson: Every section should help answer one central question: why is your proposed approach right for this particular contract or grant funding?
6. Your bid is written by inexperienced writers
Operational managers and technical specialists are essential contributors to a successful bid as they know the practical details that give a response credibility. But sometimes experts may struggle to explain processes to a lay audience. They may provide too much technical detail, overlook the evaluation criteria or find it difficult to write succinctly and persuasively. Equally, a professional bid writer working without sufficient operational input is unlikely to produce a convincing response.
The lesson: The strongest bids combine operational expertise with effective writing, structure and an understanding of how tenders are evaluated.
7. You start writing before you’ve worked out what you want to say
The deadline is approaching, the questions have been allocated, and you start drafting. But nobody has properly agreed the service model, or how the project will be managed, or how you will collect evidence. The result can be an incoherent proposition.
Good bids need planning. This means understanding the specification, identifying the commissioner’s priorities, agreeing your approach, allocating responsibilities and establishing where the necessary evidence will come from.
The lesson: Invest time in developing the bid strategy before drafting individual answers. A few hours of structured planning can save days of rewriting.
8. You mistake polished writing for a strong response
A well-written answer can still score poorly. This problem has become more pronounced with the use of generative AI, which can produce fluent, professional-sounding text in seconds. Unfortunately, AI can also produce generic statements, unsupported claims and explanations that don’t address the question.
The danger is that a response looks finished before anyone has properly challenged its substance. The same problem can occur without AI. Elegant prose is no substitute for a credible delivery model and convincing evidence.
The lesson: Judge a response by its relevance, specificity, evidence and scoring potential, not simply by how well it reads.
9. You don’t make it easy for evaluators to award marks
Evaluators often have a lot of bids to read and assess. They shouldn’t have to sift through a long response to find the information they need or have to re-read a section because it wasn’t clear the first time. You need to make it easy for them.
Yet many bids bury their strongest evidence in dense paragraphs, repeat information unnecessarily or use vague headings. Good structure isn’t merely cosmetic; it helps the evaluator recognise that you’ve addressed the requirements. So clear sub-headings, concise explanations, and relevant examples make a substantial difference.
The lesson: Write for the person assessing your bid. Make the information they need easy to find, understand and evaluate.
10. You don’t scrutinise the finished bid before submission
By the time a bid is ready to submit, you may have read it so many times that you can’t spot the flaws. A final proofread is essential, but not enough.
An effective review should challenge the substance: have we answered every part of every question? Are the commitments realistic? Is the evidence convincing? Are there inconsistencies between responses? Ideally, someone who hasn’t been closely involved in drafting should review the bid from the evaluator’s perspective.
The lesson: Build sufficient time into the timetable for an independent, critical review - and for making any improvements this identifies.
A good organisation deserves a good bid
Winning competitive tenders isn’t simply a matter of being the best organisation. It’s about demonstrating, within the constraints of the tender process, why you are best placed to deliver the required service, or why your innovation deserves funding.
This requires a clear understanding of the funder’s needs, a credible delivery model or project proposal, relevant evidence and a persuasive explanation of how your organisation will achieve positive outcomes.
With better preparation, effective collaboration between operational specialists and bid writers, and rigorous review, you can significantly improve the quality of your submissions.