Public sector procurement is less about having a “good bid” and more about proving—clearly, compliantly, and credibly—that you can deliver outcomes with low risk. Expert tender writing and bid management is the difference between being capable and being selectable.
What is a Tender Writer?
A Tender Writer could have a broad role covering opportunity identification, coordination, writing, quality assurance, bid design and uploading onto portals/bid submission.
In some businesses, the Tender Writer/Bid Writer could be very focused and purely working under the leadership of a Bid Manager or Bid Director with their role being to re-work, refine and develop base responses for senior members of the team to then tailor.
If we look at general job specifications for Tender Writers (and a snapshot of ours), you will typically get:
- Drafting, reviewing and writing creative and persuasive tender content;
- Building effective working relationships and communicating with internal and external customers;
- Supporting the development of bid strategy including storyboarding, identifying USPs and win themes;
- Completing bid planning documents including bid summaries, project plans, gap analysis and other documents;
- Researching and summarising markets, competitors and other bid-related topics.
Expert tender writers will combine writing skills with what wins: precise method statements, contract-specific risks and mitigations, credible resourcing, and hard evidence (case studies, KPIs, CVs, accreditations). In a sea of sameness, specificity wins.
What is a Bid Manager?
A Bid Managers role often includes all of the above tasks but their role will also include ‘overseeing’, quality assurance and usually the management of a small team.
Bid Managers are required to use their bid writing knowledge to guide one or multiple simultaneous projects from storyboarding to bid completion and submission.
They are expected to not only understand how to create a successful bid, but also have some knowledge of commercial and operational aspects of the business in order to support an effective bid process.
Selecting the best-suited contributors to the bid, where perhaps more technical or product/service-specific knowledge is required could also fall to a Bid Manager.
Key skills possessed by an effective Bid Manager include accurate time management and organisation, exceptional communication, interpersonal skills and acute attention to detail.
What is a Bid Mentor?
A Bid Mentor is usually an external resource to your company who actively seeks out procurement opportunities for your business. They use their expertise to evaluate the opportunities that you have the best chance of winning, and then work closely with you to guide you through the bidding process, which includes correlating all of your evidence, such as finances, carbon reduction planning etc.
Thornton and Lowe's Bid Mentor service is designed to support small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) in bidding for tenders more effectively. It is for clients who want to improve their bidding performance, who require a third party to add expertise, rather than purely bid writing capacity. Many of our Bid Mentor clients engage our services as a way to provide training and support to their in-house team, who may have competing priorities.
What is the difference between a Bid Manager and a Proposal Manager?
As a general rule, it is easier to think of the proposal as a singular, but of course critical, part of the bid lifecycle – the written submission.
Proposal managers tend to take responsibility for this aspect, whereas bid managers need to have an overarching view of the entire bid process, from storyboarding and collating all relevant information, to the final presentation of the bid and any post-bid reviews. The bid manager role tends to encompass a much broader range of tasks.
There can often be overlap between a bid manager and a proposal manager, and many cases could also depend on the complexity of the bid as to whose skill set is best suited in that instance.
Find your perfect specialist
As a Bid Consultancy, we offer all elements noted above.
We can monitor tender alerts, coordinate and support the upload or submission process, interview your team and chase down evidence, challenge and review the solution, suggest clarification questions to ask the buyer, draft responses, review bid content, design bids and supporting documents and finalise the proposal ready to be submitted on time.
To do this, we directly employ:
- Bid Administrators
- Trainee Bid Writers
- Bid Writers
- Senior Bid Writers
- Bid Designers
- Bid Managers
- Head of Bids
- Bid Directors
If you have any questions, require bid support or if you are recruiting a new bid role and require some assistance, then please contact us today.
