Can a Professional Bid Mentor Really Help Me Win Tenders?

Stepping into public sector tendering for the first time can feel a lot like entering the world of online dating. You know there are some great opportunities out there, but you’re not quite sure where to find them, how to present yourself, or what people are really looking for. You might already have put yourself out there a few times, only to walk away wondering what went wrong.

While the team here at Thornton & Lowe can’t promise to work wonders for your love life, we do have the right expertise to help you achieve success when it comes to winning tenders. In fact, it’s exactly why we created our Bid Mentor Service. It helps you to build a credible public sector portfolio, make smarter bid decisions and become a stronger contender for the contracts you actually want.

Why it can be so hard to start out in tendering

If you are coming from the private sector, or you have only ever won work through relationships and referrals, the public sector can feel like another language.

• Notices are scattered across multiple portals.
• Documentation runs to hundreds of pages.
• Buyers talk about frameworks, dynamic purchasing systems (DPSs), award criteria and accreditations.
• You are expected to have policies, case studies and processes already in place.

Without guidance, many businesses either never start tendering, or they spend a lot of time and energy on bids that were never really winnable. That quickly becomes frustrating, especially if you feel your service is strong and competitively priced.

A structured mentoring relationship changes that picture. Instead of trying to decode the process on your own, you work alongside a specialist who lives and breathes public sector procurement, and who can guide you through each step with your business and your growth targets in mind.

Who our Bid Mentor Service is designed to support

Our Bid Mentor Service is built around organisations that are serious about winning more public sector work, but need focused guidance to get there. Typical clients include:

• Businesses that have never worked on tenders before and want to start in a controlled, confident way.
• Organisations that have completed a few public sector tenders, but haven’t seen much success.
• Teams that are unsure how to improve scores, strengthen responses and maximise their chances of winning.
• Companies moving from private sector work into public sector tendering and trying to understand the different expectations.

In other words, you do not need a large, in-house bid team to benefit. The programme is ideal for owner managed businesses, SMEs and growing organisations that need a trusted partner to help them build a pipeline and a portfolio while they continue to run the day-to-day business.

What's included in the Bid Mentor Service?

The Bid Mentor Service is not a one-off training session or a generic workshop. It is an ongoing, structured relationship with a dedicated Mentor who gets to know your business, your goals and your constraints. The core elements typically include:

1. One day per month of expert support
   You receive access to one day per month that can be used flexibly for bid writing, bid reviews, strategy, coaching or other support you need at that point in time. This ensures regular momentum without overwhelming your internal team.
2. A review of your tender pipeline and routes to market
   At the start of the programme your Mentor will review your tender pipeline and relevant frameworks, helping you understand key buyers, likely routes to market, sector spend, average contract values and renewal dates. This gives you a structured view of where the most realistic opportunities sit for your business.
3. Monthly bid strategy reviews
   Each month you will sit down together to review upcoming opportunities, assess performance on recent submissions and refine your bid strategy. Over time, these sessions build a clear picture of what is working, where you are scoring well and where you can gain quick wins.
4. Personalised tender alerts
   Using tools such as Tender Pipeline, the team will work with you to set up daily tender alerts based on custom criteria such as sector, geography, contract value and buyer type, so that your inbox is filled with relevant notices rather than noise.
5. A Bid / No Bid decision making tool
   A big reason businesses lose tenders is that they bid for opportunities they were never likely to win. Your Mentor will introduce a simple Bid / No Bid tool that can help you to determine if you’re the right fit before you commit any resources. Over time, this saves large amounts of effort and helps you focus your energy where you can realistically win.
6. Discounts on wider support
   If you need additional bid writing, bid management or in house training on top of your mentoring sessions, you receive a 10% discount on wider bid writing services and bid writing training courses.

This mix of strategic review, practical support and tools means that the Bid Mentor Service is as much about building internal capability as it is about winning the next tender.

How a bid mentor helps you win

With a bid mentor at your side, you’ll be able to make better decisions and submit higher-quality tender responses. Here are some of the ways that a professional bid mentor influences results.

Better targeting of opportunities

You will look together at the tenders flagged by your personalised alerts and decide which ones deserve further attention. This discussion typically covers:

• Feasibility: Does the opportunity fit your current capacity and capability, including delivery, staffing, geography and timescales?
• Cost versus benefit: Does the work align with your wider growth strategy, framework coverage or sector focus, or would it pull you in the wrong direction?
• Compliance: Do you already have the mandatory policies, case studies, financial standing and accreditations the buyer is asking for?

By assessing each opportunity against clear criteria, you spend less time on long shots and more time on high-quality, realistic bids. This means that your team is less stretched and can give each submission the attention it deserves.

Stronger, more consistent responses

Working with the same bid mentor month after month means your messaging and evidence are refined on every iteration.

You gradually build:

• Clear, engaging descriptions of your services.
• A library of case studies and references tailored to public sector expectations.
• Standard content for recurring themes such as social value, quality management and risk.

As your content bank grows, it becomes quicker to build strong first drafts, and your Mentor can focus on tailoring and improving rather than starting from scratch every time.

Better use of frameworks and dynamic markets

For many organisations without a long public sector history, frameworks and dynamic purchasing systems are an ideal way to get your foot in the door. They often involve a single, detailed application which, once successful, gives you access to call off opportunities over several years.

Your mentor will help you identify suitable frameworks and dynamic markets in your sector, understand the qualification requirements, and plan how to build your portfolio and references through these routes. This means you that are deliberately positioning your business on the right frameworks for long term growth.

Planning accreditations and closing compliance gaps

During your meetings, you will also review your current certifications and awards and map them against what buyers in your sector typically expect. That might include:

• Cyber Essentials and Cyber Essentials Plus.
• ISO standards such as ISO 9001 (quality), ISO 14001 (environment) or ISO 45001 (health and safety).
• Sector specific registrations or frameworks.

Your mentor will help you prioritise which accreditations to pursue first, with a focus on what will make a real difference to your scores and credibility.

Building relationships and partnerships

Public sector tendering is formal, but it is not faceless. Knowing who the key buyers, framework managers and potential delivery partners are in your sector often makes the difference when it comes to understanding future pipelines and shaping stronger solutions.

As part of your mentoring, you will explore relevant industry events, pre-market engagement sessions and networking opportunities, and plan how to position your organisation in those spaces. This might also include identifying potential consortium partners or subcontractors to help you meet capability or geographic requirements.

The benefits of ongoing bid mentoring

It can be tempting to think of bid support as something you only need when a big opportunity lands, but in practice, the organisations that perform best on tenders tend to invest in continuous improvement.

A long-term mentoring relationship delivers benefits that are hard to achieve through ad hoc support alone:

• Consistency in messaging and evidence
  Working with the same bid mentor each month allows your narrative, case studies and key differentiators to be refined and strengthened over time.
• Clear visibility of what improves scores
  As you build up more submissions together, your Mentor can spot patterns in buyer feedback and scoring, then help you make targeted improvements to method statements, social value, quality answers and pricing strategy.
• Internal skills development
  Mentoring sessions are a live learning environment for your team. Over time, they gain confidence in structuring responses, interpreting specifications and managing the bid process in line with best practice.
• Better use of technology and tender tools
  By combining mentoring with tools such as Tender Pipeline, tender subscription services and bid management software, you create a more efficient, reliable process for tracking opportunities, reusing content and managing deadlines.

Ultimately, the goal is not simply to respond to more tenders, but to embed an approach that helps you select the right opportunities, submit higher quality bids and steadily increase your win rate.

Is a bid mentor right for your organisation?

If any of the following statements feel familiar, a bid mentor is likely to be a good fit:

• You are confident in your service, but struggle to translate that into high scoring tender responses.
• You are not sure whether the opportunities you are seeing are right for your business.
• You suspect you are missing key accreditations or evidence, but do not know where to start.
• You want to build a sustainable pipeline of public sector work rather than chasing one-off contracts.

Some organisations start working with a bid mentor before later opting for a more comprehensive outsourced solution, such as Thornton & Lowe’s Bid Success Programme, which provides a full, external bid team over twelve months. Others, meanwhile, maintain a flexible, ongoing partnership that gives leadership teams the confidence and clarity they need to navigate public sector procurement.

What stays constant is the focus on practical, tailored advice that fits your organisation, your sector and your ambition to grow through public sector contracts.

Ready to explore bid mentoring?

If you are wondering whether a professional bid mentor can really help you win tenders, the best way to find out is to look at your current position.

• Are you confident you are bidding for the right opportunities?
• Do you understand why previous submissions have scored as they have?
• Do you have a clear plan to build your public sector portfolio over the next year?

If the answer to any of those questions is “not really”, then structured support could make a significant difference.

Thornton & Lowe’s Bid Mentor Service gives you a regular touchpoint with an experienced bid specialist. Together, you can stop reacting to tenders as they appear, and start building a deliberate, sustainable approach that helps you win more of the right contracts, more of the time.