Let’s strip bidding down to its basics: you need to answer a question. And you need to answer it well. Why? Having the best solution, great innovation and the lowest price is meaningless if the person marking the bid doesn’t understand what they are reading.
Procurement guidelines often try to guard against this. For example, a lot of public procurement opportunities will stipulate that you shouldn’t submit marketing material, as this material won’t be clearly relevant to the Buyer because it doesn’t directly address the question, making it harder for the marker to understand the value of your solution. Therefore, when you are writing a bid, you need to make it completely obvious what you’re offering – otherwise, you won’t get the best marks.
This is where a good structure comes in. A good structure will:
- Clearly show that you’ve addressed all the question requirements, providing confidence in your ability to deliver
- Provide a coherent, compelling, and completely logical argument on why the Buyer should buy your services, and not anyone else’s
- Make the marker’s job easier, by showing them exactly how you meet the marking criteria and therefore providing you with easier access to those top marks.
Writing, however, can sometimes be a daunting process. When faced with a blank page, it can be tough to know how to fill it. If you just start writing the first things that come to mind, however, there’s a big risk that some of the best bits of your response are going to get lost in the deluge. Unfortunately, if the marker can’t easily find the information they’re looking for, they might not be able to mark you as highly as you deserve.
For this reason, a good response structure will give you a significant advantage in bid writing. While this initially seems just as daunting (how do I know what structure a response should be?), the wording of the Buyer’s question provides a pretty clear indication on how they would like you to structure your response.
What should my structure be?
Structure is simple: first, an introduction, a point-by-point explanation of your service offering, and the benefits it will bring to the Buyer (or the end/service users). You want to keep all those points as fully contained as possible to minimise confusion and make it clear where the key information is. If you have a section on resourcing, then on technology, try not to put any of your staff information in the middle of two different sentences about computers! As for the most logical order of those points, look to the question for guidance.
Let’s take the following question as a practical example:
“Demonstrate understanding of what the contract entails, and your capacity to deliver the Service Specification. Your statement should include:
- Key personnel dedicated for implementation and delivery of the contract
- Details of the management structure which will apply to the contract, including lines of responsibility
- Mobilisation procedures you will use if appointed to the contract
- An outline of their key qualifications and experience of key contract personnel”.
This is a very typical procurement question – in fact, it’s a Frankenstein question made up of two different ‘methodology’ questions I’ve seen in public procurement before.
If you look at the anatomy of this question, it’s made up of two distinct parts: an outline question (‘demonstrate understanding and capacity’) and a breakdown of the requirements the Buyer wants to see. While the Buyer wants confidence you’ll be able to deliver all their specific requirements, they also want to see you address their overarching themes and concerns. In this case:
- Do you understand what they want?
- Can you deliver that for them?
This forms your introduction.
Introduction
Once you identify the major ‘theme’ of a response, you should make sure you address this in your introduction. The theme could be the first part of the question, like in the example I’ve given, or it could be the ‘title’ of the question. If you’re writing ‘Question 1 – Delivery Capability’, mentioning your capability should be one of the first things you do. Buyers don’t want wishy-washy responses – from the introduction, it should be patently clear that you’re going to give them exactly what they’re asking for.
So, what about this example question? For the introduction, you want to ‘demonstrate understanding of what the contract entails, and your capacity to deliver the Service Specification’. This question neatly lays out what you have to write about, and I’d recommend doing it in the exact same order as the question itself. First, talk about your understanding – what does the Buyer want and why do they want it? Then, talk about your capacity – this could include details like how long you’ve provided similar services, or introduce concepts like your management systems or the skills of your staff.
Writing 101 often recommends that, perhaps counter-intuitively, you write your introduction last. This is because, sometimes, it’s easiest to introduce a topic when you know exactly where you’re going with it. An introduction should provide an outline summary of the rest of your response, so the marker can already start to tick boxes in their head.
The body of the response
Once you’ve figured out the overarching theme of a question, you can start to break it down into components. Bullet pointed requirements can be particularly helpful when determining your structure. If you’ve got bullet points, like in the example question, you should structure your response to go through the question clearly and logically, bullet by bullet. So, for this example, your main topics would be:
- Key personnel
- Management structure
- Mobilisation processes
- Qualifications and experience
Sometimes, the question structure this would provide looks to be counterintuitive or confusing, as Buyers don’t always put their requirements in a logical order. I’d always advise following the structure they provide to make the marker’s job easier, but you may want to take a judgment call on this, especially if you have a tighter word count. If you only have 500 words to address the example question, it could waste valuable words to talk about key personnel and their qualifications in separate places. In this case, you might want to write a ‘key personnel, qualifications, and experience’ section – but I’d suggest making this super clear by using the exact wording the Buyer uses and incorporating this into a heading. This guides the marker painlessly to where they need to be, and ensures they don’t think you’ve missed any of the requirements they are looking for.
You won’t always get requirements laid out clearly in bullet point form, particularly when you’re writing a shorter response. Let’s imagine a scenario where the question you’ve been given is only the first sentence: “Demonstrate understanding of what the contract entails, and your capacity to deliver the Service Specification”. To decide on your structure, look for linking words that indicate separate ideas. In this case, the ‘and’ separates two important concepts: your understanding, and your capacity. You should aim to write at least a paragraph on each of these ideas and present them in the same order to make the marker’s job easier.
Finally, it’s always worth looking at the mark scheme for the question to identify any other key points you may want to include to score the highest marks. In this example question, let’s say the mark scheme defines a 10/10 score as a response that ‘provides added value and complete certainty in the bidder’s capacity’. The new concept introduced by the mark scheme is ‘added value’ – consider maybe adding a dedicated section on it to make it obvious to the marker where your company excels. If you spell it out clearly, it’s more likely that the marker will give you the top mark, simply because it’s impossible for them to miss it. In terms of structure, anything that you identify through the mark scheme will probably be your lowest priority, as the question itself should take precedence. An ‘added value’ section always works well at the end of the response, because it provides a strong and compelling summary of your offer.
Get in touch
To find out more about how we can help you improve your bidding, get in touch via Hello@kittle-group.com, or give our our Business Development Director, Sam Nimmo, a call for a no-obligation chat at +44(0) 118 449 2506.