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Key steps to prepare your business for tendering – Part 1

key steps and tips to organise your business to save you valuable time and money when responding to tenders and to increase your chances of success

By Kate Burrows, Managing Director, Tender Training College

The Tender Training College is joining the fight to give SMEs a larger piece of the procurement pie, calling on governments at all levels to increase the tender participation rates of small and medium sized businesses, and to make the process easier and more accessible for all.

Kate Burrows, Managing Director of the Tender Training College, has helped business owners win more than $25 billion worth of new contracts over the past 15 years and believes SME tendering is key to giving the Australian economy the kick start it needs in a post COVID era.

“We have seen a 30 per cent increase in SMEs looking to improve their tendering skills in recent months so they can compete for government contracts, as they find new ways to survive during this tumultuous time. That’s because government contracts offer good tenures, clear payment terms, defined deliverables and reliable income streams for SMEs to grow their businesses securely.

“However, many small businesses simply don’t know where to start with tendering often because of the highly complex nature of the tenders themselves and the formalities of the process. Tendering is like learning a new language!

“Time and time again I witness how SMEs are unfairly disadvantaged in the process compared to big business because tendering requires significant time, effort and resources to be successful. It’s imperative SMEs educate themselves with the fundamentals of tendering to put themselves in the best possible position to tender, but also for governments at all levels to make the process more equitable and accessible,” explained Ms Burrows.

The Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman Kate Carnell said small businesses will play a critical role in the post COVID economic recovery, calling on the Federal Government to offer contracts, with a value of up to $10 million, to small businesses before they are opened to the wider market. [1]

In the 2018-19 financial year, the Federal Government awarded 78,150 contracts, with 53% going to SMEs totalling $16.7 billion[2] in value. This represented an 18.2% increase[3] in the number of Federal Government contracts awarded to SMEs compared to the previous period.

Tender Training College has developed a FREE eBook specifically for SMEs with 10 strategies to help them avoid costly mistakes and to give them the best chance to win government and/or private sector tenders. DOWNLOAD YOUR FREE COPY OF THE EBOOK NOW!

Some of these strategies include:

  1. Thoroughly review the tender: Read all parts of the tender closely to get a complete picture of what you are bidding for. Failure to do so means you are tendering blindly.
  2. Conduct a go/no-go process: Do the analysis when receiving a tender to determine your chances of success and whether or not you should actually bid for the work. Otherwise, bidding could be a waste of time, cost and effort.
  3. Offer the best value for money: Develop a competitive price and identify areas of opportunity that differentiate your tender response and provide value to the client. Put your bid on a superior footing.

[1] https://www.asbfeo.gov.au/news/news-articles/small-business-procurement-panel-essential-economic-recovery

[2]  https://www.financeminister.gov.au/media-release/2019/11/21/procurement-contract-targets-exceeded-small-and-medium-businesses

[3]  https://www.financeminister.gov.au/media-release/2019/11/21/procurement-contract-targets-exceeded-small-and-medium-businesses

Dos and don’ts of tendering to avoid common mistakes

the do's and don'ts of tendering

By Kate Burrows, Managing Director, Tender Training College

The lack of client feedback on tenders is a constant challenge for businesses bidding for work.

Why did your company lose? What could it have done differently or better?

Often the silence after submitting a tender can be deafening, given the hard work that goes into responding and the stakes at hand.

Even if your company isn’t the successful proponent, it would be good to know where it went wrong.

According to according to the Federal Government, which awards around 60,000 contracts annually, there are commonly avoidable mistakes all bidders make.

It released its dos and don’ts of tendering* to help tenderers avoid some of the mistakes that may impact on their success.

The dos of tendering are:

    • Prepare responses against the evaluation criteria and address all elements of each criterion
    • Seek to understand the mandatory requirements and terms and conditions
    • Demonstrate your organisation’s ability to provide the required services and provide factual and focused responses using examples
    • Provide sufficient detail on any assumptions being made
    • Quantify and qualify responses, eg:
      • ‘up to 24 hours’ – this could actually be only five minutes
      • ‘we will save you 50%’ – of what, when and how
    • Ask questions  if unsure of the meaning of something, ask the tender team for clarification. They are there to help
    • Leave sufficient time to lodge your bid on AusTender.

The don’ts include:

  • Assume that the tender evaluation team knows about your organisation and its capabilities – this is particularly relevant to incumbent suppliers. Tender teams can only evaluate what is submitted in written responses and obtained through verification activities
  • Submit broad, vague or repetitious statements, or irrelevant marketing information
  • Cut and paste information from previous tender responses without checking if the information is relevant to the current tender
  • Assume there will be a second opportunity to provide pricing -submit the best offer the first time.

I recommend keeping the dos and don’ts handy as a checklist when preparing your next tender.

Alternatively, we can provide a review of your next draft tender against these key criteria. Find out more here: https://tendertrainingcollege.com.au/review-my-tender-online/

*https://www.finance.gov.au/blog/2016/02/11/common-mistakes-in-tender-response

Hundreds of pages, with multiple attachments, schedules and appendices… it must be a tender document!

By Kate Burrows
What are the typical parts of a tender document?
Tender documents can be overwhelming on many fronts, especially when you are new to tendering or even a seasoned professional.

Often the document itself is a major contributor to this frustration and stress, especially if its hundreds of pages and in multiple parts, with various attachments, schedules and appendices.

On a recent $2 billion infrastructure tender I worked on, the bid team needed a diagram to understand the relationship between the many and various sections of the tender document. The diagram resembled a family tree!

For a business professional who is new to tendering, it can be difficult to wade through the tender documentation, and identify the most important and relevant sections for a question you need to respond to.

You may not be aware of:

  • What are the typical parts of a tender document?
  • What is the purpose of each section?
  • What relationship does each part or section play to one another?
  • What are the relevant requirements to the question you are answering?

So before jumping in and writing a response, business professionals should read the tender document and identify the relevant requirements that relate to their question.

For example, in a tender document for the design and construction of a new hospital:

  • The client has set out in Section A, Conditions of Proposal that the response needs to be written in Arial 11 font, supplied in pdf format and with no cross referencing
  • Section B, Conditions of Contract contains the responsibilities and obligations that the winning bidder needs to meet over the term of the Contract, such as the timeframe for building the hospital and the penalties if it is late
  • The client has determined in Section C, Specification that it wants the new hospital to be designed and built to specified standards and functional performance requirements.

Failure to understand and address the relevant requirements in your response may mean you score a low mark, or worse, fail to comply!

It sounds complicated and often is, but you need to navigate through a tender document and identify the relevant requirements to your question or questions. Then you need to ensure you address these requirements in your response.

Once you learn the tricks of the trade, you will gain the skills and confidence to ensure your tender response is compliant each and every time.

Do you need help putting together the pieces of the tender puzzle?

By Kate Burrows

I have been fortunate to form successful associations and even long-lasting friendships with many of my tendering colleagues of the last decade and more.

Not to mention consumed way too many slices of pizza with many of you around the conference table as a submission deadline approaches.

But with some $25 billion in successful tenders in my professional toolkit, I realised there was a more efficient, effective and engaging way I could help you improve your tender performance.

Enter the Tender Training College – Australia’s first dedicated e-learning centre for tender training.

I am really very proud to be launching this venture because I know first-hand how it will empower business professionals to enhance their confidence and careers.

Over the years, I have repeatedly seen people with limited training or experience in tenders dropped into tender teams.

There’s no manual available. The deadline is looming and it quickly becomes a sink or swim state of affairs.

And I know how that feels, because that was me at the start of my tendering career.

You hope no-one notices you are frantically treading water, trying to stay afloat while you work out what the difference is between an EOI and an RFP, or how to comply with the tender requirements.

Fortunately, I learnt a lot from people who were already seasoned tender professionals and was trained as a tender coach.

Bid by bid, I saw there was a way to unravel the mysteries of tenders and tendering.

And a way to systemically and efficiently put the pieces of the tender puzzle back together to be successful, time and time again.

I realised there was a formula approach available to help people become more effective in tendering so they could spend more time doing the things that were important to them.

Hence, the idea for the Tender Training College was born.

With my team, we identified the key competencies and skills that were required to be a part of a winning tender team in the Australian marketplace.

We applied the best e-learning principles to my expert knowledge in tendering to produce a number of quality online courses to improve tendering performance and productivity.


Take our Introduction to Tenders and Tendering Certificate as an example. We go back to the beginning to understand the role that tendering plays as part of a government or company’s procurement process.

Why do clients even go to tender in the first place? What are they looking to achieve? How do they assess the responses?

Importantly, this course helps to demystify the different types of tender documents and give you a better understanding of the component parts of a tender document.

Where was this course 15 years ago when I needed it? Here’s hoping it gives those professionals new to tendering the knowledge, capabilities and confidence they need to shine.

And to those seasoned professionals, I look forward to many more years of working with you in this new venture.

I encourage your feedback to help the Tender Training College to continuously improve the skills and knowledge of the professionals in our marketplace.

Don’t hesitate to email me your thoughts – kate@tendertrainingcollege.com.au

Australian Tenders