Why should SMEs tender for work through digital marketplace?

As an experienced writer of tenders for a variety of SMEs, I have asked myself whilst writing tenders and racking my brains for a synonym for ‘experience’ – should SMEs tender for work?

However, if the business has the capability and desire to grow, then my answer is always ‘Yes’.

Tenders not only offer SMEs the opportunity to gain potential work and revenue – they also allow SMEs to gain work of a different size that they are able to handle. As a result, businesses that are smaller than others are still able to win bids, and so expand their business for the future, based on key company strengths like staff experience, strong leadership and proven procedures.

In the past, SMEs were often prevented from tendering for government contracts primarily because it was too time-consuming and too expensive to bid for these contracts against larger-sized companies. In 2009/10, SMEs were only winning 6.5% of government business! However, this has begun to change as the government has helped SMEs gain more and more of this work – in 2014, 26.1% of government business was spent on SMEs. These public sector contracts can offer SMEs a great amount of potential revenue and so should definitely not be overlooked if the tender is relevant to your business’ services.

In addition to this, winning these tenders can provide you with a great reference to help you gain further contracts, as well as providing you with experience to take forward. Furthermore, public sector tenders with the government can often turn into long-term relationships, providing you with a stable source of income.

Private sector Tender opportunities

The private sector has also begun to offer SMEs thousands of tender opportunities to gain work. Private sector businesses are increasingly choosing to search for suppliers through tendering and the variety of products and services they require ranges widely. As a result, SMEs are gaining more and more tender opportunities which if taken advantage of can help to grow their business hugely. Also, tenders from the private sector are often far easier to apply too than public sector because they have far less stringent rules that have to be followed in the applications. So why not practice on these tenders?  Use the feedback you get to improve your overall tendering processes and procedures internally.

Tendering may seem like a scary prospect to many creative agencies who do not have relevant sales experience. However, the potential revenue it can create for your business makes the effort well worthwhile, and I would certainly recommend tendering to all creative and digital SMEs who want to grow their business.

So why tender for work? It’s worth a shot right?  But remember, feedback is king!

Sign up for a free demo of Creative Tenders and review the following opportunities:

Event Tenders

Website Tenders

Printing RFPs

Video Production Tenders & many more.