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Tag: creative tenders

Why choose Creative Tenders?

Posted on by Prashant Swami

Why choose Creative Tenders?

Mr Tenders vs Mrs Finder

Our system is used by two types of customers, creative agencies and freelancers looking for new business opportunities. Business owners and marketing managers looking to source creative partners will also benefit from Creative Tenders.

How can we help your business grow you might ask? By using Creative Tenders (for agencies and freelancers) or by using Creative Finder (to source creative partners).

Here’s how….

Mr Tenders vs Mrs Finder

Mr Tenders will…

 

  • Source creative only tenders, minimising the time needed to search for tenders
  • Work with his team who has decades of creative sector experience
  • Provide a time saving solution for business development teams
  • Provide a dedicated account manager to make sure you don’t miss out
  • Set up cold calling campaigns to generate unique opportunities for our subscribers
  • Grow his team who are currently operating UK wide with a clear international strategy
  • Create an ideal solution that works for both growing UK agencies and freelancers

 

Mrs Finder will…

 

  • Give you access to our ‘free to use’ system for unlimited invitation to quotes
  • Help you write your creative and digital specifications
  • Ensure your opportunities are seen by hundreds of relevant freelancers and agencies
  • Take the legwork out of securing competitive quotes
  • Ensure our system is an easy to use online solution
  • Allow agencies to respond via our system, reducing the amount of emails you receive
  • Provide you with a dedicated account manager with over 10 years’ industry experience

Don’t waste your valuable time searching for tender opportunities and suppliers….we’ve got them all in one place.  Sign up today at www.creativetenders.co.uk

Tel: 0203 051 2217

 

 

 

Top Ten Tips for submitting a tender

Posted on by Prashant Swami

Top Ten Tips for submitting a tender

Here are our top ten tips for completing a tender document:

  1. Read the whole tender, even if it is 100 pages long. Page 82 may have a vital bit of information about how to respond to the tender.
  2. Adhere to the specific tendering rules and regulations. If they want the tender in Ariel point 12, complete the tender in Ariel point 12.
  3. Ask a question if something’s not clear. Don’t just assume it’s a silly question.
  4. Answer with the information they have requested, not with the information you think they should know.
  5. Follow the format they’ve requested – they are requesting it that way for a reason and make it as easy as possible to find the information they’ve requested, creative design is great, but ensure it’s in a readable format that flows.
  6. Understand how they will be marking your tender, the percentages are hugely relevant to where you should be concentrating your efforts.
  7. Show consistency in your tendering processes and procedures – don’t contradict yourself from one section to the next.
  8. Don’t use standard, over complicated content. Those marking the tender will know if you’ve cut and pasted your company biography from your website.
  9. Choose either 1st person or 3rd person and don’t mix it up. Don’t make it difficult for the reader to follow.
  10. Proof read your response more than once, and get another member of your team to double check for spelling and grammatical mistakes.

 

Top five reasons for tendering

Posted on by Prashant Swami

Top five reasons for tendering

 

We’re often told by companies that we work with, that they don’t tender as it takes too long, they’re never successful, they don’t have the time…etc. etc.

Tendering is a powerful way to generate new business, so powerful in fact that many businesses use this as their sole route to winning new business. We think every business should at least try tendering.

We understand why businesses are put off from the long, in-depth process you have to follow. But, spending the time upfront to learn how to tender could be vital to the success and growth of your service based business.

Our Growth Director, Jill has been winning work via bid writing for well over a decade, and she is sharing with you below, her top five reasons for tendering in creative and digital agencies.

1. You don’t need to sell the need for your service

Responding to tenders means businesses have already established the need for your services and have allocated a budget to carry out the work.  This reduces the need for selling the benefits of the services, and establishing the benefit of investing in XYZ.

Responding to a tender means you’ve just got to prove that you’re the best fit for their business.  Surely it’s worth a try? Just make sure you follow a strict process of what you will and won’t apply for.

2. The project has clear start and end dates

When tendering the client usually outlines when they would like the work to start and end, meaning you can work your studio time around this.  When selling directly B2B we often have projects on hold waiting for content / imagery etc. We’re not saying this won’t happen with tendering, but your client is likely to be more prepared.

3. Budget signed off in advance

As the budget has already been allocated, you know what constraints you’re working within, allowing you to best advise your client where to allocate spend.

4. Clarifies your offering to clients

You won’t always be successful when tendering, but completing a tender document often gives you additional clarity on other areas of your business. It also teaches you how you can productise service offerings.  It also allows you to benchmark your fees against what people expect to pay.

5. Research

Tendering allows you to see how businesses are spending their marketing budgets.  This helps you to better understand where you should be spending your own marketing budgets and what services are the most popular.  If you see an influx of social media tenders and this is an offering your business provides, read the Invitation to Tender documents. You should then align your service descriptions to ensure it is suitable for the market you’re selling into.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Creative Tenders Team Profiles – John Hudson

Posted on by Prashant Swami

Creative Tenders Team Profiles – John Hudson

When did you start working in the creative sector?

12 years whilst I was still at University.

What is the biggest change you’ve seen in the sector in the last ten years?

Everything moving digital and online, social media becoming more and more important for businesses, and online communities becoming more popular than offline events.

What made you stay in the creative sector?

The diversity and fast paced environment, I’m the type of person that needs to be kept on my toes, and the creative sector does that every day.

What is your biggest achievement in the sector?

Building a leading B2C videography business with 50% year on year growth.  For future achievements I am hoping Creative Tenders will become THE leading tender portal used worldwide by creative businesses and purchasing managers.

If you could describe the sector in 3 words what would you say?

Fast, dynamic and fulfilling (unlike my current diet).

If you could see anything happen in the creative sector, what would it be?

For smaller agencies to realise the potential in exporting.  Geography shouldn’t be an issue now when we do business with one another.

If you didn’t work at in the creative industries what would you do?

Probably a PE teacher, I like working with people and helping people realise what they are capable of.

What 3 skills do you think you need to be successful in this sector?

Approachable, open-minded, a good work ethic. If you have those 3 three things, drop me a line or send me your CV.

WE SOURCE CREATIVE CONTRACT OPPORTUNITIES FOR SECTORS INCLUDING;

Book a free live demo with Creative Tenders to see how we can help your business grow. 

Focused growth continues at Creative Tenders

Posted on by Prashant Swami

Focused growth continues at Creative Tenders

Creative Tenders are growing once again with their latest recruit, an MBA graduate from Durham University.

Adhitya Vohra has joined Creative Tenders for a 3-month project looking at how the business will successfully launch the Creative Tenders product into international markets. The project is a critical step to forecasting how the management team will dominate the tendering market. This is not only in the UK but also internationally.

“We believe that geography should no longer be a factor into where we seek new business or our suppliers. With the ever changing landscape of technology and how we communicate with our clients and suppliers, we can see huge scope in bringing additional work to the UK from other markets” said John Hudson, Managing Director.

“Our marketing director Jill Hudson drives forward this strategy every day. We currently communicate with 850,000 businesses in the UK selling the services of Creative Tenders and Creative Finder. We want to double this within the next 12 months and we will continue to work hard to grow the creative industries” he added.

Jill Hudson added “Adhitya joins us with not only an impressive MBA from Durham University but 4 years professional experience working for organisations like Deutsche Bank and Citicoro Services India. He officially starts in our company on the 11th July 2016 and we are looking forward to seeing the end result and being able to drive forward our international strategy”.

WE SOURCE CREATIVE CONTRACT OPPORTUNITIES FOR;

Book a free live demo with Creative Tenders to see how we can help your business grow. 

How much time do you spend weekly searching tender websites?

Posted on by Prashant Swami

How much time do you spend weekly searching tender websites?  

Although no one has actually said £12 per week is too expensive, we thought we would look at the time saving cost of our system, allowing us to put into context how useful Creative Tenders will be to your agency.

£12 per week works out at an annual cost of only £624 per year. This gives you full system access and access to all UK and European tenders.

If the average sales professional UK wide earns £25,000 in salary we are saying that, that person would only spend 2.5% of their time on searching for marketing tenders and website tenders generating proactive leads per year to cover the cost of signing up.

New tendering opportunities

Obviously this is not the case. A sales’ professional should be constantly looking for new tendering opportunities and new business opportunities in order to achieve their financial target.

Add on the cost of the telephone bill generating cold leads, payments to other tendering systems which don’t gibe you 100% of the creative sector leads and the wasted time looking through hundreds of tenders that are not relevant to your sector or your agency then the cost saving is huge.

People have asked us why it’s so cheap when so much work goes into making it useful to agencies, and the answer is simple! We have an honest approach to making money, we can make good money from £12 per week, we can invest in product development and we can encourage the best possible lead generators to join us with good basic salaries and good bonuses. Our system is popular in the industry so as long as you keep loving us we can keep the costs of joining down.

Be a part of something fantastic and join Creative Tenders today!

 

 

Do you think you miss tendering opportunities because you didn’t see them in time?

Posted on by Prashant Swami

Do you think you miss tendering opportunities because you didn’t see them in time?  Or the deadline had just passed?

My biggest bugbear over the last 16 years in the industry is finding the perfect tender at 9am only to find out the deadline is 12noon – THE SAME DAY. Very annoying, but it used to happen all the time.

Do you ever find this in your agency?

This was one of the main reasons for launching this system, and developing it specifically for creative businesses. In the early days of the business we were asked by an investor why we are minimising our potential client base by only populating it with creative opportunities? That’s simple, creating something as fantastic as Creative Tenders, takes sector commitment, sector knowledge and more importantly a desire to grow the sector.

We know we are fantastic at generating creative sector opportunities so we created a system that allows us to take that online. That doesn’t mean to say we won’t create a Professional Tenders, or an Engineering Tenders, we might, but it will still be sector specific to those industries so they get the same value you do from Creative Tenders.

Our core goal is to make sure you don’t experience the same bugbears we have over the years and ensure you are made aware of opportunities the same day they are published. If we see you haven’t logged into the system, your dedicated account manager will give you a personal call to ensure you’ve not missed it. We are not a technical product with zero face. We build relationships, the better we know your agency the better we can support you and help you to grow.

Don’t be that Company who see’s their life changing tender 2 hours before submission, give yourself the best possible chances of success by giving yourself time to produce a winning bid submission.

 

 

Creative Tenders on tour | Tender Support | Events Management Tenders

Posted on by Prashant Swami

Creative Tenders on tour | Event Management Tenders

We are very excited to be launching our product in May. The time has flown since we first came up with the idea of Creative Tenders. The development team has steam coming off their fingertips and the sales team has been in, intensive training ready for its launch.

We are simply dying to showcase the product, so we thought what better way to do it, than to attend a couple of national conferences and exhibitions. The shortlist was hard, but our Marketing Director Jill and Development Director Andrew will be heading to London next week to attend 5 exhibitions, the B2B Marketing Expo at the Excel Centre in London, the Sales Innovation Expo, The Business Show, Business Start Up, Accountex, and Legal Ex on 11th and 12th May.

Upcoming Events

http://b2bmarketingexpo.co.uk

http://www.salesinnovationexpo.co.uk

http://www.accountex.co.uk

http://www.bstartup.com

http://www.legalex.co.uk

If that doesn’t make us busy enough spreading the word to both those interested in being a part of Creative Tenders and Creative Finder. Our MD John, is attending Thinking Digital in Newcastle to find out more about what new stuff we should be doing to make our system even more fantastic than it already is (http://www.tdcncl.com).

So that’s us covering two major cities, so we believe all good things come in threes, so we are heading to Leeds to the Buy Yorkshire Conference (http://buyyorkshire.com) on the 17th and 18th May. We’re ready for a lie down just thinking about it.

So, if you’re based on London, Newcastle or Leeds this is your chance to find out more about what we’re up too and even have a demo of our fantastic new product.

Look forward to chatting to you all more over the next couple of weeks.

WE SOURCE CREATIVE CONTRACT OPPORTUNITIES FOR SECTORS INCLUDING;

Book a free live demo with Creative Tenders to see how we can help your business grow. 

Have you had a demo of the Creative Tender business development portal yet? Creative Tenders Reviews

Posted on by Prashant Swami

Have you had a demo of the Creative Tender business development portal yet?  What do you think? Creative Tenders reviews

We are so keen to hear people’s thoughts on the Creative Tenders portal. Have you had your demo yet? We are so pleased at how well the take up has been since we launched the product. It’s very exciting that people also see the value in our product from what has been a year’s worth of planning and development.

Our promise to our clients is that we will constantly develop this system to be the best tendering product on the market for creative businesses, but in order to do that we need your feedback.

Creative Tenders reviews

Feedback we have had so far has all been positive and includes the following reviews

“Amazing product, a good mix of public and private tendering opportunities”

—

“We have the confidence that you are finding 100% of the public tenders we want to bid for, something we have not had from other systems we have used in the past”

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“Totally worth £12 per week, it helps our sales team dramatically and save’s so much time searching for opportunities”

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“So good we want to go for more tenders ”

 —

So basically we want to know the good, the bad and the ugly. If you have seen a demo but don’t think it’s for you, we definitely want to hear from you so we can create a product you want to use. If you’re a current client and think the product is fantastic, let us know why, we don’t want to change any features that work for you.

Please send any product feedback and to enquire more about tender writing support to John at john@creativetenders.co.uk.

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

Event Tenders

Website Tenders

Printing Tenders

Video Production Tenders & many more.

 

 

Creative Tenders moves to Durham

Posted on by Prashant Swami

Creative Tenders moves to Durham

We are excited to announce that Creative Tenders will be moving to Durham in April 2016 to support its bid for high growth. The growing software company will be moving to the prestigious business park – City West at Meadowfield in Durham after signing a five-year lease for 1,600 square foot.

Managing Director John Hudson said “we are very excited to move the business to Durham. The new office space allows us to grow massively and will support with finding the right team, with the right experience to lead our business to become the leading creative tendering portal across the UK”.

He went on to say “if you are looking for a new challenge then Creative Tenders could be the business for you. We have a full list of open vacancies on our website ranging from sales executives to account managers”.

Creative Tenders Portal

The product is due to go live in February and the team believes that it’s the start of something very exciting for the creative industries. The team will launch UK wide from day one and Directors Jill and John a husband and wife team has heavily invested into the business and its product development.

Jill said “I have worked in the creative sector my whole career, and I always knew I wanted to streamline the way new business was secured, as no matter what agency I worked with they struggled to find quality leads and new business opportunities”

“Our new team will be forward thinking experienced sales and marketing representatives from the creative sector and will drive forward the agencies that sign up to our product. Following the signing of the new office lease we have everything we need to build a leading brand”.

We welcome feedback on our product so please contact Jill Hudson – jill@creativetenders.co.uk to discuss our business further.

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

 

 

 

Are you looking for a new creative agency to work with? Creative Agency Tenders

Posted on by Prashant Swami

Are you looking for a new creative agency to work with?  Look no further 

Businesses work with creative agencies for different reasons, and you don’t have to be a multi million pound business to benefit from an agency relationship. Branding in a business is so important and people follow brands sometimes without realising due to their creative marketing campaigns and strong communications.

This should be the same for all businesses, no matter of size, sector or service offering. Everything consistent, from the use of colour, how you use your logo on printed and digital materials, the type of imagery you use, even the messages you put down on paper.

What’s the best way to do this? Find someone to look after your brand.

A proactive agency will present new ideas and concepts to you to support with the growth of your business. It doesn’t have to cost a fortune but you should consider putting a dedicated budget in place, no matter how small for the consistent management of your brand.

We have a pool of hundreds of UK based agencies

We have a pool of hundreds of UK based agencies and freelancers on our books. These agencies and freelancers work with businesses to help them grow, support with creative ideas and engage new customers.

Creative Finder works with marketing managers, business owners and senior business professionals with the responsibility of marketing. These businesses work with us to ensure they find the right agency relationship for their business, the wrong relationship can be costly and brand damaging.

The businesses post opportunities on our system and agencies will showcase their experience, their ideas, and any sector specific case studies they may have suitable to your bespoke requirements. Everything is managed on our system from uploading the ITT to organising shortlisted presentations. Meaning you won’t be bombarded with emails from the agencies that use our system.

The support doesn’t end there. Our experienced marketing team works with businesses to help specify their needs or help them identify what type of agency would be best to support their specific needs.

If you are interested in finding out more about Creative Finder, and how we have helped other businesses to find suitable suppliers, contact Jill on jill@creativetenders.co.uk.

Can we have your feedback on how you currently tender for new business?

Posted on by Prashant Swami

Can we have your feedback on how you currently tender for new business?

Before we started developing our product we took a selection of creative agencies feedback on the systems they use and how they tender for work. This ranged quite a bit but a few usual culprits appeared. Usually the ones that people knew about were from their local authorities, but there are so many opportunities out there, you just need to be able to find them.

If we understand how people currently tender, we will be able to improve our tendering system. We believe Creative Tenders should be a constantly evolving product and we believe with more ideas up our sleeve that we can change the way business is done globally – a big statement to live up to, right?

So which tendering websites do you use? Do you pay for tendering access or do you only use the free websites that you have found by accident as and when they appear?

What do you like about these tendering sites? Do you find any of them particularly easy or hard to use? If so we need to know, we need to make sure that our system is the best on the market. As we only have sector relevant tenders and we are industry experts, we know with the right feedback from our clients we can create a system that will have huge impact on the sector, and a huge impact on each and every one of our clients businesses.

If you want to send us your feedback so that we can shape a system that is right for you and your business, email Jill on jill@creativetenders.co.uk.

What percentage of your work comes from tendering?

Posted on by Prashant Swami

What percentage of your work comes from tendering?  Do you think you maximise this sales channel?

After me moaning last week about what people find difficult about tendering for the creative sector, I thought I best discuss something a little more lighthearted. Success rates!

As I have worked in all size agencies in my career, tendering success rates have been different. Mainly because there was no standard format in place, they were usually rushed due to studio time not being available and sometimes winging it a little with the hope that we might be in with a chance.

If I look at the most recent agency I supported, we can see that around 50% of the overall business we won came from public tendering, which for an agency of only 5 people is quite high.

Design is a very personal thing

Obviously it helped that I know how to write bids and more importantly how to write a winning tender so our success rate stood at about 80% for those projects we did bid for, but we never included creative artwork. This is a bugbear of mine. How can we actually develop creative material when we haven’t even met the client, haven’t discussed the brief properly, don’t really understand their client base or even their core objectives. Design is a very personal thing and we don’t believe that a tender should be put to one side based on a tiny fraction of the information provided.

Many people probably don’t maximise tendering as a channel to winning new business because of the studio time needed to produce the tender. I am pleased to say though that fewer tenders these days actually ask for artwork to be created, something we will also advise for those clients we work with on Creative Finder.

We’ve all sorts of standard templates to help our clients be more successful with tendering, one being a tender checklist, if you don’t tick all the boxes, don’t waste the time submitting the tender. Be ruthless.

If you want to access the standard documents we have in place, or even want me to take a look at one of your tenders, send it over, we are happy to help.

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

Event Tenders

Website Tenders

Printing Tenders

Video Production Tenders & many more.