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Why choose Creative Tenders?

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 five reasons for tendering

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.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The most common mistakes when tendering

The most common mistakes when tendering.

Here are Creative Tenders top 6 most common mistakes when tendering for new business.

1. Not answering the question that is asked

Many companies answer a question based on what information they think the tendering company should know about their business, their processes and their experience, instead of what they’ve actually asked for.  If you are being asked to submit a response to a question, double check you’ve answered what they’ve asked of you.

2. Not doing your research

Research is king! The tendering organisation will want to see that you’ve taken the time to do your homework.  Your tender response will be stronger for it.

3. Not taking the time to submit your best response.

If you’re not going to give it your all, it’s pointless submitting a bid.  Someone else will put all of their company efforts into winning this work, and is it really the impression you want to leave for your business?  We’ve all been there when we’ve seen the tender response 24 hours before its due, but sometimes it really is best to pass than to enter a response that isn’t your best work.

4. Missing the deadline, but sending it anyway.

This shows lack of respect for the tender process, and makes it look like you can’t / won’t achieve deadlines provided.  Your tender response would be disregarded anyway, so if you’ve made a mistake and missed the deadline, don’t send in your response and use it as a learning experience.

5. Ignoring the requirements of the Invitation to Tender

Many tender documents will ask you to complete the tender documents in a specific way.  Don’t ignore these requests.  If the Invitation to Tender asks for you to submit your response using their pre-defined questionnaire, don’t ignore this, use it.  The client may fail your response for not following the guidelines provided.

6.Bidding for absolutely everything

So many businesses make the mistake of tendering for absolutely every piece for work and wonder why they don’t win anything.  You’re so much better off responding to five tenders extremely well, than 15 tenders quickly and rushed.  Create a tender checklist that gives you an understanding of the tenders you would like to win / can deliver well, and stick to it.

 

 

 

 

Questions to ask before responding to a tender

Jill’s top seven questions to ask before responding to a tender

We all know the term ‘busy fools’!  The term definitely comes into play when tendering for new business.  Seeing all those tenders coming through, is like candy in a sweet shop.  But, knowing that you could deliver the work well is one thing, on paper you have to sound great too.

The best tip we can give you is to create a Tender Checklist.  This Tender Checklist will keep you on track when bidding for new work and should include a set of questions which are essential to knowing what to tender for, and what to walk away from.

Here are some sample questions that our Growth Director, Jill asks before submitting tenders on behalf of her clients.

1. Do you have 3 strong case studies from the industry you want to work in?

Most tenders require sector specific experience, and usually require a minimum of three case studies.  Think carefully before submitting a response if you’re struggling to get the right level of experience from your bank of case studies.

2. Do you have a solid foundation of experience, developing systems or creating visuals that are similar to those in the Invitation to Tender?

Look at the work you’ve done in the last three years and ask yourself, ‘is it relevant to the business project?’  If it isn’t it’s unlikely you’ll be successful, as another bidding organisation will specialise in this area and will be able to produce a winning submission.

3. Is the tender more than half of your annual turnover?

It’s hard to know the cut off point for organisations when bid writing for work, but the general rule of thumb is that you are unlikely to win any projects as an SME that are more than 50% of your turnover.

4. Do you meet the terms of the tender i.e. three years required accounts?

If you’ve only been trading for 2 years but it is an essential requirement of the tender to have a minimum of 3 years.  Disregard the tender and don’t give it another thought.

5.How strong is your teams experience against what they’re asking for?

Think of your current and previous experience, if the management team are strong, with a proven track record, you could have a strong chance of winning the work.

6. Can you meet the deadlines required for the project?

Think about the size of your team and the number of man hours needed to complete the work.  If it looks like 100% of your team will be working on the project 100% of the time, you’re unlikely to win it, it’s too risky for the client to give you the work.

7. Is it possible to make a profit, based on the budget allocated?

Many organisations bid for work not thinking of the profit margins should they win the work.  Look at the man hours needed for the project, and add 20%.  If you’re still making a decent profit, go ahead and submit the response.

10 Stages of Tendering

10 Stages of Tendering

Our Growth Director Jill, has been writing bids for over a decade, and she is often asked what makes her so successful.  It’s important to understand that when she first started tendering, she also made the common mistakes made by all, but she soon realised she had to create a process and stick to it.  Creating consistency and building knowledge.

She developed her 10 stage process which she still uses to this day.  Here goes…

1. Develop a checklist

Don’t just assume that every project is right for your business.  If you are clutching at straws for suitable experience, it’s probably not for you.  Create a checklist with 5-10 questions to ask yourself when deciding if to bid for a project.  Mark these questions between 10-20% depending on the number of questions developed.

2. Searching for suitable tenders

Searching for suitable tenders takes time and commitment.  Did you know, we scrape over 1,000 websites every day to populate our portal with suitable public and private sector opportunities?  No agency has the resource or time in-house to do this.  Searching for tenders is critical for agency growth and a great source of new business, so make this process as streamlined as possible by signing up to Creative Tenders or another suitable portal.

3. Review against your checklist

Once you have sourced relevant tenders, score them against your checklist.  If you don’t score 80% or above, don’t tender for the work, put your sales efforts into other activities.

4. Roles and responsibilities

For those tenders that score 80% or above, agree roles, responsibilities and deadlines between the sales team, ensuring you’re not leaving things till the last minute.

5. Research

Research really is king when it comes to tendering.  You need to look into the tendering organisations business, look at what they’ve done in the past, read the tender document from front to back, and compile a thorough understanding of what they are trying to achieve, who their key buyers/audience are and who they are competing with.

6. Complete draft one of the tender

Draft one is critical as its about putting all of your thoughts down onto paper.  It’s important to see this as the first draft as you’re bound to think of additional/relevant knowledge and experience as you’re producing the response.  Make sure that during this stage you’re answering the information that is being asked of you, and make it 100% relevant to the company your bidding to.

7. Amend, edit, review

The review process should take a while, it’s not about proof reading at this stage, it’s about ensuring you’re answering the right questions, that the response has been correctly levelled against the scoring criteria of the tender and that you’re happy with the message the tender response gives about your business.

8. Sleep on it

Once you’ve edited the response, sleep on it.  We’ve all been there when we’ve submitted our tender response and instantly thought ‘I should have included XYZ’.  It’s important to plan your time ahead to give you this important down time before the response is due.

9. Proof read

Only then should you proof read your response for spelling and grammatical errors.  During this stage you should also ensure you’ve kept to any word count or font suggestions from the Invitation to Tender document.  After you’re happy with the response, ask someone else to read it, it’s hard to see mistakes with our own content when you’ve read it so many times before.

10. Submit

Submit your response, giving yourself plenty of time before the deadline is due.  Consider how long this might take when using online public sector tendering platforms, as they are not always as straightforward as they may first appear.

 

 

 

 

 

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

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.