Bid/no-bid: the discipline that decides whether public work pays

Ask a supplier who has been bidding for public work for a few years what they would change, and the answer is almost never "write better bids". It is "bid for fewer things". A full tender response costs real days of senior time, and a business that answers everything it is eligible for will spend that time at a win rate that does not pay for it.

The cost you are actually spending

Put a number on a bid before you decide. Count the hours honestly: reading the pack, clarification questions, writing the scored responses, pricing, internal review, assembling evidence, submitting. For a mid-sized services contract this is commonly three to six days spread across the people you can least spare.

Now compare that with the contract. A £40,000 one-year contract at a 20% chance of winning is worth £8,000 of expected revenue, against perhaps £3,000 of your own cost to chase it — before delivery. That can still be a good decision, but it should be a decision, not a reflex.

Six questions, in this order

Work through them in order and stop at the first clear no. The order matters, because the cheap disqualifiers are at the top.

• Can we meet the mandatory requirements today? Not "could we by the deadline" — today. Missing insurance levels, accreditations or a required certification is the most common reason a good bid scores zero.
• Is the deadline realistic given what else is in flight? A rushed response to a large opportunity usually loses to a considered response to a smaller one.
• Do we have the evidence the scored questions will ask for? Named comparable contracts, references, data. If you would have to write around a gap, expect to be marked on the gap.
• Can we deliver it profitably at a competitive price? Not at any price — at the price this buyer has been paying.
• Is there an incumbent, and how are they doing? A well-performing incumbent on a straight re-tender is expensive to displace.
• Do we want more of this work? A contract that pulls you into a market you do not want, or a buyer you found difficult, is a cost even when you win.

Use what the buyer has already published

Two of those questions can be answered with evidence rather than instinct, because the buyer's own award history is published. Look at what they have paid for comparable work, how often they buy it, and who has been winning. A buyer whose awards in your category have gone to the same two firms for four years is telling you something. So is one whose typical award is a quarter of the value you would need to make the contract worthwhile.

This is the single most under-used input in a bid/no-bid decision, and it takes minutes rather than days.

Write the decision down

Keep a one-line record of every opportunity you declined and why. Two things come out of it. First, patterns: if you are repeatedly declining for a missing accreditation, that accreditation has a price and you can now calculate whether it is worth paying. Second, discipline — a written no is much harder to quietly reverse at nine o'clock on a Thursday because someone thinks it would be nice to have a go.

What a good ratio looks like

There is no universal number, but a business winning one in three of the bids it writes is usually choosing well; one in ten usually is not. If your win rate is low, the fix is almost never in the writing. It is in what you are choosing to write about.