Sales & business leaders are ultimately in the driving seat when it comes to making a firm decision around tender business. They should decide whether tenders (both public or private), RFPs and RFIs, are an essential part of their growth strategy. If the company only occasionally participates in tender procedures, then don’t even bother, continue as you’re doing. Yet if winning tenders is an important component of business growth, then continue reading.
💹 Why investing in a professional, dedicated tender desk is a key business decision ?
An effective tender team significantly improves a company's chances of winning tenders and securing new business. This boosts revenues and helps a company achieve its sales targets.
An optimised tender team improves customer satisfaction by providing faster, more accurate, and more comprehensive responses to tender requests. This enhances the overall customer experience and helps to build stronger, longer-lasting relationships with customers.
An efficient tender team also reduces costs by streamlining processes, minimising errors and rework, and improving resource utilisation. This leads to significant cost savings, particularly for companies that frequently respond to tenders. With less time and effort, these teams are capable of handling more requests.
To optimise the efficiency and effectiveness of their tender teams, sales & business leaders can take several steps. These include:
- Commit to building a strong, high-performing team of dedicated tender specialists, fully focussed on growing your new business initiatives, by equipping them with the means to be top performers in your business.
- Define clear roles and responsibilities: Each member of this team should have clear roles and responsibilities defined to ensure that everyone knows what is expected of them. This helps to avoid confusion and duplication of effort.
- Provide training and development: invest in training and development programs to help the tender teams develop the skills and knowledge they need to perform their roles effectively. This can include training on specific tender processes and specialised tools, as well as training on customer service, negotiation, and communication skills.
- Implement effective processes: work with the tender teams to develop and implement effective processes for managing tender requests, including processes for reviewing and assessing tender opportunities, developing responses, and submitting bids. These should be documented, standardised, and regularly reviewed to ensure that they remain effective. Look for efficiency gains by optimising these processes where possible.
- Leverage technology: Sales & business leaders should stimulate the team to leverage technology to streamline and automate tender processes, where possible. This includes tools for document management, proposal development and project tracking.
- Set clear performance metrics: Setting clear metrics for the tender team and regularly reviewing and reporting on these metrics, helps to identify areas for improvement and ensures that the team is working towards common goals.
- Encourage collaboration and teamwork: By encouraging collaboration and teamwork, leaders help to ensure that the team works effectively together, shares knowledge and expertise, and supports each other to achieve common goals.
In summary, optimising the efficiency and effectiveness of tender teams enables sales & business leaders to build a sustainable growth engine for the business.