Why smaller businesses should learn to love tendering for work.

A request for tender is very often met with a heavy sigh.

To begin with, examining the tender document is usually a project in itself. 

Whoever writes these things seems to take huge pleasure in being very particular, prescriptive and difficult to please. They are often looking for features and services that are frequently not on the menu of the day.

This, understandably, leads many smaller automation and technology companies to walk away.

They assume the tender is there to drive down costs and that the client is clearly so demanding they would be too much trouble to service. It’s all too much.

They decide it’s probably far less trouble to deal with existing clients or prospects who want something that can be delivered off-the-shelf. Sure, this might be a bigger, more valuable opportunity but why take the risk?

Time to look at tendering wearing different glasses.

There is another way to look at tendering that many smaller businesses miss but bigger organisations know very well.

First, tenders are usually issued by mature clients. They have usually invested lots of time and money to articulate exactly what they want and they may even have people whose job it is to get it. They may seem demanding but at least they know what they think you should do for them.

Contrast this with a client who will ‘know what I want when I see it´. Immature clients often expect their clients to perform magic.

Concentrating on them can mean missing what is happening in the broader marketplace, too. Mature clients are, quite likely, responding to a market need they have identified. So they could be offering an opportunity that a smaller player may have missed altogether.

New business, rather than old business.

Tenders are a potential opportunity to create genuine new business, rather than make existing business bigger.

It’s true that the best client is the one that you already have. And it makes absolute sense to grow the value of existing customers - which is why the vast majority of smaller automation and technology companies do precisely that.

The problem is, the wider market could contain different and substantially bigger clients. Like, for example, the one requesting a tender.

There is also a common assumption that maintaining an existing client is less expensive than chasing a new one. But in the case of an immature client this is very often not the case. These clients are higher maintenance and absorb a surprising amount of energy.

When a tender requires a business to make modifications or change processes, this will undoubtedly create a cost but this is also an investment in potential future sales. It isn’t necessarily wasted if the tender is not won.

A tender is an invitation. Not an ultimatum.

It is entirely possible for a business to respond to - and even challenge - elements within the request.

A good, potential client will probably welcome an intelligent conversation like this. They might even be impressed that their potential new supplier has clearly thought about the project in such depth. This discussion might even lead to alternatives that include cost-optimising solutions.

Tendering is a competitive activity and it may take a little time to become geared up to make it part of normal new business life. And perhaps even longer to love the process.

But, as most expanding and successful companies will agree, the bigger the prize, the more effort it can take to win.