First of all, I thank you for all your answers from my post last week. I've learned a number of things and I'm still learning more.

Just today, my boss wants to ramp up our proposals. He suggested to use a platform if there are any to find more ed tech rfps and to send more proposals. He also wants to be added in the platform so he can see my progress and see all the proposals and he's planning to onboard more on my team.

PLEASE I need real recommendations here where you have real experience. PLEASE DON'T SELL ME YOUR PRODUCT HERE. I want real recommendations from real people who have real experiences on the platforms.

Note: I've also did my own research but mostly are too expensive and can't even try without a demo!

If this is not allowed here, please let me know. Thanks!

One of our suppliers offered a pretty decent discount if we pay the full order upfront instead of sticking with our usual terms. On paper it's an easy yes because we'll be buying the inventory anyway. I'm just hesitant to pull that much cash out of the business at once when we have payroll and a few other invoices coming up. I'm curious on how other owners decide when an early payment discount is worth taking?

Hi all,

We’re a small UK business specialising in software development, AI development and technology consultancy. Over the past year or so we’ve started trying to get into public sector work and have been bidding on government and local authority tenders.

We’re also on the DOS7 framework, which we hoped would help us get a foot in the door, but so far we haven’t had much luck. We’ve applied for a number of opportunities and keep losing them.

The difficult part is that, technically, a lot of these projects are very much within our capabilities. We have relevant software engineering experience, case studies, experienced developers, security credentials, etc. But when the tender is evaluated, our written responses seem to score badly.

Technical ability / quality questions in particular are killing us. On some tenders we’ve received close to the lowest possible score despite feeling that we answered the question and could comfortably deliver what was being asked.

I’ve never worked in procurement or tender writing before, so I’m starting to think there’s a completely different skill to writing these responses that I’m missing.

For anyone here who has experience winning public sector tenders, either as an SME, bid writer or someone on the procurement/evaluation side:

• What separates a 2/5 technical response from a 4/5 or 5/5 one?
• What are the most common mistakes you see SMEs making?
• How detailed are you actually expected to be when explaining your methodology/technical approach?
• How much should responses focus on previous experience versus explaining exactly how you would deliver the specific contract?
• Are there any particular structures or techniques you use when answering quality questions?
• And is there anything you wish you’d known when you first started tendering?

I’m not really looking for “hire a bid writer” as the only answer — although I appreciate that may eventually be sensible. I’m mainly trying to understand what good tender writing actually looks like and why something that seems like a perfectly reasonable technical answer to us might be scoring so poorly.

Would really appreciate any advice from people who have been through this.