Tender and Proposal Strategy. Pre-submission positioning so the bid wins before it's written
Strategic Sales Support sets the strategy for major tender and proposal pursuits before drafting starts: targeting, Award Drivers mapping, win-theme development and positioning plans. The output is a documented strategy the bid team executes against, not a generic capability statement.
Who benefits.
- 01
Pre-RFP pursuits worth doing properly.
An opportunity is six months out. You want to land warm, not bid cold.
- 02
Major panel or framework reapplications.
Current panel position up for renewal. Failure costs 3–5 years of revenue.
- 03
First-time pursuits with new buyers.
Buyer you haven't won before. You need a strategy, not last year's template.
- 04
Complex multi-stakeholder pursuits.
Government, defence, infrastructure or major resources. Internal objections and politics matter as much as price.
- 05
Bids where you're not the incumbent.
Displacing a sitting supplier needs more than a good response, it needs a strategy.
The patterns we see.
Cold bidding.
First contact with the buyer is when the RFP lands. By then the incumbents have shaped the requirement.
No Award Drivers mapping.
Response addresses the published evaluation criteria but ignores the unstated buyer priorities behind them.
Generic value propositions.
Same capability statement used on every bid. No buyer-specific positioning.
No win themes.
Response is descriptive ('we do x') instead of persuasive ('you need this because y').
Strategy invented at draft time.
Win themes emerge in week 3 of writing, too late to shape the structure of the response.
What changes.
Commercial outcomes, not activity outputs.
- ↑
Documented strategy before drafting.
Pre-RFP strategy doc covering positioning, win themes, Award Drivers and capture plan. Bid team executes against it.
- ↑
Warm position when RFP drops.
Buyer-side stakeholders know you, know what you stand for, and have heard your win themes, before the RFP is released.
- ↑
Higher win rate on pursued bids.
Less effort spread across all bids; more effort concentrated on bids where pre-positioning has actually been done.
- ↑
Strategic clarity in the team.
Everyone on the bid knows what to lead with, what to invest in, and what to de-emphasise. No drafting by committee.
How an engagement runs.
- 1
Target.
Identify the strategic pursuit. Confirm fit, timing and resource allocation. Stop if the answer is no.
- 2
Map Award Drivers.
Workshop with your team and (where possible) buyer-side intel to map the criteria the buyer will actually weight.
- 3
Build win themes.
Three to five themes the response will lead with, each tied to an Award Driver and supported by your past performance.
- 4
Capture plan.
12-week pre-RFP plan: which stakeholders to meet, what content to publish, what events to attend, what intel to gather.
- 5
Handoff to Bid Support.
Documented strategy passes to the bid team when the RFP drops. No re-inventing the wheel in week 1 of drafting.
Tender and Proposal Strategy, answered.
When should we engage on tender strategy?
+
How is strategy different from bid writing?
+
What are Award Drivers?
+
Does the strategy work alone, or does it need bid support too?
+
Who delivers the strategy work?
+
Right service. Right time.
Book a 30-minute call. We'll figure out if Tender and Proposal Strategy is the right fit, and if not, where to start instead.