In this instance, design concepts accounted for 20% of the final evaluation score.

Price was twice as important (40%) and yet the maximum value of the contract was limited to £6000.

But the bigger issue was there were no specific, comparable requirements. You were free to choose whether to submit a few logo concepts or to show a developed brand. Equally the tender specification required you to submit sections on, amongst other things, ‘Experience’.

How points would be awarded was explained but not what was specifically required. How, for example, do you judge someone’s 30 year experience against 12 months worth? Who’s to say which is more valid? This is a lot easier to evaluate in person than it is in writing.

With on-line tendering portals you can often ask questions – but these threads will be seen by the competition. So you may not want to ask anything that might hint at a potential solution.

This is perhaps the biggest risk for an agency – without talking to a client there’s no way of gauging likely reactions.

Having gone through the process we’d suggest that some form of videoconference might be an idea. Allow everyone to submit potential questions beforehand, select a set to answer and then talk about the issues. Let the agencies hear your views, critique approaches already on the market, discuss why you have set certain priorities.

Just an hour would make a huge difference to help agencies gain some real understanding of the project and the client.

In many pitch situations a client is effectively saying “I’m looking for new ideas”. In any pre-pitch meeting you would certainly want to ask who the incumbent was and why they weren’t doing the job in question.

In a tender situation you need to assume the incumbent will be submitting a bid.

They’ll probably have big advantages over you:

• Personal relationships
• Prior knowledge – style likes and dislikes
• Established processes – trust
• Budget understanding

We made the mistake of assuming the incumbent wasn’t an option and guess who won the contract? Lesson learned.

If there is a next time, we would be asking questions about motivation and perceptions of any current output right at the outset.

• Take any time off
• Produce any speculative work for existing or former clients
• Support a local charity
• Work on promoting our business to the markets we’re already successful in

This might sound flippant – but, having committed to the project, we spent significantly more time than we’d planned preparing our submission. This is an easy trap to fall into when there’s no definitive list of what’s required in concept terms.

The tender we were involved with had scheduled a 6 day gap between the submission deadline and the announcement of the winning bid. The winners were announced after 3.5 days, Why so quickly? – we won’t have been the only people to wonder.

Of more concern though, is the lack of any feedback. This specific tender specification had assured bidders the client would “inform all Tenderers of the weighted scores they have achieved in the process, the identity of the successful Tenderer(s) and their scores achieved”.

No such scores were sent.

Whilst a client has no obligation to justify its decision a simple “thanks but no thanks” message gives you no way of judging your own approach or, indeed, to work out if were close enough to warrant investing time in future bids.

If you’re thinking of running, or responding to, a tendering project we hope this article has been of use and wish you good luck!