Tender Tactics - is it what you say or how you say it?
In a competitive tendering environment, especially within government and institutional contracts, presentation, tone, and clarity matter more than many businesses realise. A good submission meets the requirements. A winning submission makes those requirements easy to assess, compelling to read, and confidently delivered.
When you're preparing a tender submission, the natural instinct is to focus heavily on what you’re saying—after all, that’s where you demonstrate your capabilities, experience, and offer. But if you’ve ever lost a bid despite having the best technical solution or the most competitive price, there’s a good chance the issue wasn’t what you said—but how you said it.
In a competitive tendering environment, especially within government and institutional contracts, presentation, tone, and clarity matter more than many businesses realise. A good submission meets the requirements. A winning submission makes those requirements easy to assess, compelling to read, and confidently delivered.
So let’s break it down: what really matters more in a tender - what you say or how you say it?
The content (what you say)
Let’s start with the obvious - substance matters. If you don’t have the capability, qualifications, or relevant experience to deliver on the contract, no amount of great writing is going to save your bid.
Strong content in a tender includes:
Detailed methodology showing how you’ll meet the scope.
A team with relevant experience and qualifications.
Robust safety, quality and environmental systems.
Evidence of past success (e.g., case studies, KPIs).
A clear understanding of the client’s objectives.
Value for money, innovation, and risk management.
This is the foundational layer of any good response. If the core offer is weak, the rest doesn’t matter. But having the right content isn’t enough on its own.
The communication (how you say it)
This is where many good businesses fall short. Their content is strong—but it’s buried in wordy paragraphs, littered with jargon, or presented in a way that’s hard for the evaluator to follow.
How you say it includes:
Clarity and conciseness.
Logical structure and easy navigation.
Plain English and client-focused tone.
Clear headings, bullet points, and summaries.
Visual consistency and professional formatting.
A great tender isn’t just informative - it’s reader-friendly. It understands the evaluator’s time constraints and helps them quickly find what they’re looking for.
Why “how” can make or break your submission
Let’s imagine two submissions:
Company A lists their experience in a paragraph with dense text, limited formatting, and vague outcomes.
Company B presents the same experience in a concise table with project names, outcomes, KPIs, and a short paragraph explaining relevance.
They both did the work - but Company B made it easy to understand and aligned it clearly with the tender’s priorities.
Evaluators want to give you the best score possible, but they can only do that if your submission makes it easy for them to find and interpret the information. That’s where writing, formatting, and layout come into play.
The role of tone and language
Tenders are often read by panels of people with mixed expertise, including procurement officers, technical specialists, operations staff. You’re not writing a legal brief; you’re telling your story to a time-poor, mixed-skill audience, so it’s important to use a tone that’s:
Professional, not robotic.
Confident, not arrogant.
Plain, not technical (unless required).
Client-centric, not self-congratulatory.
Instead of saying:
“We are a highly regarded provider of end-to-end facility maintenance solutions.”
Try:
“We maintain over 50 buildings across mulitple locations, achieving a 96% compliance score in independent audits.”
Show, don’t just tell.
Case studies: the ultimate combo of what + how
Case studies are one of the best ways to blend strong content with strong communication. A well-written case study provides:
Relevant experience (what you’ve done).
Specific results and outcomes (how well you did it).
A story format that’s easy and engaging to read (how you said it).
When done well, a case study becomes a proof point that builds trust, not just a paragraph of background noise.
Final verdict: it’s both - but don’t underestimate the “how”
Yes, the technical content matters. Yes, you need to tick all the boxes. But don’t ignore the role of presentation, tone, formatting, and structure. Because when every competitor has similar capabilities, the winning submission often comes down to who said it better.
A clear, compelling, well-structured tender helps evaluators do their job—and that gives you a serious edge.
Need help saying it better?
TenderWise helps businesses across all sectors create persuasive, professional tenders that don’t just meet the brief - they stand out.
From editing and formatting to full-service tender writing, we’ll help you say it right, and give you the best chance to win more work.
Here at TenderWise we can help with that! Just give Pauline a call on 0400 514 579 or shoot an email to pauline@tenderwise.com.au and we’ll get right back to you!
Didn’t win that tender submission? Ask for feedback!
None of us like to lose, especially when you’ve put lots of time and effort (not to mention bucks if you’ve paid for professional help) into creating a tender response submission. As hard as it is to miss out though, this is a golden opportunity to seek feedback so you can get some clues as to what you could do better next time.
None of us likes to lose, especially when you’ve put lots of time and effort (not to mention bucks if you’ve paid for professional help) into creating a tender submission. Although, as hard as it is to miss out, this is a golden opportunity to seek feedback so you can get some clues as to what you could do better next time.
Not all organisations will provide feedback, but you'll never know if you don't ask! Suppose your tender submission was for a local Council contract. In that case, it's also a good idea to search on the Council website for the minutes of the Councillor's monthly meetings - these are always publicly available and usually include a section relating to the outcome of tenders (aka who won what and why).
The level of feedback offered will vary substantially depending on who issued the tender. Some may offer a face-to-face debrief designed to provide honest feedback and insights on what parts of your tender letter could have been improved. This information is gold for your business, so use it well.
Other tender issuers may provide a ranking score against each evaluation criterion for all tenders received. Sometimes this will list all tenderers and their scores by name, and sometimes this will list all tenderers, with everyone but your business listed with a generic name (e.g., Company 1, Company 2, etc.).
Either way, it’s an excellent opportunity to see where you sat amongst your competitors and what areas let you down. If you don’t get much information, but you do get the chance to ask questions, it’s always good to know:
Who won the tender submissions? It will help you better understand your competition.
How many were received, and where did you rank? It’s always a good thing to know where you sit amongst your competitors so you know your relative position.
How you scored against the evaluation criteria, and whether there were any areas where you didn’t meet the standards required or made mistakes.
What areas the evaluation panel felt you should improve on next time?
Once you have this information, you’ll know what let you down and what you should improve when you start your next tender submission. Any feedback should provide you with valuable insights, and it’s important to share this with your team as soon as you can so they can start working on creating updated content.
If you need a hand, I’m here to help, and I’ve also written my professional tender writing tips, which are free to anyone who wants them - just fill in the form on my home page, give me a call on 0400 514579 or shoot me an email to pauline@tenderwise.com.au. I’m also happy to provide you with a review of your unsuccessful tender - obligation and cost-free.
In the meantime, happy tendering!
Pauline
Key Cairns Tenders Take Outs from my Recent Visit Worth Sharing
I spent 8 days in beautiful Cairns and Douglas Shire recently where I was able to check out the local tender scene, catch up with tradies, meet local business owners at networking events and attend the FNQ Major Projects forum. Here’s what I learnt.
I spent eight days in beautiful Cairns and Douglas Shire recently, where I was able to check out the local tender scene, catch up with tradies, meet local business owners at networking events and attend the FNQ Major Projects forum. Here’s what I learnt about Cairns Tenders I have the pleasure of sharing with you.
I spent eight days in beautiful Cairns and Douglas Shire recently, where I was able to check out the local tender scene, catch up with tradies, meet local business owners at networking events and attend the FNQ Major Projects forum. Here’s what I learnt about Cairns Tenders I have the pleasure of sharing with you.
Plenty of tender action is happening, with local Councils regularly issuing new tenders. You can find Cairns Regional Council tender opportunities on Tenderlink, and the Shire of Douglas uses VendorPanel. In the two months since I returned, I’ve seen many options posted for a wide range of services, including cleaning, earthmoving, trades (electrical, plumbing etc.), design and construction activities, manned security, HR services and IT services.
One thing I did notice is that many smaller businesses are hesitant to take their first step into the world of tendering, thinking that contracts are awarded only to the bigger market players. Not so — councils want to know that you have the skills, experience and resources to get the job done, and in many cases, prefer smaller businesses because they know that you will be more focussed on delivering quality outcomes than some of the larger companies for whom the contract represents only a small portion of total turnover.
The FNQ Major Projects Forum was a real highlight in the Cairns city council tenders and the QLD Government is in the throes of delivering a $1.3 billion capital works program across the region, with a further $2.43 billion currently being planned. The program is focused on providing essential infrastructure to meet the increasing needs of local residents. As I write this, I can see current tenders advertised for water treatment plants, sewerage pump stations, water security, and dam risk assessments.
Douglas Shire alone is currently managing 101 individual capital works projects for things as diverse as ferry infrastructure and replacement, bridge replacements, shared pathways for pedestrians and cyclists, playgrounds, emergency accommodation and smart water meters.
In Cairns, the pipeline of public and private projects amounts to $1.3 billion worth of construction activities to be undertaken over the next 12 months, with another $1.2 billion in projects planned but not yet committed. Historically speaking, this is a significant pipeline of work, with the majority of committed projects being in the heavy and civil sectors.
Cairns’ construction industry is now working through a pipeline of projects on a scale that has never been seen before in the region. This pipeline has materialised quickly and is impacting both the building and engineering sectors simultaneously, opening more doors for tender submissions.
FNQ capital projects committed into 2023 and beyond include a wide range of services required for roads, health, education, tourism, public safety, harbours, ports & freight, housing & community, environment, and energy & water.
If you’re not registered on VendorPanel yet, it’s time to do so. Register, and you’ll get a daily feed of relevant opportunities that may interest you. Tenderlink is a paid service, so you won’t get any notifications unless you pay a fee, but regularly checking the Cairns Regional Council website for tender opportunities is a good idea.
That’s it for now. If you’re reading this, I hope you find some awesome Cairns tenders to bid for. If you need a hand with your tender bid or want to chat about a response strategy, please get in touch. You can call me (Pauline) on 0400 514 579, email me at pauline@tenderwise.com.au or contact me here. I’m always happy to chat, and I love talking about tenders.
FOUR Things You ALWAYS Need to Include in Your Tender submission
Tenders come in many different shapes and formats but there are usually some common threads in all tender requests, so matter how specific or vague a particular question may be, there are 4 main areas that you'll need to respond to for nearly every tender.
Tenders come in many different shapes and formats. Still, there are usually some common threads in all tender requests, so matter how specific or vague a particular question may be, there are four main areas that you'll need to respond to for nearly every tender submission.
Demonstrate Your Experience
The tender issuer wants to know that you've got the skills and expertise to get the job done, so this is your chance to showcase your awesomeness. You should include:
Your Capabilities
Precisely what you do and how long you've done it for.
Your Capacity to Deliver
What resources do you have (people and equipment), and how you would structure yourself organisationally to deliver the services.
The Experience of Your Key People
Who they are, their qualifications, what they've done and how they would add value to the tender response.
Your Customers
Make sure you profile customers with similar requirements to those in the tender documents and then reinforce the contract similarities.
Show How You'll Manage the Project
It's your opportunity to demonstrate that you've got the right systems and processes to manage whatever needs to be delivered. It includes things like:
Management roles and responsibilities
Your Quality, OH&S and Environmental Management Systems
You back office processes
Your service standards
Your reporting ability
Any key performance indicators you want to set
Contract and Relationship Management
Include information about the person or people who will be responsible for the tender response document and contract compliance and the quality of client relationships at all levels for the scope of work. Include previous experience, qualifications, and your process for resolving complaints.
Innovation and Value Add
If you have any cutting-edge equipment or processes that you use, make sure you highlight them. Innovation doesn't need to be groundbreaking —it can focus on more efficient equipment or utilising cloud-based and mobile applications to be more productive. If you can't think of anything that you do that's particularly innovative or adds extra value, now's the time to research and refer to a tender response template most suited to your business.
Need a hand?
If you need a hand with your tender submission or if you'd like to get ready for the next one by developing some standard responses you can cut and paste from, TenderWise can help. We've written loads of winning tenders across a wide range of industry sectors and we can help you too.
Just give Pauline a call for a chat at 0400 514579 or contact us here.