Member in the Spotlight
BidAble
Owner & Senior Bid Manager Rachel Adams
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Like many new businesses, BidABLE started shortly after the first COVID-19 lockdown.
For smaller businesses, your delivery team may do both, which is not sustainable, with staff needing to work longer hours to get that proposal in on time while ensuring your inflight projects are not affected or delayed, which could tarnish your reputation.
We help small, medium, large and corporate customers with their business development and tendering requirements.
It starts with planning, creating content libraries and building a bid process that fits your needs because, as with any bid, no two businesses are the same.
Without proper planning on how you will start tendering, you are already on the back foot. It is about understanding some core components of tendering. We can help you with this, from the type of tendering to how you articulate your unique selling point (USP).
I have been managing bids and tenders for over 25 years across multiple industries and know what evaluators are looking for in a proposal. There are many different steps to securing new business through a formal procurement process, and that is where the challenge starts for many businesses.
If you are new to tendering, the first question is, where do you start? There are many pitfalls that can lead to you scoring low in the evaluation and not being shortlisted. For example, copy and pasting content from Customer A’s response to Customer B’s. Why is this an issue? It is an issue because the content may not be relevant and may contain a reference to Customer A rather than Customer B, which will alienate Customer B. But most importantly, it does not answer the question and loses you evaluation points. More details on this subject can be found on my blog at www.bidable.co.nz.
So why did I start BidABLE? Because I had spent had two decades working mainly in IT companies and wanted to broaden my knowledge of other sectors and bring my expertise of “what good looks like” when submitting a proposal.
I love to help people and take immense pride when a customer gets to the shortlist and wins more business. By winning more business, a company can create more jobs and provide opportunities to other companies in our local areas.
“Rachel’s expertise transformed our bid attributes, elevating them to an exceptional level. We recommend her for her outstanding bid writing and tender management skills."
~Mills Albert Limited.
Another reason was more personal; moving to the Kapiti Coast in 2019 and taking that long commute into Wellington daily was not something I enjoyed, and I needed a work-life balance. This was the same year my eldest turned 18, and I wondered where all the time had gone. I wanted to find a way to combine working with having more time to see my other children grow up.
Our services are business development (pre-tender), bid management, content writing (proposals and award applications), building and maintaining content libraries, structuring a bid process, planning for your presentations and other post-tender submission activities.
BidABLE is not just me; I have a team of contractors who work with me, including a graphic designer who brings my creative mindset into proposals with image design, front covers and other ways to present bids. Images are worth a thousand words; only using words in a proposal reduces your chances of impressing the evaluator, who has multiple proposals to read. They want to skim responses and still absorb the information in your proposal.
I also have a freelance procurement specialist who is the evaluator at the review stage and gives feedback on improvements.
Behind the scenes, there is a virtual assistant and freelance proofreader. When you have read a proposal many times, things get missed by the best of us, so it is always good to have that fresh pair of eyes.
There is so much to tendering, and if you are a large business, using an external consultant ensures you get exposure to knowledge from across more than just your market and, in my case, that experience covers industries such as civil construction, engineering, IT, audiovisual, recruitment, construction, and even a cleaning business to name a few.
For smaller businesses that want help with their first tender. BidABLE will start with building your content as we go and train you on how to tender. Many customers have said they learn so much working with me.
How do I do this? It starts with listening and getting to know your business and transforming your uniqueness to a compelling competitive proposal.
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