Tender after tender arrive on the desks of many companies. I often hear comments like... "our submission was really competitive but we were blown out of the water"... "the big guys are now fishing in our pond and are able to cut prices way below what we can afford to do"... "we used to win 2 or 3 bids out of 10, now we are lucky if it is 1 in 10, even at that the price is ludicrously low"

Two suggestions...

1. Qualify your tenders and only work on those that you believe have a chance of being successful.
   This can be done by systematically asking questions about the opportunity and evaluating the results i.e.
   
   • Is this an approved project with cleared funds?
   • Is there an incumbent?
   • Do we know the key buying criteria?
   • Do we know who the decision makers are?
   • Are we the preferred supplier?
   • Do we have the right solution?
2. Review past tenders with an external bid advisor, they will dramatically increase your success rate.