Everything you need to know about our professional Bid Writers and how they can benefit you

Last updated: Aug 9, 2022 @ 1:57 pm

Joining the Hudson Team

Starting out as a professional bid writer can be quite daunting, as can going into any new role. A team of bid writers are often a tight-knit community, due to the competitive challenges they face on a daily basis. The tight deadlines and the niche industry can all bring a bid writing team close together. They become a family ready to win business and secure lucrative deals.

Saying that the team at Hudson make the transition into bid writing smooth and natural. Hudson has a clearly documented bid writing process and follows a pattern of best practice. This makes it easy for any new bid writer to get to grips with the rules of procurement.

The Hudson Succeed team is made up of approachable and extremely supportive bid writers. So even though you may feel a little flabbergasted at first, you will carve a niche for yourself.

Being a bid writer is a brilliant profession, with more and more organisations realising the benefits of procuring sales through an effective and efficient bid writing team.

Hudson Succeed recognises the need for bid management teams, for companies that don’t have their own procurement departments, hence why we offer such a range of services to our clients.

Perhaps you don’t have time in your busy schedule to focus on the tendering process, or perhaps you’re interested in tendering but don’t know how to approach it?

Our bid writers are on hand to guide you through the process, no matter what kind of tenders you’d like to go for.

Our Bid Writing Consultants are highly skilled across many industry areas and will set aside time to assess your needs as a business.

A day in the life of a bid writer

First things first…. Coffee!

As professional bid writers, our day successfully begins with a nice cup of coffee. This is to get the day started and our brains stimulated. Before we get down to the nitty-gritty of writing compelling bids!

At 9am, before our day fully begins, we have a fifteen-minute team huddle. This is an opportunity for the Hudson Succeed team to get together and discuss the projects we are working on, and how they are progressing.

Being a bid writer means constantly sticking to tight deadlines.

Discussing the progress of our projects allows us to plan workloads for the day. It also ensures we never miss those stringent deadlines.

Our team huddles also allow for discussions on contract wins, contract losses and any feedback given from buyers. We feel it important to know what we are doing well, as well as areas of change that we see across both the private and public sector procurement space. This is to enable us to constantly improve our bid writing services and our already fantastic win rate of 87%.

After this time, our tender writers start to focus on their own projects. Alongside this comes liaising with clients, doing research and filling out PPQs and helping out colleagues with proofreading.

Daily Activities 

Ultimately, we complete tenders and PQQ’s in order to secure new contracts or funding.

However, there are so many significant tasks that make up our daily workloads. These include:

• CVs;
• Case Studies;
• Extensive research;
• Accessing & managing portals for submission;
• Bid Management;
• Bid content development;
• Blog writing;
• Communicating with clients, over email or phone communications;
• Policies and procedures;
• And so much more. 

A bid writer and the tasks they do make the role one of the most important positions in any organisation.

Our responsibilities

Our team was created with the client in mind. Each of our many different packages can be tailored to your business, providing individual service to your company.

The team provide a consistent service, ensuring all the businesses we engage with are fully supported by each member of the team.

As part of our job roles, we are all bid writers. Project Management is a huge part of our role, and to stay on track we regularly schedule meetings to discuss how far clients are along and new ways we can work to improve their success.

In a recent meeting, we discussed utilising a new project management tool, so all of us as bid writers can work collectively to understand each other’s clients and workloads, enabling us to jump on and help others on particularly busy days.

We are currently working internally through Hudson Labs to develop technical specifications to build a product that will serve the team and our clients. This database will help us further in scheduling products and improving efficiency as a team.

Writing tender responses

The main part of a professional bid writers’ role is completing PQQs, ITTs and quality questions. This means that a large portion of our day can be spent creating innovative content for our clients.

Most writing can be planned in advance. We like to make sure we are being succinct enough to showcase our client’s services within restricted wordcounts. Our professional bid writers are real wordsmiths with excellent levels of grammar and exceptional writing abilities.

Many of our bid writers have published works, and the expertise and quality they bring to professional tender writing is absolutely critical to creating and winning fantastic tenders for all our clients.

Writing tender responses is a time-focused task. We often work to tight deadlines and our professional bid writers ensure they set aside enough time to complete the contracts before submission.

We always allow for a two-step review stage in-house. This is to ensure that the tenders we submit here at Hudson Succeed are of the highest possible quality. At Hudson Succeed, quality is our top priority. When you sign up to any of our services, quality is always our mission.

Managing bid writing for multiple clients

Our team of professional bid writers are well-rehearsed in working reactively. With constant deadlines, we work instinctively to what needs doing the soonest.

In a typical day, you can see our bid writers handling up to four different bids for that coming week. To do this they ensure the following:

• Enough time has been planned in to be able to fulfil the needs of the tender and submit on time.
• Quality questions are fully answered and detailed meticulously with brilliant information about our clients.
• We have had enough information from the client to be able to create any CVs or case studies needed to boost the proposal.

Juggling a busy workload is something our professional bid writers grasp with ease. We have a natural ability to write passionately about our clients, ensuring they are presented in the best possible light to potential buyers.

Our professional bid writers are experienced in all stages of the process. This means that no matter where you’re at with your tendering journey, we have a dedicated team on hand to deliver bids for you.

Writing for different industries

On an average day, it’s quite normal for our bid writers to be working reactively across different bids. This means you could be working on a cleaning tender in the morning, then switch to a creative or digital tender for the supply of smart boards for schools in the afternoon.

This means our workdays are incredibly varied, which is a great positive for our professional bid writers. Writing for different clients and industries is incredibly important, and we’re proud to say that we can cover any industry.

Our commitment to learning and research has seen us develop ten sector-specific portals, ensuring our knowledge reaches far and wide in terms of business. It’s because of this we’re able to write instinctively and with gusto about different sectors.

To find out more about the different industries we currently work across, please visit Hudson Discover.

Other commitments

By the afternoon, there may be meetings to attend and new clients to account for. For all tenders we commit to, we ensure the client is fully aware of what an opportunity entails before suggesting they go for it!

This means we’re likely to point out and find anything that may trip you up in one of our handy breakdowns. Our tender breakdowns are designed and created by our professional bid writers.

This is a great way of ensuring when we put forward a client for a bid, they have a great chance of winning. Our motto is: we write to win! And we make sure we see this through on every single tender we submit.

With our aims high, we always make sure that our clients are fully supported throughout the tender process. We understand it can be a minefield of acronyms, but we’re here to keep you grounded!

Once a client has decided that a specific tender would benefit them, we’ll create a bid plan. Our professional bid writers will focus on creating a schedule and gathering information needed from the client. We put this all into a handy format that is easy to understand and digest.

We think it’s really important to take time out in our day to fully engage with our clients – although most of the time we do have our heads down writing fantastic content! We’ll send out a bid plan on the same day a client decides to go for it, ensuring they’re supported from day one.

Writing the bid

Now comes the part most feared by most business professionals – the actual bid writing. If it’s something you dread, then fear not! Our team of professional bid writers can take this task off your hand, whether it be ad-hoc for the one-off tender or as a retained client looking to pursue new avenues of work through outsourced Tender Management.

To find out more about how an interim bid writer or perhaps a whole team of professional bid writers could integrate with your team.

We offer a range of services dedicated to providing excellent support where YOU need it.

We’ll work with you to create the perfect bid response. We’ll gather all the information from you about your business, including policies, working practises and methods.

With this information in mind, we’ll really get a grasp of your goals and aims, ensuring we pour as much passion into our writing as we possibly can. It’s always our plan that our bids will shine and stand out in the crowd, and with an 87% success rate at winning bids, we can ensure brilliant quality each time.

Each bid is different. Never forget it. This means that our professional bid writers can tailor your content to suit the needs of each bid you decide to tender for. Decide what’s most important to you and your company and we’ll include it.

Traits of a successful bid writer

Since starting a bid writing career at Hudson, it is evident that essential personality traits and skills are required.

Successful bid writers must be able to:

• Read and understand how to answer nuanced questions;
• Present information that is concise, consistent and correct;
• Persuade and influence through effective use of content, form, structure and style.

To complete the above successfully, bid writers need:

• Excellent writing skills
  

  I bet you are thinking ‘oh the obvious’, right? However, you need a specific set of writing skills. A professional bid writer will write in a language and style that suits the buyer and their requirements.

The evaluators may not be technical experts, so it is important to get straight to the point. We always say, ‘if the response has to be read twice, it will lose points’ – Don’t be fluffy!

• Superb proof-reading skills
  

  Here at Hudson, we have a three-stage proofreading process. This is to ensure that typos, spelling mistakes and grammatical errors are picked up and corrected.

Attention to detail is paramount to any bid writing team. Ultimately, good grammar will help the readability of the tender response.

• Good story writing skills
  

  Professional bid writers require the ability to write a good story. A successful tender will ‘paint a picture’ in the buyers’ mind, from implementation to contract commencement.

What will the supplier deliver? What makes this supplier stand out from their competitors? Why are they the correct supplier for us?

These questions will be answered clearly throughout our responses. We have the ability to develop our stories in a relevant and persuasive style.

• To be compliant
  

  Compliance allows for a common language between bid writers and evaluators. Being compliant and demonstrating this in the tender response is an essential skill.

This will ensure that any mandatory or desirable criteria is met and reiterated through the response. Conclusively, increasing the chances of a win.

• Brilliant researching skills
  

  To be a successful bid writer, you need that inner Sherlock Holmes. You need a crime, a detective and the solution. A good bid writer will seek to fully understand the client’s Unique Selling Points (USPs). This typically includes researching all aspects of the client’s business by:

• Scoping their website;
• Reading through case studies of previous projects;
• Speaking to the technical professionals within the company, who can provide a more in-depth viewpoint.

• To be committed
  

  Irrespective of how well a tender submission is managed, it can still get manic. It is sometimes impossible to meet a deadline by working 9-5 hours.

It is important for a bid writer to be committed to their role – those extra hours of overtime should not be a problem.

Perks of being a professional bid writer

There is no question about it, bid writing is a challenging role. Nevertheless, it is one of those most rewarding.

For example, a junior bid writer role is unique from so many other entry-level positions. Notably, it gives the new bid writer a 360-degree view of a company’s business, products and services. It is a valuable role that not only builds skills vital to business success; it is also a rewarding long-term career.

Some of the ‘perks’ of being a bid writer include:

• Quickly becoming a company and industry expert
  Professional bid writers are subject matter experts. They work with a wide range of industries on a day-to-day basis. In a short time, bid writers are exposed to the most current content on multiple company products and services. Bid writers will ultimately gain expertise in each field over time.
• Communications with senior management
  Due to bid writing companies being really close-knit, senior management are always nearby. They show significant interest in all of their employees. As a bid writer, you have the unique opportunity to build relationships and prove your worth. This type of visibility opens doors for further opportunities and success.
• Your work has significant impact
  bid writers are knee-deep in creating compelling content, critical to winning huge contracts. This is definitely inspiring and leads to better job satisfaction overall. You get the opportunity to become a real thought partner and advisor to the business.
• Transferrable skills
  As a professional bid writer, you learn highly transferrable skills such as:

• Extensive attention to detail;
• Project management skills;
• Persuasive and compelling writing capabilities;
• The ability to build and maintain relationships with senior stakeholders.

The skills you learn as a bid writer are extremely important and critical to success within any industry sector. 

Team Collaboration

Being a bid writer promotes the importance of fantastic teamwork. Collaborative working calls for success – especially when trying to hit those stringent deadlines. Working together, interacting and sharing ideas, can speed up our solutions.

Here at Hudson, we always:

• Have a common purpose and goal – to win bids!
• Clarify roles from the start – minimising overlaps in workloads and decreased productivity;
• Communicate openly and effectively – allowing for a positive work culture and establishing transparency;
• Appreciate the diversity of ideas – learning and growing from each other;
• Balance the team focus – we love to get together for team exercises at Hudson.

It is important to remember that talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence win championships.

Our services  

Our bid writers are always working on what we can offer you to improve your success. That’s why we developed excellent services dedicated to providing support to your level. Whether you’re an SME or a large established company, we’d love to help you through your tender journey.

Tender Writing – For businesses who don’t know how to tender or have any writing teams in house and need support writing tenders from our team of professionals.

Tender Mentor – This service has been designed for businesses who want to ensure they’ve produced the best bid possible. We’ll offer an external guide and review and mark your bid as a buyer would before the deadline.

Tender Ready – Our Tender Ready programme helps businesses to understand how to respond to public and private sector tenders, assisting businesses of all sizes.

Tender Improvement – This service supports businesses who are bidding for work and not seeing the success they wanted. We’ll show you a new tendering path, ensuring you’re not making any mistakes.

Tender VLE – This service offers brilliant support when you’re new to tendering. Tender VLE is our online virtual learning environment and it’s completely free. It’s stocked with insightful videos, designed to help you understand tender basics.

How do we work?

The bid writer role carries great challenges when it comes to coordinating the overall tender process and working collaboratively together as a team to procure and win contracts on behalf of Hudson’s.

Our main aim with our bid team is to provide support – you won’t find a more dedicated team elsewhere, ready to absorb the details of your business that make you shine.

If you have a question about the tendering process, don’t hesitate to pick up the phone or email us to ask. We’d rather you ask than be stuck worrying over something we can solve for you.

Once signed up to one of our brilliant services, may it be Tender Ready, Tender Mentor, Tender Improvement or Tender Writing, our team are happy to arrange a schedule for your bid (if you have a specific one in mind) or a schedule for your business accomplishments in order for you to start tendering.

Starting the relationship

Our bid writers will get in touch via email, informing you of the process, and how we think best to handle it. This is where you’ll have your input.

We’re a friendly team, always aiming to do the best for our clients. When we win a tender, we celebrate with you too – after all, we’re both working towards the same goal: success.

Our services are fully flexible to suit your needs. We understand that every business works differently, therefore we believe you should have a say too!

As bid writers, our focus through all of our services, is to build a brilliant relationship with you. Our clients mean the world to us, and we’ll go above and beyond to ensure their tender responses are innovatively written.

Our bid writers are dedicated wordsmiths, with quality at the forefront of their minds and provide excellent support to our clients and other team members.

Tackling tenders

Let us know what types of opportunities you’ll most likely be going for and we can organise daily opportunity tracking, sourcing excellent contracts on our 11 sector-specific portals, dedicated to providing you with endless opportunities that will fit to your business.

The opportunities we find will be sent directly to you, therefore this saves you time, cutting out the endless scrolling through portals trying to find something relevant to you.

We know the tender marketplace can be tricky, with many tenders not labelled properly with CPV codes – this is why we don’t use them.

Our sites are designed for ease of access, meaning we use keywords instead. These keywords are designated to specifics within that tender, meaning if you’re focusing on IT systems within secondary schools and the installation of Windows 10, the tender will be tagged as such. This then narrows down your search when using our platforms!

Tendering teamwork

Once you’ve found an opportunity that really suits, and you’re interested in participating, the tender process has begun. We’ll take care of the whole process from start to finish (if you’d like us to!). You always have the option of submitting yourself if you wish!

Us Tender Coordinators are often habitual creatures, and we love to follow a process. That’s because processes work and get results.

We follow the same intuitive steps below to ensure success:  

Find more information about the below steps at Tender VLE. 

• Breakdown – we’ll fully breakdown the opportunity to outline exactly what the tender entails and what is expected from you.
• Bid Plan – we’ll always create a bid plan for you, so you can see the direction in which you bid will take.
• Request information – there’s always a few things we’ll need from you to complete an ITT, such as policies, staff CVs, case studies and accounts information.
• Tender Writing – our team will start bid writing once they’ve understood your company goals and processes, meaning they can give well-rounded answers.
• Proofreading – all our team are adept proof-readers, able to spot mistakes that others may not, ensuring your tenders are error-free.

Whilst doing so, we’ll keep you informed of any changes or updates you may need to know about regarding the tender. We always aim to keep in contact with you throughout the process, ensuring the smooth delivery of our service.

Hudson Succeed

At Hudson Succeed, our team of bid writers proudly hold an impressive success rate of 87%. The bid team support businesses of all sizes with their tendering efforts. Collectively, the team have over 5 decades of experience.

Our team of highly experienced writers cover virtually every sector and subject area. We have worked in areas such as:

• Domiciliary Care
• Commercial Cleaning
• Security
• Quantity Surveying
• Software
• Marketing
• Logistics
• …to name a few

We want to create lasting relationships with our clients and grow their business. Visit our site today and find out more about what it is like to work for Hudson and to be a bid writing consultant.

Please take a look at our ‘Meet the Team’ videos which go into detail regarding all of our job roles.

We are an incredibly friendly team and welcome any questions regarding the tendering process and what a bid writer role includes.

A day in the life of a bid writer is spent assisting and helping businesses GROW!

Contact us to find out how we can help.

Find more helpful tips and advice in our blogs. We cover topics including:

• How to win a tender
• What is a Bid Writer?
• The tendering process
• Writing winning bids
• 7 tips for tendering for contracts
• Tips for bid management
• Bid writing services
• The types of tendering procedures
• Writing bids
• Bid writing consultants
• Submitting a tender response
• And many more.