How to Write a Winning Video Production Tender Response
The challenge of writing a tender response is daunting, especially if it’s a job that would be a major win for your company. Making a solid presentation of what your company brings to the table is a logical process mixed in with plenty of creative brainstorming. Once you’re committed to doing the graft that’s half the work done. Reading this article is a good indicator that you’ve crossed that bridge. Let’s get the rest done, dusted and submitted.
How to win a government tender?
Submitting for a government tender takes on much the same pattern as any other. One critical factor to keep in mind is the MEAT criteria. Within Irish and EU legislation, public sector tenders must choose the contractor that offers the best value or the Most Economically Advantageous Tender (MEAT). It’s crucial then to be really clear on the economic impacts that your proposed strategy will produce along with the breakdown of the pricing.
Part I: Develop Content
A tender document is a large undertaking, but breaking it down into stages helps with progress. It’s best to have a few elements prepared before the document starts taking form.
Use the templates or formats provided
I’ll start with templates as it’s where a lot of newcomers may go wrong. The government organisation has laid out its tender submission process in such a way that they can easily zero in on the crucial, game-changing parts of the submission. Although it can be tempting to showcase your design styles, especially as a video production company within the document’s templates – it’ll favour your chances to stick to theirs.
Make a list of achievements
A wonderful idea that saves time when making tender responses in the future is to create a document with everything your team has achieved. Having this archive makes it so much easier to cherry-pick the relevant examples for your next project. You’d be surprised how many big jobs you complete, only to have a vague memory of the benchmarks and results of the campaign one year on.
Assemble Analytics
Tenders exist for all sorts of industries – from construction to video production. And in a way, it can be more challenging to creating one for a more creative industry. In video production, it can be easy to get carried away with the artistic elements of a campaign. Showing enthusiasm for your craft is obviously important and is the root of all your successes so far. What convinces the reader of your competency is when you can back up your company’s innovation and creativity suitability with real-life stats. Include ROI, social reach and conversions to help solidify your standing as a compelling competitor during the selection phase of the tenders.
Stage II: Drafting the tender response
Delegation
If possible, round up the experts to handle drafting each section. Having the main body of each section stem from specific team members makes the process much easier and improves the quality of the finished product. One person can then draw all of the sections together to read with a natural flow and tone.
Structure and organisation
The best way to achieve a clear document is to deal with each section independently. For each section you add, ask “how does this show that we are the best candidate for this brief?”
It can be all too easy to go off on a tangent which doesn’t answer the question. They’re likely to be quite a few companies throwing their hat in the ring for your tender invitation. Those who tackle the question asked to tend to be seen in a better light as it shows that they’re able to follow instructions down to the letter. It’s a level of professionalism that promises a trustworthy and reliable working relationship going forward.
Case studies
Showing your past work and successes are vital to giving readers an insight into your team’s ability to go above and beyond. Showcase your videos and how the artwork excelled and provided results for your clients. This is an essential part of any tender response, so it’s worthwhile to invest time as a team in creating long-form case studies. Again, these can be used and tweaked for future tender responses.
Stage III: Finalising the document
Price vs. quality of the submission
Now we come to the grand balancing act of a tender document. It’s best not to create a tender that promises the world and comes at an unaffordable price. At the same time, showcase different enticing and rewarding aspects that could be added to the tender. They are looking for your expertise, after all. You can outline how much your additional suggestions cost to give them the option.
Don’t be afraid to be realistic, set the price in line with the work required. However, the key is to explain and breakdown in clear terms how much work is involved and what you generally charge for that. There’s no real victory in winning a big job and then for your business to actually make a loss from the transaction. That’s likely going to cause stress in your team, perhaps some unmet deadlines or an irresponsible amount of overtime.
Edit as a team
Having plenty of eyes drawn over it before the final draft is the way to go. Be sure to label the different document versions so that nothing valuable accidentally gets deleted.
Design
Design preferences will be unique to your industry and sector, however, it’s important to have an appealing overall finish. Images and graphs should be high quality and having the document professionally bound enhances the end product.
Tackling your tender response in these three parts will help you to refine your tender-making process, save time and secure great clients. If you’re looking for advice on EPK – we’ve got you covered here too:
How to make a great EPK (Electronic Press Kit) for film production?
