What “evidence” really means in a bid response
Last month I reviewed a draft containing the phrase “our world-class support team”. I marked it down. The author was baffled. “We have told them we are world-class,” he said. “What more do they want?”
They want proof. Without proof, “world-class” is flimflam. Worse, it irritates the reader. An irritated evaluator will not give you the discretionary point that decides most competitions.
I see this in nearly every bid I am asked to review. Teams write beautifully about what they will do. They write very little that lets anybody believe it.
Evidence is not a compliment you pay yourself
Evidence is the material that lets an evaluator conclude, from your text alone, that your method will work for this client, on this contract, at this size. That is a much narrower test than most bid teams think.
Notice what it is not. It is not a statement that you are good. It is not your reputation. It is not the fact that you already hold the contract.
Incumbents fall into this trap constantly. “They know how good we are, so we do not have to prove it all over again.” You do. The evaluator may only score what you have written down. If she credits you for anything else, she opens the whole procurement to challenge. No procurement officer will take that risk. In Public Sector buying, getting the process right matters more than picking the best supplier.
It is worth half your words
My rule of thumb has not changed in twenty years. Spend half the word count on the solution and how you will manage it. Spend the other half giving the evaluator the assurance she needs to award full marks.
Your technical experts will tell you the word count is already too tight for the solution alone. They are wrong. A response that is nine tenths technical description will lose to one that is half technical description. I have watched it happen many times.
Build it on a credible method
Evidence only works on top of a solution the evaluator believes in. If she doubts your approach will work here, she will treat your evidence as irrelevant. So describe the method completely, at a level of detail a reasonable evaluator would expect.
Then stop. Detail beyond that point bores her. Bored evaluators skim. When they skim, they skip the very text that was going to win your points.
What every piece of evidence must contain
A reference is not evidence until it carries all of these:
- The name of the client. Add a line describing its business if the name will mean nothing to the evaluator.
- That client’s problem, stated so it is recognisably the same problem as the one in this question.
- Your solution, visibly the same method you are proposing here.
- The benefit, quantified. A number beats “it went well” every time.
- A testimonial in that client’s own words.
- The comparison. Say plainly that the organisation was similar in size and complexity to this one.
Leave one out and the reference weakens. Leave three out and you have written a boast.
Who says it matters
Convincing evidence comes from outside your business. Use the client who received the service. Use a market analyst. Use an awards body. The source must be someone this client will believe. Your own opinion of yourself does not qualify.
Show who does the work
Ownership is evidence of a different kind. For each step of your method, tell the evaluator who is responsible for its success, who performs it, when it happens, how you measure it, how you report it, plus what you do if it goes wrong. Name people where you can. Use their roles where you cannot.
Write it in the active voice. “The Project Director will build the plan” gives an owner. “A plan will be built” hides one. Evaluators notice the difference, even when they cannot say why.
Justify every choice
Where you had options, show them. Say why you picked this one. Say why that choice is best for this client.
This is powerful for two reasons. It proves your competence. It also proves you understand their business, which is the harder of the two to fake.
Tackle the risks head on
Here is the item almost every bid leaves out.
Scoring guidance increasingly says something like “all sub-criteria are fully evidenced”, without ever defining “fully” or “evidenced”. Under that wording, “we did this before and it worked” will not guarantee full marks.
What will? Deal with the balance of risk and benefit for each element of your solution. Every approach carries risk. Say so. Then set out how you overcame that risk on a comparable contract. Add what that client said about it. Explain how the approach transfers to this client, on this contract. State the benefits. Finish with your mitigation if the risk arrives anyway.
Work through each element this way and an evaluator marking against “fully evidenced” has nowhere to go but full marks. As a bonus, this approach sweeps up all the traditional evidence points. It also delivers the demonstration of understanding everybody asks for, without you having to bolt it on.
Is it easy? No. Start with the highest scoring questions. Brainstorm the risks, benefits and justifications before anybody writes a word. Writing is quick when the author already knows what to say.
Tie the proof to their worry
The client asked the question because something worries it. Find that worry. Then use the “so we” form: “You need out-of-hours cover for your users, so we have strengthened the evening team by …”.
Do not precis the question first. Do not explain their own problem back to them. Both waste words. Both annoy.
Make it easy to find
Evidence the evaluator cannot locate scores nothing. Use the client’s own words as bold headings. Answer in the order the question asks. Avoid your in-house terminology. Near the end, add a short section headed “Why you should choose us” that the evaluator can lift straight into her report. Somebody has to write that paragraph. Better you than a tired evaluator at half past five.
When the words run out
Sometimes you get 2,000 characters for a complex answer. Spend what is left in this order:
- A benefit for the client’s own customers.
- A benefit for the client.
- Where you have done it before.
- An award you won for it.
- Where the solution has worked elsewhere.
- The choices you had, plus why you chose this one.
- A testimonial from a similar client.
- Added social value.
Start collecting on day one
None of this is writable in the last week. Referees go quiet. Legal departments block them. What comes back is often so sanitised it is worthless.
So build your reference strategy into the bid plan at the start. Map several referees at different levels against the sections of the ITT. Write case studies while the project is going well, not months afterwards. Put a reference obligation into your own contract terms.
Points mean prizes. Evidence is where most of the points are hiding.
If you would like help finding the evidence for your next bid, we would love to hear from you. Please call Sixfold on 01227 860375 for a no-obligation chat.
