Winning in the West: Bringing Bid Strategy to the West Country Business Show

When Sphere 6 hit the West Country Business Show, we had one dedicated purpose – to educate fellow West Country businesses on successful bidding strategies in the public sector. We had many great conversations that reminded us of the importance of what we do best: help companies better understand the tendering landscape and ultimately win more bids.

How Do West Country Businesses Fare on Bid Strategy?

We spoke to countless business owners, directors and decision makers who are directly involved in tendering processes and discovered a very common theme: most companies want to win more public sector contracts but either don’t know where to start or how to stand out from competing bids.

We heard time and again:

• ‘We just don’t have the time or resources to focus on tenders properly.’
• ‘It feels like we are constantly submitting bids, but rarely win.’
• ‘We tend to go for everything and just don’t understand why nothing sticks.’
• ‘We are one of the best placed companies on the market for the work, but have no idea how to show that in a bid.’

This ‘ready-fire-aim’ approach is one we see all too often; and one that results in a fast track to wasted time and resources, missed opportunities and ultimately lost revenue. The modern tendering environment is highly competitive, making it imperative for companies to understand the market in which they operate and how to bid strategically. Yet many companies lack a fundamental understanding of tendering processes and how to select the right tenders to chase.

Bid STRATEGY: A Roadmap to Tendering Success

The Sphere 6 Roadmap to Tendering Success is the core component of our Bid STRATEGY service offering, geared to help companies win more bids.

Our Roadmap is built around five simple principles:

1. Awareness – know your market and your buyer
2. Strategy – play to your real strengths
3. Opportunity – pick the tenders you can actually win
4. Execution – craft responses that make buyers feel heard
5. Optimisation – make every bid more profitable than the last

Utilising the Roadmap enables customers to build a long-term, repeatable system for bidding success in the public arena; benefiting them with accelerated and sustainable growth. We’ve helped firms in Hospitality, MedTech, Critical Services and other sectors outscore incumbents by up to 30% by knowing how to capitalise on what buyers look for in bids.

Tendering success is driven by our helping companies learn how to:

• Understand which frameworks actually matter
• Assess the viability of tenders for bidding
• Sharpen value propositions to stand out from the competition
• Understand customer requirements early and shape stronger win themes
• Establish the organisation as a credible supplier that customers know and trust

By enabling your business to execute the above, tendering quickly evolves from being a gamble to a growth engine.

And the Winner Is…

As part of the event, we ran a competition for a free bid strategy workshop – a deep-dive session to assess a business’s current bidding process. We’re thrilled to announce that the winner is: Jemima Soltys from Event Branding Specialists: Instant Marquees Ltd. We can’t wait to assist Jemima and her team to elevate their bidding strategy and uncover new public opportunities to bid on, and win.

Let’s Talk

It was refreshing to see so many great businesses keen to light a fire under their bidding strategies, and the value given to optimising tendering processes.

If you're tired of throwing together last-minute bids, missing out to competitors, or simply unsure how to start; we’d love to talk. Get in touch for a no-obligation chat – and let’s start building your own roadmap to winning more bids.

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