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Bid or no bid: deciding what to chase

By Kathryn Pearson ยท Updated

Most losing bids were lost at the decision to bid. A disciplined bid or no-bid check covers fit, the incumbent, margin, capacity and evidence before any writing starts. This guide gives a practical qualification checklist and makes the case for walking away from tenders you cannot win.

Bidding is expensive. A serious response to an ITT costs days of your best people's time, and the cost is the same whether you win or lose. The single biggest improvement most small firms can make to their win rate is not better writing; it is better choosing. Bid on fewer, better-fitting opportunities and the same effort produces more wins.

The tool for this is a bid or no-bid decision: a short, honest review against fixed questions, made before anyone starts writing, and recorded so you can learn from it later.

The checklist

Work through these five areas. Be brutal; optimism at this stage is how firms end up spending a fortnight on a bid that was unwinnable on day one.

1. Fit

  • Can you deliver the whole specification, to the stated service levels, from day one? "We could probably build that capability" is a no.
  • Do you meet every condition of participation: insurance levels, accreditations, certifications, financial standing? These are pass or fail, and a fail on any one wastes the entire bid.
  • Is the contract the right size? A rule of thumb many buyers apply: they get nervous when one contract would be more than around half a supplier's annual turnover. If the contract dwarfs you, the financial assessment may sink you regardless of quality.

2. The incumbent

  • Is there an incumbent supplier, and are they bidding? Award history on Find a Tender and Contracts Finder will usually tell you who holds the work now.
  • Is there evidence the buyer wants change? Re-tenders happen because they must, not necessarily because the buyer is unhappy. Signs of genuine appetite for change include a rewritten specification, market engagement sessions, a restructured lot pattern, or public criticism of the current service.
  • If the incumbent is competent and liked, you need a concrete reason you would win: a genuinely better price, a capability they lack, or a lot they will not chase. "We are hungrier" is not a reason a scorer can award marks for.

3. Margin

  • Price the job roughly before deciding to bid, not after. Include mobilisation, management time, portal administration and contract reporting, which small firms routinely forget.
  • Look at the award criteria. A heavily price-weighted competition in a market with aggressive competitors is a race you should only enter if your cost base genuinely allows it.
  • Would winning at a realistic price actually make you money? Winning unprofitable work is worse than losing; you are then locked into it for the contract term.

4. Capacity

  • Who exactly will write this bid, and what will they stop doing to write it? Deadlines do not move for your busy month.
  • If you win, can you mobilise by the contract start date: staff, vehicles, equipment, vetting, TUPE transfers where they apply?
  • Could you survive winning twice? Firms that bid widely occasionally win two contracts at once and deliver both badly.

5. Evidence

  • Do you have two or three relevant, recent examples with measurable results and referees who will answer the phone? Quality questions are scored on evidence, not assertion.
  • Can you evidence the specific requirements: the same sector, similar scale, similar service model? Adjacent experience scores lower than direct experience.
  • If the answer is "not yet", the constructive move is to build evidence on smaller, below-threshold contracts first, then come back for the big one at re-tender.

Scoring it

Turn the checklist into a habit: score each area one to five, set a threshold, and hold yourself to it. The exact numbers matter less than the discipline of writing them down. A recorded decision can be reviewed when the outcome is known; a gut feeling cannot. Over a year of decisions you will learn which factors actually predict your wins, and the checklist gets sharper.

The discipline of walking away

A no-bid is not a failure. It is the moment you chose to spend your limited bidding effort where it can win. The firms with the best win rates decline most of what they see, and they decline early, before sunk time starts arguing for finishing the bid.

Walking away also has a productive form. If an opportunity is close but not right, do something with that: contact the buyer's procurement team, attend their next supplier event, note the contract end date and plan for the re-tender. This tender may be gone, but the buyer will still be buying next year, and the supplier they met at a market engagement session starts ahead.

One caution in the other direction: do not no-bid your way to zero. If every opportunity fails your checklist, the problem is upstream, in what you are searching for or the evidence you have built. Fix that, and the checklist starts saying yes.

Terms in this guide