Andrew Morrison, Aspire Bidding Co-Founder and APMP Global Thought Leader, explains how to write bid responses that clearly communicate value and benefits to buyers
Have you ever been in a conversation with someone and wondered, “when exactly will they get to the point”? This speaks to a fundamental human truth. When we cannot see a clear reason to pay attention, we switch off.
The same happens in bids and proposals. If evaluators cannot see clearly how your solution addresses their needs, they will likely lose interest. This translates to lower evaluation scores and missed opportunities for your business.
In our experience, this is where many competent submissions lose marks. The bidder describes a process or a system in careful detail, then leaves the evaluator to work out what it means for them. Since most evaluators are reading numerous submissions under time pressure, make things as simple for them as possible. Use the “so what?” test.
What Is the “So What?” Test
It’s very simple. After each statement about how you work or what you are accredited for, ask yourself “so what?” Why should the evaluator care about this statement? Then keep asking until a clear and compelling benefit for the buyer emerges.
Key takeaway: A feature tells the evaluator what you can do, whereas a benefit tells them why they should care.
How you do it:
Here is the chain in practice.
“Our engineers use a digital job management system.”
So what?
“Every job is logged the moment it is raised.”
So what?
“Response times are tracked and visible as they happen.”
So what?
“You [the buyer] save time by having every outstanding fault instantly visible. No chasing required.”
Notice what changes across those four steps. The opening statement describes something your business does – a ‘feature’ in marketing terms. This may interest you but gives the evaluator very little to mark. By the fourth step the same fact has become something the buyer’s own team will benefit from. Now the evaluator can see the point. That is the version that scores well.
Key takeaway: Ask “so what?” until the answer describes something the buyer would pay for.
Place benefits first:
Once you have the benefit, go one step further: place it at the front of the sentence. In bidding, this is often termed “front-loading”. Using the chain above, that would read: “To save your estates team time, they can visualise every outstanding fault in real-time, without chasing us. This is all thanks to our digital job management system.” Written that way, the evaluator reaches the reason before the mechanism. They no longer have to wade through a description to find out why they should care.
Key takeaway: Start with how the buyer benefits, then follow on with how it works.
Why Bids Get Stuck at Features
If the fix is so simple, why do experienced teams still submit pages of features? It usually comes down to three habits.
- Writing from your company outwards. The draft starts with what your organisation is proud of rather than with what the buyer asked for.
- Letting experts describe rather than explain. Subject matter experts know their systems intimately and will write about them in technical detail. Some of this is ‘unconscious competence’ – they are so familiar with what their service delivers that the benefit no longer registers as worth saying. A writer sitting between the expert and the page can tease those benefits out.
- Assuming the evaluator will join the dots. The bidder can see the benefit clearly, so it feels obvious enough to go without saying. The evaluator, however, may not infer the same benefits that you do.
All three habits lead to the same problem: The benefit is clear in the writer’s mind but missing from the page.
Key takeaway: Write the benefit down, because an implied benefit cannot be scored.
Three Audiences, Three Kinds of Benefit
Benefit to whom? Public sector buyers usually evaluate on behalf of three groups, and a strong response speaks to each one.
The buying organisation: They care about cost, risk, compliance, continuity, reputation, social value, and the evidence they need for their own governance. Under the Procurement Act 2023, contracting authorities in England, Wales and Northern Ireland award contracts to the most advantageous tender, where the previous regime referred to the most economically advantageous tender. Read the award criteria in your tender documents closely, because they will tell you which of these benefits carry marks and how much each is worth.
Its staff: The contract managers, front-line teams, and clinical or teaching professionals who will live with your service every day. Their benefits are practical: less chasing, clearer reporting, safer sites, and a less stressful workday.
Its service users: The residents, patients, pupils, tenants, and travelling public that the contract exists to serve. For them, the benefits include continuity, dignity, safety, and a school / hospital / library etc that stays open while the works go on around it.
The same feature should therefore be translated three times. Here are some examples.
- Take an ISO 45001 certified safety management system on a school refurbishment. The council gets lower programme risk and fewer incidents to report, provided you support that claim with your own incident figures. The school premises officer gets a single point of contact and a daily briefing, simplifying their day. Pupils and parents get a playground that stays open and safe for the whole build.
- An electronic care planning system works the same way. The commissioner can inspect an audit trail at any point in the contract. Care staff spend less of the end of a shift on paperwork. Families feel at ease seeing how their loved one’s day went.
These are just examples to help get the point across. To ground it in your mind, try formulating a scenario using a feature from your own company. Did it cover all three audiences?
Key takeaway: Translate each feature three times over, because the organisation, its staff, and its service users each need a different answer.
How to Run the Test on Your Own Draft
All you need are a sample draft, and an honest reader. Work through it in five passes:
- Highlight every sentence that describes your processes, your systems, your accreditations, or your people. These are the sentences most likely to stop at the feature only.
- Write “so what?” beside each one and answer it in a single line.
- Check that the answer names at least one of the three audiences. If it names none, ask the question again.
- Check that the benefit is specific to this buyer and this contract. A generic claim such as “improved efficiency” will fail the test just as surely as a bare feature will.
- Lead with the benefit wherever you can. Where the sentence will not allow it, at least keep the benefit alongside the feature rather than three paragraphs further down.
Make the Benefit Easy to Find
In conclusion, turning features into benefits can improve your score without requiring rewriting your whole draft. It involves:
- Asking “so what?” for every statement you make
- Answering for the buyer, its staff and its service users
- Leading with the benefit rather than the mechanism
- Being specific to each buyer and each contract
The test is free and needs no tools. And, running it once on a live draft will show you vital missing benefits to the buyer.
If you would like an outside perspective that spots the benefits your own team can no longer see because they are too close to the draft, talk to us about our Bid Review & Comment service. If your contributors, including the subject matter experts who write the technical sections, need a repeatable way to explain value rather than describe capability, discuss Bid Training with our team. Get in touch now, and we will help you answer the question before the evaluator asks, “so what?”.
Book a meeting with us today to discuss how you can enhance your bids and increase your prospects of success
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