Tender writers and tender illustrators must observe rules that are part of the planning process. Begin with the view that the people you must convince actually know very little about the most critical aspects of the contract. They may know something. They may pretend not to know. They may really know nothing.
Even if a person you are writing for has a PhD in engineering, when you are an expert supplier you will know more about some things than the prof who taught the PhD. So you must see the bid as an educational tool and design it to make the buyer aware. The purpose of the bid is to affect each reader exactly as you wish.
A poor teacher soon has the students yawning. A poor bid document has the same effect on its readers. Given that customer satisfaction is a key measure of business excellence, boring your readers just won’t do.
My design pattern for tender communications defines the problems to solve as: lack of credibility, lack of relevance, lack of detail, lack of comprehension, lack of personality, lack of inspiration, lack of differentiation, lack of value and lack of trust. Fail to solve any of these problems and your tender bid stands to miss the mark. Forget for a minute about selling a product or a service. What you must sell is peace of mind.
Make it easy for each reader
The aim is to make it easy for each reader to decide promptly and wisely in your favour. The bid must therefore display textual clarity, visual clarity, customer orientation and solution orientation. Without doubt, your words and pictures have much to achieve.
Here are some things for the writers to produce: bright style, strong verbs, active verbs, correct grammar, clarity, unambiguity, steady helpful metre and correct punctuation. Text should be technically accurate, complete on facts, verifiable and slanted to key decision makers.
Typing should be well laid out and well spaced with wide margins. Sentences should not run from one page to the next. The fog index should be low, making the text easy to read. The significance of issues and details should be explained.
Each statement should be simple. It should tell what people need to know and nothing more. The words should flow smoothly if they are read out loud. The reader should see a logical connection between adjacent sentences. If, on reading a statement, the reader might ask, “So what?” then the answer should be explained.
Regard the verb as the heart of each sentence. Strong verbs lead to strong sentences. Avoid the passive tense where possible. Keep the subject noun near the start of the sentence and follow it closely with the main verb.
To emphasise a word, put it at or near the start of a sentence. Write short sentences as well as long ones. Use no word that the least educated reader might not understand – unless you at once explain its meaning. Explain all acronyms.
Use only Standard abbreviations: do not invent your own. If you write 100mW when you mean 100MW, you are out by a factor of 1,000,000,000.
The entire text should be in the correct language. I’ve known a German engineer refuse to even look through a proposal written in English.
Avoid over use of adjectives. They are usually subjective and tell more about the writer than their nouns. Break long sections of text up with crossheads.
A job for experts
There is much more than what’s above to writing, proofing and laying out good text. Thus, for a winning tender, these would appear to be jobs for experts. Don’t believe as I did once that a person with an MA in English is sure to be a good writer. My friend was expert at writing gobbledegook, such as a 95-word sentence of technical jargon.
If the words in your tender document are first class, why bother with pictures? There are many good reasons. Don’t assume that every person you are writing for can read as well as an expert can write. Besides, words mean different things to different people.
Think about the word “tree”. Then consider a picture of a tree. The picture tells which tree and much more. A captioned picture will tell more still. But an infographic can show at once how a tree can be grown, pruned, logged, sawn, finished, treated and assembled into a house.
With good infographics you can, if you choose, tell the customer all he or she needs to know without writing text or saying a word. Good text “says” it – but with pictures you are more likely to “feel” it. Empathy is a virtue when you are out to persuade someone.
Many tender writers hide behind their words. It’s easy to waffle. But when you come to draw something, you need specifics. One big client gave us his text to read. “What does it all really mean?” we asked. He couldn’t explain. Pictures demand a discipline which adapts well to boosting credibility.
Pictures capture attention
Pictures can capture attention and avoid ambiguity. They can boost recall and add appeal. Infographic pictures can simplify complex issues and depict a macro view with micro details. They can present an easy path to the most compelling proposition. They are at the cutting edge of education and sales communication.
Quality assurance demands that tender bids contain no defects. Every weakness in your document is a reason why you may fail to impress and end up losing the contract.
(c) Tecads
Chapter 14 reprinted from Tom's book, "Winning More Profitable Tenders" - published in 2007.
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