Developing a Winning Bid Strategy

Winning bids isn’t just about putting forward a great submission. It’s about building a consistent, strategic approach that helps you target the right opportunities, respond effectively, and improve over time.

In this article, we’ll explain what a bid strategy is, how to build one that suits your organisation, and how to evolve it to achieve better results.

What is a Bid Strategy?

A bid strategy is your organisation’s approach to identifying opportunities, planning responses, and increasing your success rate. It ensures your bidding activity is aligned with your business goals and tailored to meet procurement requirements. A strong strategy helps you produce bids that are well-structured, competitive, and fully compliant.

It typically includes:

• Opportunity tracking and early engagement
• A clear bid/no-bid decision-making process
• Defined win themes based on buyer needs
• Team roles and responsibilities
• A process for reviewing and improving your approach

Why You Need a Strategy

Without a clear strategy, bidding can become reactive. You might find yourself chasing every opportunity, even when the fit isn’t right. This leads to wasted time, lower win rates and unnecessary pressure on your team.

With a focused strategy in place, you can:

• Prioritise bids you’re more likely to win
• Strengthen internal consistency and confidence
• Use resources more effectively
• Increase your return on investment

Building Your Strategy

1. Identify Your Strengths
Start by assessing your core services, track record, and what sets you apart. Think about where you perform best and what gives you an edge over competitors.

2. Set Clear Criteria for Bid/No-Bid Decisions
Develop a checklist to help you assess opportunities. Consider contract value, resource availability, relevance to your goals and any previous engagement with the buyer.

3. Align Win Themes with Buyer Needs
Understand what your target buyers care about. Build your messaging around how you meet these needs better than others, whether through innovation, reliability, value or social outcomes.

4. Build Strong Internal Processes
Establish a clear structure for planning, writing, reviewing and submitting bids. Use templates, timelines and defined responsibilities to keep things on track.

5. Review and Improve
After each submission, reflect on what worked and what didn’t. Use feedback and evaluation outcomes to refine your approach and apply lessons to future bids.

Work With Us

A clear bid strategy gives structure to your bidding activity. It helps you focus your efforts, reduce wasted time and consistently improve results.

At WeBid Consult, we support organisations of all sizes to build and refine strategies that lead to long-term success. With a 96% bid success rate, our approach is proven to deliver results. Whether you’re creating your first strategy or refining an existing one, we’ll help you put the right structure in place to win more work.

Get in touch to find out how we can support your bid strategy development.