6 Lessons Learnt in My 3 Unsuccessful Tender Bids

Sometimes in life, opportunities just come to you and before you even have time to consider, you are already in the thick of the action. In my 3 years of managing Studious Media, I have little to no chance of submitting a tender to any major corporation. However in the last 2 weeks, I had 3 tender submissions, one to a major MNC and two other government bodies. Here are some personal lessons I learnt along the way.

Always Go with the Craziest (Creative) Idea

Going into the first tender, the team had a tiny preparation discussion about what to present and we were all throwing really fun ideas into the pitch. 

The meeting was really impromptu but still we had our thinking hats on

Just as things were getting really fun and exciting, the logical side of the brain kicks in and starts sucking out all the fun. What we were left with was a "safe" cookie cutter presentation that will leave the audience emotionless.

Don't ever do that! Always remember that you are up against other agencies and the client is always looking for that special something or unique. It might be a huge risk but why not have loads of fun doing it than regretting that you could have done better.

Honesty is Not Always the Best Policy

So the first pitch was made up of 3 companies, one in media and marketing, another in video production and mine, web development.

We were kind of just thrown into action all of a sudden and this was how we looked

We thought that we were clever by telling the clients how they were saving time and money by dealing with the direct sources rather than through some middlemen (aka creative agencies). Yes, most creative agencies outsource their work to anchovies like us.

Boy were we wrong, in fact, clients prefer to work with only one company / point of contact. Our unique selling point suddenly became a major disadvantage. I don't blame the client as I understand that it makes sense for them, dealing with 1 clown is better than 3.

Understand the client and if it's better to just sell the services under one umbrella, do it.

Don't Show Everything But Also Don't Show Nothing
This title really sounds like teachings from Kung Fu masters or even Yoda but it really makes a lot of sense once you know the horror stories.

This is me, trying to gain wisdom by mimicking what I saw on Karate Kid. not

When you step into the business world, you start sharing stories of your own journey and along the way, you also hear about urban legends. One story goes something like this, a really creative agency went into a tender and presented their best concept in full. However, their price wasn't attractive enough and the client simply awarded the tender to the cheapest while telling them to copy the really creative agency's concept to a tee.

The moral of the story is to show the client minimally what you will be creating for them, much like a sample and without revealing the final perfect execution you will be creating. It's a really hard act to balance but it's better than seeing your creation come alive but without any credit to your name or money in the bank.

Customers are Very Visual People
This will contradict the previous point a little but I will try to make it less confusing.

Present what you will but the animation will always get more attention

You see, clients aren't usually design-savvy and despite all the explanation you can do on slides to present your concept, they just don't get it. So you really need to present a 100% rendered graphic or animation to prove your point and make the client go "Ah Ha!"

Remember the contradicting part? A rule of thumb from me is about 10% of the final work. So like my first tender, I simply showed them one full rendered layout of the page that I will be creating that allows me to sell/present the features of my design. Nothing more, nothing less.

Presentation is Not Everything, Numbers Are
I do agree that not all clients look at numbers entirely but this happened to me on my third tender submission.

This was the exact scene I faced, an old man with a calculator counting away

I went into this tender presentation totally prepared to wow them with my design concept on how their logo and website will be rejuvenated for the new year. After 10 minutes of my best Steve Jobs impression (without the one last thing bit), I was hit by a wave of numbers and figures from the old man.

He was totally pressing away on his calculator while questioning me and none of the questions pertain to my design approach. I did do my homework of making notes on some figures they might come to expect but I just didn't want to bore them.

I was wrong. So if you think the numbers matter to your clients, place them on the slides with some fancy charts or graphs so you don't end up like me, typing here on my blog with no projects won.

Not All Competitions are Fair

Life is also not fair so why should the tender process be?

Only one gets the trophy, I'm the one with the champagne being a sore loser and spraying it all over the winner

There are many times when the client already has a favourable partner to work with on a project but the tender process still has to be performed. Why? So that they can appear to be transparent and fair or its simply company policy.

So what makes a favourable partner? Here I identify 2 commonly found reasons to be one:
1. Already worked with the client on a similar scale project
2. Knows someone working in the client's company

If you are lucky, you are the favourable partner but if you are like me, you are simply a clown to perform your routine before being sent away. There's really no lesson in this last part other than to be really friendly and know more people. Connections are really important in the business world.

These are just some simple observations of mine during these 2 weeks and I will be sure to revisit this blog whenever something interesting happens to be me again. If you have some better lessons learnt, be sure to comment and share. Good luck on your presentation pitch!