5 Tips to Win More Tenders in 2025
Increase your success rate in government procurement with these five practical strategies.
Most companies that bid on government contracts have a success rate of less than 20%. That means four out of five bids are lost — including the dozens of hours that went into them. Yet there are organizations that consistently win, sometimes with a success rate of 40% or more. What are they doing differently?
After years of experience in the world of public procurement, we see five patterns that distinguish the winning companies from the rest. No vague tips, but concrete strategies that you can apply tomorrow.
1. Select more carefully: the GO/NO-GO decision
The most impactful improvement you can make is not to write better—it is to choose better.
Companies with a high hit rate do not bid on everything. They use a systematic GO/NO-GO assessment before investing even a single hour in a quote. The three key questions are:
Can we do it? Do you meet all the selection criteria? Do you have the right references, certifications, and capacity? Be honest: if you don't quite meet two of the five requirements, the chances of you making it are slim.
Do we know? Do you have the substantive expertise? Have you successfully completed similar assignments? A contracting authority does not want a company that will "figure it out" — they want proven experience.
Do we want it? Does this assignment fit your strategy? Is the margin healthy? Can you free up the team? Winning an assignment that you cannot execute profitably is worse than losing.
Someone who submits bids for ten tenders and wins three is better off than someone who submits bids for thirty and wins four. The hours you save on hopeless bids can be invested in the assignments where you can really make a difference.
2. Know your competitors before you start writing
Too many bidders focus solely on the specifications and forget about the competition. But a tender is not an exam—it is a competition. You don't have to score perfectly, you just have to score better than the rest.
Before you start writing, research:
Who else is bidding? Look at previous awards for similar contracts with the same contracting authority. You will often see the same names cropping up. By analyzing historical award data, you can find out who your competitors are and how they are positioning themselves.
What are their strengths and weaknesses? If you know that competitor X always offers competitive prices but scores poorly on its approach, then you know where you can distinguish yourself. If competitor Y excels in quality but is expensive, then a competitive price could win you over.
What is the market price? Historical award amounts can be used to estimate what the contracting authority expects to pay. A price that is 30% above the last award is almost impossible to win — regardless of your quality score.
3. Write for the evaluator, not for yourself
Most submissions are reviewed by a committee of three to five people. They sometimes read ten or more proposals in a single day. Think about what that means for how you write.
Make it scannable. Use clear headings that reflect the assessment criteria in the specifications. If the specifications ask for "project organization," "quality assurance," and "risk management," use exactly those headings. The assessor should not have to search for information.
Be concrete and specific. The difference between a 6 and an 8 is in the details:
| Vague (scores low) | Concrete (scores high) |
|---|---|
| "We communicate regularly with the client." | "Our project manager sends a progress report with a KPI dashboard, risk log, and action item list every Monday at 9:00 a.m. We schedule a 45-minute steering committee meeting every two weeks." |
| "We have extensive experience with this type of assignment." | "Over the past three years, we have carried out 12 similar projects with an average customer satisfaction rating of 8.4/10 (see reference overview in Appendix C)." |
| "We guarantee quality throughout the entire project." | "We use a three-tier quality system: daily checks by the supervisor, weekly audits by the quality manager, and monthly external assessments in accordance with ISO 9001:2015." |
Respect page limits. If it says "maximum 5 A4 pages," submit 4.5 to 5 pages. Too short suggests that you don't have enough depth. Too long will not be read — or you will be disqualified.
4. Use the Information Memorandum strategically
The Information Memorandum (IM) is the official channel for asking questions about the specifications. Most bidders use it only to clarify ambiguities. Smart bidders use it as a strategic tool.
Test the limits of the specifications. If a requirement is unclear, ask a specific question. The answer applies to all bidders — but you have taken the initiative and can better tailor your bid accordingly.
Identify disproportionate requirements. If the turnover requirement is five times the contract value, or if the references requested are too specific, ask whether this is proportionate. Contracting authorities are obliged to set proportionate requirements and will often adjust them after a well-founded request.
Read other people's questions. The questions your competitors ask tell you something about how they interpret the specifications. Sometimes you can deduce from this which approach they are taking — and you can set yourself apart.
Pay attention to the timing. Ask your questions well before the deadline. If you ask questions at the last minute, you give the contracting authority little time to respond — and run the risk of the NvI being published too late.
5. Evaluate systematically — even when you lose
Most companies stop thinking about a tender as soon as they know the result. Won? Celebrate. Lost? Too bad, move on to the next one. That's a missed opportunity.
Always ask for feedback. In public procurement, you have the right to ask why you did not win. Contracting authorities are obliged to justify their decision. Make use of that right—it is free advice on how you can improve.
Build an evaluation database. For each tender, record: the contracting authority, the value, your score, the winning score, and the most important feedback points. After twenty tenders, you will start to see patterns: do you consistently score lower on the price component? Is your plan of action always too vague? Are you making mistakes in your market selection?
Calculate your actual hit rate per segment. Perhaps you win 40% of ICT assignments but only 10% of construction projects. These insights will guide your GO/NO-GO decision when the next opportunity arises.
Share learnings internally. If your tender team consists of several people, organize a short 30-minute evaluation after each important tender. What went well? What will we do differently next time? Document this so that knowledge is not lost.
Conclusion: discipline beats talent
The five tips above have one thing in common: they require discipline and a systematic approach. It is not the company with the best writers that wins the most tenders—it is the company that works most systematically.
Select more carefully, know your competition, write concisely, use the NvI strategically, and evaluate consistently. These are not spectacular insights, but they are the habits that make the difference between a hit rate of 15% and a hit rate of 40%.
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