Simpletenders
Writing tenders absolutely sucks.
The whole UK procurement field is scattered with mines that blow up your bid without warning.
Learning to be a bid writer is being told your writing doesn’t make any sense, your bid is garbage, and you’re 19th in a list of 20 bidders - on a friday evening as you’re ready to pack up for the day.
What’s worse is there is almost nothing out there that prepares a new entrant as a supplier to the public sector for the hellscape that is about to dominate all their waking hours.
I’ve spent 30 years and well over 30,000 hours doing this work, and I have the scars to prove it.
Now I’m writing a guide for new bidders that will walk them through every step of the process, learning the jargon, avoiding the pitfalls, and not pretending to be a hero because they worked until 3am.
I’m sick to death of boring corporate training guides that are guaranteed to put new people off. Mine will be different. It’ll talk to people like the human beings they are, and recognise that they have lives outside of work.
It’ll also be a path to a software platform that implements every step I recommend, so users don’t even have to remember them; they will be supported by software that lets them do what they do best - sell their solution - rather than get bogged down in admin.
I’m starting with the guide, and I’ve spent 21 days (in tiny, tiny steps) writing my outline and vomiting what I know onto the page.
Right now, what I’ve written is hideous piles of crap that I’d be ashamed to reveal to the world. But buried in there is a gem of a teaching guide that I will polish until it absolutely shines - once I’ve finished the endless process of puking up every last facet of my knowledge onto the page.
I’m digging in. going step by step. Writing my guide, thinking of tools to build that will support it, and painfully learning coding so I can make my extended dream a reality.
Welcome to Simpletenders. It’s not going to suck.
(an explanation of 900 minutes follows when - ding ding ding! - my time is up).