Effective time management for Bid Managers

If you struggle to manage your time and frequently rush your bids, you are not alone. 22% of bid writers and managers state that time management is one of their biggest tendering challenges. 

With an average of 30 days to respond to tenders, the more time you have available to work on your bid, the better! The following tips should help you identify and resolve your time management challenges. 

Lack of time to complete submissions by the deadline 

Rushing to meet tight deadlines for tenders is not good for your chances of success, and could potentially see you wasting resources. 

Solutions: 

• Avoid last-minute deadlines – it is better to prioritise proposals with more time left, allowing for well-thought-out submissions. 
• Plan better – adopt a standardised approach for planning your tendering activity before you start writing a bid, ensuring the deadline is realistic. 
• Pre-engagement – get familiar with target buyers and do your research, they might have their procurement pipelines planned months or years in advance. 
• Track renewal dates – if contracts frequently come up for renewal in your industry, track these dates to give yourself a head start next time.   
• Use tender alerts – there are services, like Tenders Direct, which exist to notify you as soon as tenders have been published.

Lack of resources to effectively manage workload 

If you are finding opportunities that you believe have manageable lead times, and then end up rushing to meet the deadline – you should review your bid processes and see where you are losing time. 

Solutions: 

• Stick to a plan – all bids should have an agreed plan before you start writing. This should ensure you have resources allocated, and if you encounter problems, help you identify where.  
• Adjust workload – if you are struggling to manage frequent or multiple tenders, you should look at sharing the workload or prioritising which opportunities to take on, and which to miss. 
• Bid management tools – using some for of bid or project management tool/application might make your life easier. Bids have a lot of deadlines and tasks to track, and anything that helps you manage these is a good investment.