Business owners and/or their employees make many mistakes when they respond to tenders or request for proposals. These mistakes can have a major impact on the result of your bid. Have a view on some of the common mistakes which you can avoid while submitting your tender proposals.
- Bidding Too High or Too Low-
If you really wish to win a particular auction, make sure you don’t bid too low or too high to get that particular tender for your company. If you think you can win the auction by bidding it at a lower price, then somebody else will bid at a higher price and win if the item is really worth it.
It’s especially tempting to bid low when the seller sets an unrealistically low starting price. If you think an item is really worth a particular price, bid that full amount.
On the other hand don’t bid too high for an item which has no worth. Do your homework ahead of time and find out what that item is really worth. Then place an appropriate bid and don’t bid more than that.
But if you want to win, you have to bid high enough to beat all other bidders. Don’t be cheap!
- Failing to complete all the forms-
Make sure to fill every form that is in your tender response. Documents may look alike sometimes, but don’t be mistaken. Details inside may differ. If you miss on any important details on the look alike pages, your tender can be marked as non-responsive.
- Correct Compulsory or Out Dated Documents-
It can be time consuming to get all the documents of your tender proposal certified as true copies. But documents without the certification or your response to the tender contains copies of documents which are not certified, then the response to the tender will be disqualifies and all the efforts will go in vain.
Also ensure that all your registration certificates are up to date and valid.
Also when responding to a bid ensure that you have attached all the Compulsory documents the Government Entity asks for. There are reasons why they want to see your B-BBEE certificate or the Annual Financial Statements. Ignoring the request for Compulsory documents can lead to your bid response being disqualified.
- Failing to Sign-
This might be the most common mistake which anyone would make before submitting the tender documents. There are a lot of documents which a responder needs to sign for submitting a single tender proposal. In this case, one can easily skip on any of the important documents that require the sign. Re-check all the documents twice before submitting it for evaluation.
- Not Reading the Fine Print
So make sure you know what the shipping and handling fee is before you place your bid. If the seller doesn’t include this fee in the item listing, email him with your ZIP code and ask him to estimate the fees to your location. And always be on the lookout for higher-than-normal shipping/handling fees, or other unexpected charges.
Be sure to read the fine print before you bid—especially where it concerns shipping and handling charges.
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