Latest Blogs
Six tips to making your team shine through a star CV
There are five essential elements to winning each tender: Team Track record Relationship with the client Commitment to the bid Solution. The first 4 elements get you in the race and the magic is in the 5th element – the solution. The right team, with the right track...
Dos and Don’ts of Bid Leadership
Some people say you’re either born a leader or you’re not. If you’re not, can you learn to lead? Leading and parenting have many similarities. From being exposed to different ways people parent through reading articles or hearing stories from family members, friends...
Working Smarter Not Harder – 10 tips for ultimate office organisation
Working for a busy tendering organisation means that additional work can - and does - pop up at any time, often with a tight deadline. This then creates sporadic workflow, which I know must happen in the most organised of professional services teams. Preparing and...
Winning the Competition
We frequently talk about the bid mindset: understanding that a tender is a competition, not a test. Once the penny drops that a tender is a competition, with only one winner, it totally transforms the way bid teams behave during the tender phase. Instead of focussing...
Get your tender pitch right
How do you focus the messaging of your tenders? How do you structure the pitch that you present? If you want to the align to the client's way of thinking, there are two common frameworks to use: the project objectives and the evaluation criteria. We always advocate...
The Complacency Trap
Have you fallen victim of the complacency trap? More often than not, most people do not even know they are stuck in the trap. Just like the compliance trap that we've spoken about earlier, avoiding the complacency trap goes to the core of what we do at Aurora...
The 4 Litmus Tests
You submit a tender with the intention to win it right? Why else would you want to commit the time, money and resources? If you want to win, make sure you can pass the following four Litmus tests first. 1. If you can’t summarise your bid in an elevator, you...
Are you guilty of cookie cutter thinking?
We recently engaged a research company to work with us on one of our projects and they took the team through an exercise which involved planning a birthday party. The exercise went like this… Imagine you are asked to plan a birthday party for a Sydney woman in her...
Engaging With Your Client
Any kind of sale or procurement process almost always involves a phase of client engagement, such as delivering presentations, participating in workshops or being interviewed (sometimes one-on-one, sometimes as a team). This is an area that is very uncomfortable for...
The Value of Tangibles
In tendering, every client is concerned with certainty of delivery. They are asking themselves: "Is this the best product or solution for me?" "Will this company deliver what they promise?" "Is this the best team to work with me and deliver what I need?" Whether they...