Bid Management Best Practice Q&A: With Charles Ross-Smith
From small scale grants to large complex tenders, applying for bids can be a daunting process. To enable you to feel more confident about your capability to submit great bid proposals when it matters in 2025, our bid expert at Pointer Charles has shared some advice. Over the course of his career, he has managed over 20 bids of varying scales, ranging from smaller bids worth around £5,000 to significant projects valued at up to £90 million.
Read below to gain insight into what bid management is, how to align to best practice and how to strength your competitive advantage in competitions.
"...it's not just about finding these opportunities — it's also about actively creating them."
Q) Can you define bid management in your own words and explain it's function within businesses?
Charles: For me, bid management is about understanding your company's strengths, goals, and growth aspirations. It's about identifying the right opportunities that align with what your company excels at and wants to achieve. However, it's not just about finding these opportunities — it's also about actively creating them. Once you've identified the right opportunities, it's crucial to ensure that you're investing your time, resources, and energy wisely. The focus should be on pursuing bids that represent the best use of these resources.
"A strong focus on motivation, people skills, and empathy is just as important as having a structured approach to creating a winning bid."
Q) What does good practice look like to you within bid management?
Charles: Good practice in bid management starts with clearly defined roles and responsibilities. It's essential to establish ownership early on so that everyone knows who is accountable for what. This clarity, combined with early preparation and structured planning, helps ensure that you can deliver a winning bid with minimal disruption to the business.
Effective communication is another cornerstone of successful bid management. Communication is key to engaging busy stakeholders, helping them support the bid process in the best way possible, and keeping them motivated. It's about reaching out to people, understanding their needs, and providing positive feedback on progress while clearly highlighting where additional support is needed. Keeping senior management consistently informed about the bid's progress is also crucial.
Bid management can be stressful, often involving long hours. Therefore, it's important to keep the team engaged while also acknowledging that everyone has off days. A strong focus on motivation, people skills, and empathy is just as important as having a structured approach to creating a winning bid.
Ultimately, good bid management is a blend of effective planning, strong communication, and people management skills, ensuring both a productive process and a positive, motivated team.
Q) From your experience, what factors most strongly influence win rates and competitive advantage in bids?
Charles: The biggest factor influencing win rates is alignment with the opportunity. Do you have an exceptional product or service that perfectly meets the customer's needs, and is it presented in a way that aligns with their priorities, such as sustainability?
The second factor is understanding and fully addressing the "exam question". Have you thoroughly read the customer's requirements and ensured that you are responding to exactly what they are asking for? For example, if the customer says they need someone to teach them how to run, have
you figured out whether they want to train for a 5K, a half marathon, or an ultramarathon? Tailoring your response to their specific needs is crucial.
Finally, honest proposal reviews significantly impact win rates. Before submission, it's essential to have an independent review by people who haven’t been too involved in the proposal’s development. These reviewers can provide constructive, unbiased feedback, pointing out gaps and areas that need improvement. A robust and honest review process ensures that your final submission is as strong and competitive as possible.
"Our commitment to upskilling... empowers clients to become better bid managers themselves."
Q) How does Pointer’s bid management service specifically address increasing competitive advantage and subsequently win rates?
Charles: Our approach is centred on leveraging our extensive experience in bid management. We fully understand what works and what doesn’t, and we adapt our expertise to fit the specific context of each organisation. This includes assessing how mature the organisation is in terms of bid writing and management, understanding how much time they have, and determining the best way we can plug in to support their efforts—whether that means starting strong from the beginning or helping to push a bid across the finish line.
We also provide a flexible level of support, scaling it up or down based on the client’s needs. A key strength of our approach is building strong relationships with our clients. This allows us to understand their business deeply, often uncovering opportunities across different areas of the organisation. For instance, we might identify a relevant case study from another part of the business that could strengthen their proposal. These personal connections and insights enable us to help our clients create the best bids possible.
Another aspect that sets us apart is our commitment to upskilling. We don’t just write bids for our clients; we work collaboratively, providing feedback and explaining the rationale behind our suggestions. This empowers clients to become better bid managers themselves, making the process more efficient and less challenging over time.
Finally, our approach is characterised by robust and honest feedback. We aren’t afraid to challenge assumptions or provide constructive criticism, ensuring that the final bid is as strong and competitive as possible.
Q) Can you recommend any valuable resources, books, or thought leaders for those looking to deepen their understanding of bid management?
Charles: Ultimately, the most valuable resource is a mindset of openness—whether that’s learning from colleagues, engaging with clients, or iterating on past experiences. Capturing innovative ideas and finding ways to implement them effectively is key to growing as a bid manager.
For those seeking structured guidance, look for communities or networks of bidprofessionals where you can share practices, or explore resources from organisations like the Association of Proposal Management Professionals (APMP). They offer certifications, webinars, and articles tailored to the field.
To summarise, here are 5 top tips to embed in your bid management processes in 2025:
1) Clearly define roles and responsibilities.
2) Create an environment that increases effective and consistent communications.
3) Maintain motitivation of the team throughout the bid writing process.
4) Incorporate honest proposal reviews by someone detached from the bid writing and/ or external parties are crucial.
5) Ensure there is alignment between your offering/ proposal and the opportunity.
For information on bids, see our service page here.
