Six free bid proposal templates in Microsoft Word, for responding to a tender, an invitation to bid or a formal request for proposal. Before the writing, though, there is a calculation worth doing — because most firms that bid a lot and win occasionally are losing money on the activity itself, and the sums are not close.
This is the decision that determines whether bidding makes you money, and almost nobody does the arithmetic. The old version of this page said not to bid on everything, which is right. Here is why, in numbers.
Say a bid costs you $8,000 to prepare — staff time pricing it, drawings, references, the submission itself — and a won contract yields $30,000 of gross margin.
Win rate
Expected value per bid
Net per bid
10%
$3,000
−$5,000
20%
$6,000
−$2,000
27%
$8,000
Break-even
33%
$9,900
+$1,900
50%
$15,000
+$7,000
The break-even win rate is $8,000 divided by $30,000, or about 27%. Below that, every bid you submit costs more than it returns on average — and a one-in-five win rate, which most people would describe as respectable, is losing $2,000 a time.
Across a year it compounds. Ten bids at a 20% win rate produces two wins, $60,000 of margin and $80,000 of bid costs: a $20,000 loss on the whole programme. And here is the part worth pinning above the desk:
Ten bids at 20% — two wins, net −$20,000
Five bids at 40% — two wins, net +$20,000
Same number of wins. A $40,000 difference, from bidding half as often and choosing better. Work out your own two numbers — what a bid genuinely costs you, and what you actually win — and the no-bid decision stops feeling like timidity.
Decline when: you do not meet a mandatory requirement, you have no relationship and no incumbent is being replaced, the price you would need is below your cost, the specification is written around a competitor’s product, or you simply cannot produce a strong response in the time left. Saying no early is free; saying no after three days of work is not.
The templates
Six Word documents to adapt. Each download is a zip file — extract it before opening, and check it against the issuer’s required format before you build anything on it.
A brilliant bid that breaks a rule is not scored badly — it is often not scored at all. This is the most avoidable way to lose, and it has nothing to do with how good you are.
Treat the deadline as absolute. In formal procurement a late submission is usually rejected without discretion, however small the margin and whatever the reason. Submit a day early; a portal that will not accept uploads at four minutes to the hour is a well-documented way to lose a contract.
Use their format. If they specify a response form, use the form. If they set page limits, font sizes or a file naming convention, follow them exactly. Evaluators often disregard anything past a page limit, so your best material being on page nine of an eight-page limit means it does not exist.
Answer every mandatory requirement explicitly. A requirement you meet but did not mention is a requirement you failed.
Build a compliance matrix. Every stated requirement in one column, where you answered it in the next. Build it before writing, tick it off at the end, and include it if they allow attachments — it makes an evaluator’s job easier, which is never a disadvantage.
Ask questions in the clarification window and read the answers published to all bidders. They frequently reveal what the buyer actually cares about, and competitors’ questions tell you what they are worried about.
Answer against the scoring criteria
Formal bids are usually scored against published criteria with published weightings. Read them before writing a word, and spend effort in proportion.
Criterion
Weighting in this example
Technical quality and method
45%
Experience and references
25%
Price
20%
Social value or added benefit
10%
On that split, price is only a fifth of the marks while quality and experience are 70% of them. Cutting your price by 10% can move at most a fifth of the score, and costs you real margin; ten points gained on technical quality moves nearly half of it, and costs you an afternoon’s writing. Firms lose bids they could have won by discounting instead of answering.
Two habits that raise scores reliably:
Structure your response to mirror their criteria, in their order, using their headings and their words. An evaluator scoring criterion 3 should not have to hunt for where you addressed it.
Answer the question actually asked. “Describe your approach to managing subcontractors on this site” is not an invitation to describe your company. The commonest scoring failure is a good answer to a different question.
Pricing the bid
Price from your costs, not from a guess at the competition. You cannot see their numbers, and bidding below cost to win turns a victory into a problem you are contractually obliged to finish.
State what is excluded as clearly as what is included. Exclusions are not weakness; they are what stops a dispute at month three. List assumptions too, and say what happens if one proves wrong.
Use allowances for genuinely unknown items, labelled as allowances with the basis stated, rather than burying contingency in a rate.
Give unit rates where the quantities might change, so a variation is priced by a formula you both agreed rather than negotiated under pressure.
Say how long the price holds. A validity period protects you against material costs moving between submission and award, which on a long procurement can be months.
Check the arithmetic twice. A transposed figure in a bid is embarrassing at best and binding at worst.
Scope, and the exclusions that save you later
For construction and trade bids especially, the scope statement is the document you will be held to. Be specific about:
What you are doing, by reference to their drawings and specification numbers rather than your own description, so there is no gap between the two.
What you are not doing — making good, disposal, scaffolding, permits, temporary works, out-of-hours access, cleaning, final connections. Each of these is a routine argument and each is settled by one line.
What you need from them, and by when: site access, power and water, free issue materials, decisions. State the consequence of late provision, because otherwise the delay becomes yours.
Programme and milestones, with the assumptions they depend on.
Once the bid is won, the terms you actually sign are a separate matter — our service agreement templates cover the contract behind the work, including the scope-change clause that keeps a priced bid intact, and our sales contract templates cover supply of goods.
Common questions
Do I need Microsoft Word?
No. These open in Google Docs or LibreOffice Writer. Submit in the format the issuer specifies — usually PDF, sometimes their own editable form — and check that converting has not broken page counts or numbering, since both can be compliance points.
Should I use the same proposal for every bid?
Keep a library of reusable material — company background, accreditations, standard method statements, CVs — and assemble from it, but never submit a generic document. The old version of this page was right that scripted proposals read as scripted. Tailor the method statement and the references to this specific job, because that is what is being scored.
How much detail should a bid contain?
As much as the criteria reward and the page limit allows, and no more. Length is not a scoring criterion. A focused eight pages that answers each question beats forty pages of company literature, which evaluators read less of than anyone hopes.
Is it worth asking for feedback when I lose?
Yes, always, and in public procurement you are often entitled to a debrief showing your scores against the criteria. It is the only reliable way to find out whether you are losing on price, on quality or on compliance — and those three have completely different remedies. It is also how you improve the win rate that drives the arithmetic above.
What if the specification seems written for a competitor?
Raise it as a clarification question rather than bidding anyway and hoping. In public procurement there are usually rules requiring specifications not to favour a particular supplier, and a question on the record sometimes changes the specification. If it does not, that is a strong no-bid signal.
Can I use these commercially?
Yes, for your own bids or on behalf of clients. You may not resell or redistribute the template files themselves. See our Terms of Use.
