Effective marketing support

Since you’re always losing, it may be an indication that the losses are not accidental, but legitimate. Of course, it is easier to assume that the losses are an accident and do nothing, but if you want to start winning, if you need victories in tenders, you should admit that there are problems, find them and solve them.

As experience shows, the most common reason for constant losses is poor marketing support of the process of participation in the tender up to the fact that such support is not provided at all.

Very often documents for participation in the tender are submitted with the idea that our products are the best, we have the best price and we are the best, and therefore we are guaranteed to win. You should understand that submitting documents to a tender is the final stage of a very large preliminary work.

It is possible to win only if this work is done in the best possible way. Of course, there are occasional easy victories, but they are very rare, because, as a rule, many competitors submit documents for participation in a tender and all want to win, and each of the competitors uses a very large arsenal of means.

How to beat the competition

One way to win a tender is to send in a “spy” who finds out what price other bidders have submitted. Accordingly, the first thing you need to do is to find out if a “spy” has been sent to you to pass on information about prices and other characteristics of the products put out to tender to your competitors.

If there is no spy, you should understand if you are playing by the same rules as the other participants of the tender. You have to understand that nothing is actually decided at the tender procedure itself, but just the “verdict” is announced. All the most important things, i.e. marketing support, take place before the tender itself and very often the winner is known in advance.

For example, there is a well-known to experienced participants of tenders scheme. It can be conditionally called “partnering”. The documents for the tender are submitted by several partners, who act as if for themselves.

But in fact they initially agree on everything, including the price, which will be profitable. Someone just give a higher price, and someone lower, and therefore will win. Evaluation is carried out within the submitted proposals, not within the market price. So you can submit any price, as long as the “partner” submits a higher price. At the next tender is the first to submit a lower price, and the second higher, and therefore the first will win.

If everyone is still playing for himself, if there is no prior agreement, then another marketing support is used. Its essence in this case is to study the market, to study competitors, their capabilities, to study their suppliers. This will make it possible to predict the price that competitors will serve and, accordingly, offer a slightly lower level.

The price is not always decisive

Offering a very low price that your competitors won’t beat is very often not profitable, because you will get an order, but you’ll work at a disadvantage. You have to ensure profitability in any case, only then does it make sense to participate in the tender. Without studying the market and competitors, offering a price that is as profitable and less than the competitor’s is as difficult as winning at the casino.

What information do I need to have in order to set a winning price? First of all, you need to calculate the fixed costs of the competitor: rent, maintenance of premises, warehousing and so on.

Then you need to calculate the variable costs: utility costs, employee wages and so on. As a result, it will be possible to predict the price to be tendered by the competitor and offer a price that will be slightly lower than the competitor’s price, which will be enough to win.

Of course, marketing support is an extra hassle, but it is obviously worth it, because with its help you can significantly increase the chance of winning. If you simply submit documents to tenders without marketing support, you can only hope for a miracle. Miracles do happen, but rarely and not steadily, which means that developing a business under such conditions is very difficult, and sometimes impossible.