Here at Tsaks Consulting, we are passionate about helping businesses across New Zealand write bids and tenders that are compelling and persuasive and help our clients win government and private sector contracts. Our tender writing service is designed to empower our clients to write quality bids across all industries.

Here is our 2025 guide to writing winning tenders in New Zealand. For more specific information on our capabilities, or articles on case studies and other critical tender activities, feel free to browse our website or contact our team.

The tender and bidding landscape in New Zealand

Many businesses across the North and South Islands dream of winning government (and private sector contracts). Whether it’s a small bakery in Auckland looking to secure a catering contract, or a large construction company in Christchurch bidding for major infrastructure works, contracts help secure short, medium long-term revenue and certainty.

As a result, nearly all tenders that are released by the government and private sector are highly competitive. That doesn’t mean you cannot win. If you adopt a robust bid/no bid process (which essentially means not bidding for tenders you have no experience in and limited prospects of success) and deliver a tailored, compelling and persuasive proposal, you have generally a reasonable chance of success. Other factors that impact your chances of success include:

• Your position in the market and credibility in the market
• How your experience and expertise align with the opportunity and project
• If you have developed win themes in your submission
• Your ability to provide a structured response to each question in the tender
• Your pricing and price positioning
• How you are positioned in the market and any existing relationships you have with clients
• The detail and relevance of your responses and alignment to the evaluation criteria
• The strength of your references
• The presentation of your bid or tender
• The level of evidence you included in your bid to give your bid credibility.

You need to put forward a tailored, persuasive and compelling bid or tender response to win a contract in New Zealand in any industry.

The different types of tender processes in New Zealand

Procurement departments often adopt different tender processes depending on what they are looking to procure. For example, the use open tenders, closed tenders, RFPs, RFTs and panel appointments depending on the nature and length of the projects.

• Open Tenders: These are the most transparent and often highly competitive tenders. They are also the most popular and most government sector tenders are open tenders. Whether it’s Auckland City Council or a government department, open tenders are a simple way for organisations to get a gauge of the market and find a suitable supplier. They are also a great way to win new business for our clients although nearly always highly competitive. It’s not unusual for a tender to have 10 – 20 applications. However, many businesses do not undergo a thorough bid-no bid process before bidding and don’t meet the mandatory criteria. Therefore, you are most likely going to be up against your main competitors in the market when bidding for an open tender.
• Closed Tenders: As the name suggests, these are closed tenders available only to businesses that have been invited. It’s an encouraging sign if you have been invited to a closed tender. It means that your business development and marketing functionalities are working well. It also means that you will more than likely be joined by your main competitors in the tendering process. A small amount of credible competitors is generally a good thing and a good opportunity for you to put forward a compelling proposal. It also means that there will generally be limited price shocks with most competitors pricing around the market rate.
• Panel appointments: Our tender writing services has helped hundreds of businesses across the North and South Island write secure appointments to government and private sector panels. From lawyers and accountants, to valuers and plumbing and building maintenance businesses, we have helped many businesses benefit from the consistent revenue streams that panel appointments provide. When bidding for a panel, it’s generally not for a specific task – but rather – a broad range of projects that will arise under the panel for an extended period of time.

Public and private sector tenders – tailoring your bid writing to the client

Although largely the same, tendering to the public and private sectors requires a slightly different approach, writing style and strategy. Knowing your audience is critical and understanding the motivations behind public and private sector tenders is also important. For example, with public sector bids, government departments are often happy with their current supplier, however, for regulatory purposes they have to go out to tender.

When this is the case, you need to put forward an innovative proposal with a unique value proposition to win the work. Public sector government departments often take a much more methodical approach to procurement. They are well organised, completely transparent and adhere to the rules. They will expect you to do to the same and love to hear their terminology referenced in the bid.

Writing bids to the private sector offers a lot more flexibility. You can introduce graphics and infographics into your bids and tenders and are able to put forward an alternative bid with ease. You will need to take a more salesy and marketing approach to your bid and be sure to have polished graphics and infographics.

There are limited restrictions on stakeholder engagement which offers an opportunity for you to engage with your client throughout the bid process.

Preparing for your bids and tenders in 2025

With tenders being so fast paced, whether you are a community organisation, builder or health company, and regardless of if you are located in Auckland, Wellington or regional NZ, you will generally be in a frenzy when a bid is released with limited time to respond and your day to day business to run as well.

If you have been through a thorough bid / no bid process, then you will certainly be tendering for a contract you have a decent chance of winning. Therefore, preparation is key to submitting a quality response which is highly tailored to the opportunity.

What can you do to prepare for a must-win tender?

Monitor and understand the market and competition

This is important and something that you more than likely do on a weekly basis anyway. Competitive intelligence is critical in business and absolutely critical in tenders. Keep an eye on any innovative products or services your competitors or releasing or offering the market. Look out for any updates to their websites and speak with industry stakeholders where possible about what your competitors are going.

It’s also a good idea to monitor the results of tenders and bids and even industry articles about what contracts your competitors are delivering on and where. You can be sure that when it comes time to write their pitch, they will more than likely include reference to thought leadership and any new initiatives and innovations. You will need to match this in order to score well and win contracts.

For example, we assisted a horticultural and grounds maintenance business in writing a bid for a large grounds maintenance contract. One of their competitors had released a new product to the market which was an eco-friendly pesticide that didn’t use glysophate. Our client didn’t have such a product and was marked down in their tender.

Create a tender or bid library

If you have written a tender or bid in the past, chances are that you will have existing content which can be used again and again. We don’t support cut and pasting content as if you don’t tailor the content you will generally score poorly. Previous content is however very useful for creating a first draft of your tender response.

In order to put a first draft together quickly it’s recommended to create a bid or tender library or central repository of information. This should be well organised and cover the key components of most tenders such as CVS of key personnel and case studies.

Once you have a comprehensive bid library which is well maintained and updated, you will be able to quickly and effectively put together the first draft of your tender and have enough time to tailor your response.

Project managing the bid and tender writing process

Our bid writing service extends beyond simply writing the bid or tender. One of the biggest challenges facing businesses across the North and South island who are tendering is project-managing the tender process. It is time consuming and things can quickly go wrong – particularly for large tenders and bids – if it’s not done right.

Here at Tsaks Consulting New Zealand, the process we generally adopt includes:

• Receive the tender documents. Review the documents in detail and undertake a capabilities assessment. Conduct a bid/no bid meeting and decide on whether or not to bid.
• Develop a checklist of the tender requirements. Identify what supporting documentation will be needed to submit a proposal that will comply and win.
• Have an internal meeting and assemble a team of stakeholders as well as appoint a bid lead. Allocate responsibilities and tasks to stakeholders.
• Set a schedule for completion of initial content and for input from key stakeholders.
• Create a central document which everyone can access and work on as a draft.
• Write the response and actively manage the process up until completion (including draft reviews, proof-reading and other tender preparation tasks)

How you can win more tenders in New Zealand

Adopt best practice tender writing strategies and techniques

To give your business or organisation the best chance of success, you need to write a credible and persuasive tender. Adopting best practice writing strategies in critical to this. When we help clients write winning proposals and tenders we adopt best practice techniques such as:

• Avoiding technical jargon and writing in clear, concise and easy to understand simple English. Always adopt the positive tone and active voice in your writing.
• Structure content so it’s well formatted, spaced out and easy to read. Ensure you use images, headings and sub-headings to break up the text as well as lists and bullet points where possible. This makes it easier for the reader to find the information they are looking for and award you marks against the weighting criteria.
• Ensure you structure your response to each question effectively and address each aspect of the question. Sometimes in tenders, one question can have two or three different parts. It is important to provide a comprehensive and tailored response to all questions that addresses the instructions in the question. For example, when you are asked to ‘demonstrate’ something it generally means you need be provide a thorough response with examples.

Integrate your win themes and key selling points throughout your bid

You need to storyboard your response and develop win themes for your bid for it to be successful. The key point here is that the win themes need to be client focused – as opposed to focused on yourself. I.e. look at your capabilities and then consider what the client is looking for in a supplier or service provider. Identify the key selling points of your business that match what they are looking for and put these forward as win themes.

This means integrating these win themes throughout your bid to ensure the key messages flow through to the reader and the procurement teams understand what sets your business apart. Sometimes your bid may sound a bit repetitive, but this is generally fine as long as you don’t ‘cut and paste’ your win themes through your bid.

Write a compelling executive summary

We have helped many businesses across New Zealand write a compelling and engaging executive summary. It’s often the first (and sometimes the only in the case of private sector bids) part of the tender the client will definitely read.

Your executive summary needs to:

• Outline your key points of difference and clearly articulate the benefits of your bid
• Outline any innovative services or thought leadership you will provide
• Introduce your team and demonstrate that it’s you’re A-team
• Talk about your relevant experience and how you will leverage on it to deliver value
• Focus on the client and not yourself

Write compelling case studies

Another key component to any bid is your experience and a case study. In order to secure a contract you need to show you are a credible supplier. Detailing your previous experience certainly help with this (regardless of your industry or business size).

In order to put forward a compelling case studies, our bid writers here at Tsaks Consulting New Zealand recommend you detail:

• The client and size and scope of the contract
• Which personnel on your team were involved
• What services you provided
• If there were any safety or other issues
• What software or methodology you used to deliver the project or service
• What challenges were encountered and how you overcame them
• The key outcomes and deliverables

Why you need to meet the evaluation criteria to win

The reality of any tender or bid is that in order to be successful and score well you need to be awarded marks. The procurement team can generally only award marks against the evaluation criteria. That means that even if you put forward outstanding content, if it isn’t responsive to the question then you will generally score low.

Therefore, it is critical to respond to the tender questions directly and ensure you cover off all the evaluation criteria and clearly reference where you have covered it in your bid.

A pricing strategy that will help you win without losing money

It’s easy to win tenders by pricing low – particularly when the weighting criteria is for pricing is high. The hard part is when you price at market rate and need to rely on a compelling tender to win. Our tender writers back themselves. We believe a good tender and market pricing is enough to win government contracts and makes good business sense.

Some pricing strategies that are popular include cost-plus pricing, value-based pricing and market pricing. Whilst cost-plus and market pricing are self-explanatory, value-based pricing is a bit different.

When adopting value-based pricing, you need to integrate an explanation throughout your bid about the value you will be delivering and how this can be quantified. It’s a good idea to assume the client doesn’t understand at all and you will need to spell it out to them in order to justify your pricing and ensure they understand the value you will deliver.

Health and safety – always an important factor in New Zealand

Over the years – we have seen tenders won and lost on health and safety. It may not seem like a large factor, however, in certain industries such as infrastructure, building and construction, as well as large government projects it can be a dealbreaker.

On smaller projects, it will be a mandatory requirement and you will need to comply with it in order to win a contract. However, safety provides an opportunity to simply comply with the requirements. Tailoring your safety documentation to the opportunity and actually thinking through the possible safety issues of a project demonstrates that you are a credible supplier and take the project seriously. It also demonstrates that you are committed to safety and have put forward a plan to ensure a successful incident free project. This is a possible win theme for certain projects and an opportunity to differentiate yourselves from the competition.

Ensuring you deliver a quality bid or tender

For most tenders, you will be asked to submit a Quality Management System and talk about ad-hoc audits and other quality management processes you have. It’s a good idea to demonstrate that these processes are working by submitting a quality tender. Some of the quality assurance processes which we integrate into your own tender writing processes when writing bids for our clients include:

• Ensuring all claims and statements in your bid are backed up by evidence where possible.
• Ensure that your win themes and key messages are client focused and that your bid is client focused and not focused on yourself.
• Checking for consistent formatting and font throughout your bid.
• Reviewing and ensuring you comply with all the tender requirements. This includes upload instructions and acting on any addenda that are issued.
• Completing a thorough spelling and grammar check on your tender prior to submission.
• Keeping the same (preferable active) tone throughout your bid.

Our bid review service

Our team of writers based in Auckland and Christchurch offer a bid review service. This is where, as opposed to writing your entire bid (which is a service we also offer), we will review your bid or tender in detail and provide our thoughts and recommendations on how to improve it. When we review your bid we will check for:

• Win themes throughout your bid
• Correct response structure to key questions
• Evidence throughout your bid
• Compliance with the tender requirements
• Best practice tender writing techniques

Our bid and tender review service helps businesses tap into our knowledge and tender writing experience whilst improving their own internal capabilities. It’s a great way for you to prepare for future tenders and bids as they arise and develop the in-house capability to respond effectively.

FAQ – Our 2025 tender and bid writing guide

Is there are tender writing service that can tell me why I’m losing tenders?

Yes – as part of our review tenders we will tell you where there are weaknesses in your tender or bid and how to improve on them. We will conduct a review of your tender from the perspective of the evaluator.

What can I do to win more tenders and who can help me?

Our team of tender writers here at Tsaks Consulting can help you win more tenders. We will do this by ensuring you:

• Introduce win themes
• Only bid for tenders which you have a good chance of actually winning
• Use evidence and facts and figures to ensure your bid is credible
• Tailor your bid to the opportunity
• Put forward a compelling local community and social benefits response.

Call our team today and speak with our Director, Jason Cooney, about how we can help you win more tenders and bids.