Professional Services Tenders

Tenders and bids are excellent avenues for professional services firms (accounting, legal, recruiting, architectural and others) to secure a pipeline of work for a fixed period of time. Appointment to a government or private sector panel will generally fee certainty, and lead to appointments to other panels – both government and private. Whilst engagements with the private sector are often through relationships and a simple capability statement, government panels and larger corporations often adopt a formal procurement process.

Our team has a history of helping professional services firms secure appointment to government and private sector panels. A recent example is the Whole of Government tender to provide legal services to the New Zealand government. Nearly all professional services firms need to tender for work from time to time and with extensive in-house experience in marketing and bid writing roles in law and accounting firms – our team is well placed to assist and will ensure you submit a quality bid.

Legal tenders and bids

Our founder, Jason Cooney, started his bid and tender writing career over twelve years ago writing bids and tenders for mid-tier Australian law firm, Moray and Agnew. He and our team have since contracted at a broad range of mid, boutique and top tier law firms and our team has developed expertise working across a broad range of practice groups including:

• Insurance: Insurance writing tenders and bids to all major New Zealand and international insurers such as AXA and QBE. This includes all areas of insurance such as professional indemnity, public liability and product liability.
• Property: Including industrial, commercial and residential.
• Commercial and commercial: Including proposals to large corporations for the provision of contract law and other advice.
• Mergers and Acquisitions: We have written bids and tenders internationally including to Japanese and American Owned companies for advice in relation to mergers and acquisitions into New Zealand and the Asia Pacific region.
• Family: Including to government organisations with panels of family lawyers.
• Maritime: This has generally entailed writing bids and proposals to international organisations with operations in New Zealand.
• Work Health and Safety.
• Construction and Infrastructure: Including to both government departments as well as some of New Zealand’s largest construction companies.

We understand how to manage and work with busy partners and internal stakeholders to put forward a compelling bid. When writing legal bids and tenders, quality detailed cased studies and tailored CVs. You also need to put forward a comprehensive and structured response to questions on matter management and practice management. Sometimes the key to submitting a successful legal bid lies in managing all of the relevant stakeholders throughout the bid preparation process and getting the best out of them. Jason and the team have the gravitas and confidence to challenge Partners and other stakeholders where necessary in order to ensure you put forward a winning submission.

We have the skillset required to write tenders and bids in the legal industry and understand the New Zealand legal market.

Our experience extends to:

• Partner coaching – including the development of business development plans.
• Business development planning and client mapping – to identify future growth and marketing opportunities and helping you capitalise on them.
• Website development and capability statements – including graphics. We work closely with a local developer to deliver our clients engaging websites with the aura of credibility required in the professional services space.

Law firms we have serviced in the past include:

• Bakers and McKenzie
• Henry David York
• Norton Rose Fullbright
• Ashurst
• Lander and Rogers

Accounting tenders and bids

Having assisted two of the big four accounting firms with tenders and business development, as well as having helped a range of boutique and small-sized accounting firms across New Zealand and Australia, we know the methodical process required to write a winning accounting and auditing tender response.

In order to write a submission that wins, it is critical that your firm:

• Demonstrates your specialisation in different areas of accounting and auditing. In a competitive sector such as accounting, you need to show that you are specialised in the areas you are tendering firm. This will help your firm differentiate from other full practice firms, or if you are a boutique firm it will help you demonstrate why you are a good fit.
• Puts forward a team showing the depth and breadth of resources required to deliver the work. This is critical. The procurement team will want to know they are procuring a firm with the depth of resources to deliver. The depth of resources means you will be able to deliver value in pricing, by delegating work where possible. It will also mean that there is no key person risk in your service provision. Tailor each individual CV to ensure each team members experience reflects the focus of the bid.
• Shows that you have the experience not only providing the type of accounting services you are bidding for, but also working for clients with similar demands and expectations. For example, if you are tendering for government work, then delivering other work to government or semi-government organisations (such as universities) is the type of experience that will set your firm apart.

We also provide business development training, planning, Partner coaching and marketing writing and capability statement development.

Recruitment and Labour Hire Tenders and Bids

Recruitment and labour hire is mostly a relationship based industry with a strong work proving critical to winning work. However, in recent years, we have had more and more clients from the recruitment industry across New Zealand approach us for assistance with bids and tenders. These are generally a combination of public sector and private sector recruitment tenders. Our team has experience helping recruitment and labour hire firms respond to RFPs, RFQs and EOI.

We understand what is required to win and how to write effectively about your:

• Talent pool
• Recruitment methodology
• CVs for your personnel
• Team structure
• Background checks and other verification processes

Our team of bid and tender writers understand the importance of showing specialisation in terms of recruiting different roles and having the depth of resources to deliver on both key hard to recruit roles as well as volume based roles.

How we can assist your firm

Should you engage us to write your bid we will:

• Review the RFP documents and coordinate the response. We will ensure you comply with the mandatory criteria and that your expertise align with the tender requirements.
• Guide on you making a bid/no bid decision to ensure that the time spent in writing the bid will be worth your investment. We will draw on our experience writing legal, accounting and recruitment bids to illustrate the benefits of bidding for the contract and your chances of success.
• Gather information from your internal personnel as required, including challenging your internal personnel where required to ensure we get the right information to deliver a quality outcome. We will work with all internal departments from subject matter experts to human resources to gather the required content.
• Project managing the bid process including managing an internal issues as they arise. Where you need an independent viewpoint to cut through any internal disagreement in terms of tender approach or strategy, we will provide our opinion and guide you in the best interests of your firm.
• Writing your first draft, reviewing and finalising your response.
• Developing graphics and infographics to ensure tender document look professional and polished. We do not create fancy graphics which add limited value and bore the reader. We create infographics that are tailored to the opportunity and drive home your key points of difference.
• Develop capability statements and brochures to help you unlock new opportunities with different companies.
• Conduct tender mapping and develop business development plans. This helps to ensure you have the right relationships in place prior to the commencement of the formal procurement process.

Strategies to win professional services tenders

Strategies our writers (and you can) use to win legal, recruitment, accounting, engineering, investigations, finance and other professional services tenders and bids include:

• Tailor your experience to the opportunity. For example, if you are bidding to being appointed to a government panel, you need to present yourself as a government specialist with a strong interest in Government.
• Strike the right balance – between depth of experience and ability to delegate down to drive value and the hands-on involvement of your senior partners and personnel. Clients want to know they will receive quality, expert advice. At the same time, they will want to know that you have the depth of resources to handle large and complex matters or projects where required. Your bid must give them confidence you will deliver.
• Focus on your service ability as well as your expertise and experience. With most professional services tenders, there is a focus on your ability to service the client, as well as your expertise and experience. A lot goes into delivering on a contract from reporting to project management, resolving issues and managing the relationship. Your tender needs to comprehensively respond to questions and service capability and continuous improvement.
• Write for procurement – All government and most private sector organisations generally use a formal procurement process. They work off a weighted-criteria to mark each and every question individually and combine them to come with a ranking. You need to write a comprehensive responses to each and every question and ensure you score highly in each question – even areas you think are irrelevant such as environmental processes.

Contact our team today via email or phone to discuss how our consultants and writers can help you win your next bid or tender.