Know When to Bid or No-Bid

As a small business owner, it is very tempting to bid on every opportunity that flows into your inbox. Before making that next leap—wasting time, energy, and other resources—to bid on an unwinnable opportunity, consider looking for reasons to “no-bid” it.

Here’s a starting point:

1. You find out about the opportunity when the RFP is released.
2. The customer has not budget or can’t afford what is actually required.
3. Your competition is cheaper.
4. There are too many competitors.
5. There is a requirement in the RFP that you can’t live with.
6. The price risk is too high.
7. The performance risk is too high.
8. You have negative past performance.
9. The customer doesn’t like you.
10. You don’t like the customer.
11. The RFP is too vague.
12. The RFP is too specific.
13. You don’t have enough staff available to write the proposal.
14. The schedule is unrealistic.
15. You don’t have the staff to do the work.
16. You can’t promise delivery of key personnel.
17. You don’t know who the competition is.
18. The customer likes someone else.
19. Your awareness is limited to what is in the RFP.
20. Pursuing it would distract you from other opportunities.
21. Your started working the proposal after the RFP hit the street.
22. The customer doesn’t know you.
23. You can’t adequately perform at the price you plan to bid.
24. The technology requested is already obsolete.
25. There’s not enough profit in it.

You can find additional reasons to ‘no-bid’ opportunities and other related information atwww.captureplanning.com.