Common mistakes made by bidders
By Werner van Rooyen, Director of HowToTender (Pty) Ltd which specializes in tender consulting and tender training.
Business owners and/or their employees make many mistakes when they respond to tenders or request for proposals. These mistakes can have a major impact on the result of your bid. Here are five common mistakes that responders to tenders make on a regular basis:
- Forgetting to sign
This might be the most common mistake that responders to tenders make. This is because there are a lot of different documents to be signed in one tender and responders can easily skip an important document that needs to be signed. Double check every page of your tender document before sending it of for evaluation.
- Outdated documents
Ensure that all your registration certificates as well as your tax clearance certificate and Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment (B-BBEE) certificate are all up to date and valid.
- Certified copies
It can be time consuming and sometimes very frustrating to get copies of documents certified as true copies. The fact is, if you do not get it certified or if your response to a tender contains copies of documents that are not certified, your response to that specific tender will be disqualified and all your efforts would have been for nothing.
- Failing to complete all the forms
Be sure that you complete each form that is in the tender response – Make sure you read the whole tender document. Tender forms might look alike in all the tenders but believe you me; some clever official might just decide that they want something extra added to their tender. If you do not read everything in the tender document, you might just miss this, and your tender can be marked as non-responsive.
- Authority to sign
This document might seem unnecessary to some but unfortunately this document must be part of all tenders, especially tenders that are done by employees of companies. Remember that if you are a director of the company and there are other directors in your company, you as the responder to the tender, must have authority to sign. This authority must have been obtained at a board meeting of your company. Failing to have authority to sign a tender document might lead to the disqualification of your tender response.
Our tender manual contains an example of an authority to sign as well as other valuable information on Tenders and how to respond to them.
To learn more about this and many other tender conditions attend our “Become a Tender Expert” 2-Day workshops presented in Johannesburg, Pretoria, Durban, Port Elizabeth, and Cape Town. Book and pay online at https://howtotender.co.za/tender-expert-form/
Contact us at wernervr@howtotender.co.za should you require more information.
You can also purchase a Tender Manual (Handbook) on our website https://howtotender.co.za/ which is a step by step guide how to respond to a South African Tender. It includes examples of completed SBD forms.
