Why Good Tradespeople Lose Tenders, and What Buyers Are Really Looking For

Written for the UK tradesperson, but the principles apply in most English-speaking countries.

Every year, councils, housing associations and large companies spend billions on work that small trade firms are perfectly capable of doing: electrical upgrades, heating maintenance, cleaning contracts, grounds maintenance, repairs. Yet most small firms never bid. And many of those that do, lose, without ever finding out why.

I have seen tendering from both sides. For 13 years I ran my own electrical contracting business, bidding for work with BT, British Rail and London boroughs. Then for 13 years I sat on the other side of the table as Head of Environmental Services at a district council, writing specifications and scoring bids.

The uncomfortable truth I learned as a buyer is this: most small firms don’t lose because they are worse at the job. They lose because their bid doesn’t show the buyer what they need to see.

How a buyer actually scores your bid

Most tradespeople imagine a buyer reading their bid like a customer reading a quote, getting a general feel for whether they seem good. That is not what happens.

In a formal tender, the buyer sets out in advance exactly what will be scored and how much each part is worth. A typical split might be 60% for quality and 40% for price, though it varies. The quality part is broken into individual questions, each with its own weighting, and each answer is marked against a scale, often 0 to 5.

The people marking your bid are usually a small panel. They score each answer separately, often with a scoring guide in front of them describing what a 5 looks like and what a 2 looks like. They can only award marks for what is written on the page. They cannot give you credit for what they think you probably meant, or for your reputation, however good it is locally.

Once you understand that, the way you write a bid changes completely. You are not trying to impress. You are trying to make it easy for a tired assessor to tick every box on their marking guide.

The four mistakes that lose most bids

1. Answering the question you think is being asked

This was the most common failure I saw. A question asks how you will manage health and safety on this contract, and the bidder pastes in their general health and safety policy. It may be an excellent policy, but it doesn’t answer the question. The assessor wanted to know how you will manage the specific risks of this job, on these sites, with these people.

Read every question twice. Underline every part of it. If it asks three things, answer all three, in the same order, using the buyer’s own words as headings.

2. Making claims without evidence

“We pride ourselves on excellent customer service.” Every bidder says this, so it scores nothing. What scores is evidence: how many complaints you had last year and how you resolved them, your average response time to callouts, a named client willing to give a reference.

A useful test for every sentence: could a competitor write exactly the same thing? If so, it is not earning you marks. Replace it with something only you can say.

3. Treating price as the whole decision

Many small firms assume the cheapest bid wins, so they cut their price to the bone and spend little effort on the written answers. When quality carries 60% of the marks, that is backwards. A strong quality score with a fair price will often beat a weak bid that is slightly cheaper.

Underpricing also carries a real risk. Buyers are wary of bids that look too cheap to deliver, and if you do win, you may be locked into a contract that loses you money for years.

4. Tripping over the basics

I saw good firms thrown out before their answers were even read. They missed the deadline by minutes, left a mandatory form blank, didn’t hold the level of insurance the contract required, or lacked a policy the buyer asked for. These are pass or fail checks. Fail one and nothing else in your bid matters.

Build a checklist from the tender documents on day one, and work through it before you write a single answer.

Where to find work, and how to start small

Public sector opportunities are advertised on government portals: in England, the Find a Tender service and Contracts Finder, with Public Contracts Scotland and Sell2Wales covering Scotland and Wales. Many councils and housing associations also run their own supplier portals, so register with the ones in your area.

The timing is good for small firms. The Procurement Act 2023, which came into force in February 2025, requires public buyers to consider the barriers small businesses face when they bid. It won’t win you work on its own, but buyers are under more pressure than ever to make contracts accessible to firms like yours.

Don’t start with the biggest contract you can find. Lower-value work often needs only a few quotes rather than a full tender, and it gives you a track record. Being a subcontractor to a larger firm that wins a big contract is another good way in. Each job you complete becomes evidence for the next bid.

Write for the person holding the marking guide

If you remember one thing, make it this: the buyer can only score what you put in front of them. Answer exactly what is asked, prove every claim, price fairly and get the basics right. Do that consistently and you will win work that most small firms never even try for.

Paul Lewis is a time-served electrician who spent 13 years running his own contracting business and 13 years as a council buyer. His book Winning Work: The Tradesman’s Complete Guide to Tendering takes trade contractors through the whole tendering process, including a full worked example of a small firm bidding for a housing association contract. It comes with a free toolkit of forms, policies and method statement templates.