Common Bid Writing Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

The quality of your writing when tackling a tender response has a direct impact on the score you will receive when it is evaluated.

Your business may have a strong solution, lots of relevant experience alongside the capability to deliver the service to a high standard, but if you do not clearly communicate this within your bid response then you will ultimately score less favourably than those who can better articulate their position. 

Many potential bidders do not fall short because their solution is lacking, it is because the responses that have been crafted whilst responding to the ITT has not been properly aligned to the scoring criteria, specification, buyer priorities, or lacks evidence to substantiate your claims in a way that is easy for the evaluator to understand. 

Bid writing is not a simple administrative task. It is a skill and discipline in its own right where you must make your answer clear, concise, structured, persuasive, compliant and easy to award marks to.

In this blog we will unveil the most common bid mistakes we see when bidders attempt their bid writing response and how you can avoid them to help you strengthen your response and make it as easy as possible for evaluators to confidently give you high scores throughout your ITT response.

Why Writing Quality Matters in Bids and Proposals

Evaluators can only appraise your company based on what you write in your tender responses, with no credit ever given for what is implied, assumed or known internally within your organisation without it being explicitly stated in your response. You cannot even rely on your brand and company history if you never leverage this and explicitly use it to substantiate your claims.

This is why Bid Writing is a skill set which requires significant development through experience and training. Only with this can you produce a bid response with the structure, clarity, persuasiveness and alignment to scoring criteria needed to score top marks. Weak writing is devastating to a business as it creates the impression you are unprepared or do not value the client or the opportunity they are presenting. If this is a contract you are the incumbent for, this could have huge repercussions for you, your business and staff.

 

  1. Not Reading the Documents Properly

One of the earliest and most impactful mistakes that bidders can make is failing to read all of the tender documentation in full, line by line. This must be done before anything else and you must ensure that you truly understand what is being stated across the specification and beyond. Invitation to Tender packs often include more than the main question document. They may contain specifications, pricing schedules, terms and conditions, method statement requirements, evaluation criteria, submission instructions, appendices, and clarification logs. Important instructions may appear in several places and can be littered throughout all of the documentation. 

If you do not read all of these and truly satisfy yourself that you understand everything that is being asked of you by the commissioning body then you run the most crucial risk of misunderstanding or underestimating the requirements. This can lead to under allocation of internal resources needed to produce a high-quality bid response, or worse you even submitted a non-compliant bid which is disqualified at the first pass.

Step 1 should always be a full document review before drafting, where you identify the deadlines, word counts, required attachments, pass/fail requirements, scoring criteria, and any areas that need clarification. The window for clarification will close in advance of the ITT deadline and it is always recommended that you submit your clarification questions (CQs) early to ensure you can build CQ answers into your crafted responses.

 

  1. Not Reading the Questions Properly

Closely related to not reading the documents properly, is not reading the questions being asked properly. Bid questions are often written carefully and intentionally, can be layered in their requirements and will be explicit in what the client wants to see within your response. If a question asks for your approach to mobilisation, risk management, staffing, reporting, and continuous improvement, your answer needs to address every one of those areas. You should waste no time, effort and word space trying to incorporate your environmental initiatives into this response, for example, as it is not relevant and will not help you to score highly. If anything, you will lose marks as you will have less space available to respond to what is truly important to the response. 

To avoid this common mistake, you need to learn how to properly deconstruct the question before you start writing. Break down each element of the question, and create a series of headings, highlighting each requirement as you go. By doing this you can be confident that when you start drafting, you have the structure you need to answer the question in full. 

 

  1. Not Answering the Question in Full

Closely linked to not reading the question properly is then going on to not answering the question properly. To score well you not only need to ensure that you are addressing all elements of the question, and make it easy for the evaluator to award marks. This means that you need to explain:

  • who will do what
  • how they will do it
  • when they will do it
  • how often activity will take place, where relevant
  • what standards will apply
  • where you have successfully done it before, and what were the results

A strong response should leave nothing implied, and when crafting your response you can help yourself by asking “who, where, what, when, how, why and where have we done this before”. Clarity creates confidence, evidence substantiates your claims.

 

  1. Being Too Generic

Generic writing is one of the biggest killers to a strong and compelling bid response. It shows you either do not understand the specific needs of the buyer, or you simply do not care. Both are inexcusable and you cannot expect to score highly if you do not make any attempt to incorporate the buyer’s specification and priorities into your bid response. 

Alongside an overreliance on your existing boilerplate response, being generic means that you are also not providing sufficient detail needed to score highly. Sweeping phrases such as “we deliver a high-quality service,” “we put customers first,” or “we have a robust approach” will have little resonance or impact if they are not also explained and evidenced/substantiated. They could apply to almost any bidder and you want to be working to set yourself apart from your competitors rather than blend in.

A stronger response uses the buyer’s language, reflects their priorities, and shows how your approach meets their specific requirements. Avoid relying too heavily on internal terminology, company slogans, or service names that the evaluator may not understand without explanation. Technical jargon should also be avoided, and your bid needs to be easily understandable to an evaluation panel who may not have technical knowledge. Some may be technical specialists, while others may be procurement, finance, quality, or operational reviewers. It is not safe to assume they already know your business, your systems, or your service model.

  1. Making Unsubstantiated Claims

There was certainly a time where unsubstantiated claims could still prove impactful in a bid response. However, the bid and tender landscape has shifted significantly (especially with the use of AI), with the quality of bid submissions rising alongside a stark increase in the competency of evaluators. It is true that claims made in a bid response without evidence lacks credibility, especially so where your competitors have a strong evidence-base they are using throughout their bid responses.

Instead of saying your service is effective, you must show how it is effective. Instead of simply saying your team is experienced, explain what they have delivered, for whom, over what period, at what scale, and with what outcomes. What qualifications do they have? What do these qualifications mean for their skillset and how does that apply to this opportunity?

You can outshine your competitors by substantiating your claims with case studies, metrics, contract examples, added value, performance data, accreditations, testimonials, and measurable outcomes.

A useful habit is to ask whilst writing your responses: what evidence would make this claim more believable? If the answer is not already in the response, add it or run the risk of dropping marks.

 

  1. Ignoring the Evaluation Criteria

Even if you take all of the last 5 lessons into account when crafting your compelling narrative responses, you still run a huge risk of a poor final score if you do not take the evaluation criteria into account within your structure and bid content.

Before you start drafting, review the scoring criteria carefully so that you understand the weightings, score descriptors, buyer priorities, and any guidance on what is required to achieve higher marks. Where the criteria describe what an excellent response should include, use that information to shape your structure and content. Often there is an expectation that a 10/10 response includes evidence of added value or innovation, then this needs to be factored into every single scored response you write in response to this Invitation to Tender. If you don’t do what is asked to achieve a 10/10 score, then you cannot reasonably expect to score over 85% overall for your quality submission. 

This is where storyboarding is valuable as it helps you decide what each response needs to cover before you start writing in full. It also helps you make bigger commitments on higher-scoring questions, where the weighting justifies more time, detail, evidence, commitments above and beyond the specification.

 

  1. Writing in an Overcomplicated Way and with Poor Structure

If you write in a cumbersome and complicated manner, you are making it a challenge for evaluators to award you the marks you need to achieve a successful contract award. A key element of successful bid writing is the ability to translate complex technical information into clear, accessible responses that are easy to understand and directly aligned to scoring criteria. Another top tip is that if you are going to use acronyms, make sure to spell them out in full the first time they are used in every single response. 

Poor structure can significantly impact your score. When deconstructing a response, you should ensure your structure and headings follow the order of the question, making it easy for evaluators to assess. If a question asks for a series of subjects in the order of 1,2,3,4 you shouldn’t then create a structure that then goes 4,2,1,5,3. This makes it all the more difficult to evaluate and you are even including content that was not explicitly asked for (5).

 

  1. Repetition, Cross-Referencing, and Poor Word Count Control

Repetition is another common issue, particularly when you encounter questions that naturally have some overlap in their requirements. If you are finding yourself constantly repeating the same subjects you need to take a step back, review your deconstructs of each question and satisfy yourself that the same point needs to be mentioned across all of these responses. If you find yourself in this position, you may have misinterpreted the requirements, the questions being asked may need to be clarified to ensure you properly understand what they want to see in each response or it may simply be the case that your solution and/or bid lacks the depth needed to succeed.

As previously inferred, cross-referencing unless otherwise explicitly permitted, is not something we as Bid Consultants would ever recommend. This is particularly so in the UK public sector, where you may be forgiven to signposting to another area of a broader proposal when responding to an RFP in the private sector. Most bids will be explicit that each response is reviewed in isolation of another, and therefore assuming an explanation used in a previous response can be carried over into another is a huge faux pas when crafting your ITT response.

Word count discipline is also crucial when crafting a compelling bid response. This is a hard line in the sand and evaluators will simply stop reading once they hit a word/page/character limit. You should use the limitations provided to help structure your response and should be part of the building blocks used when creating your initial deconstruct. Conversely, if you finish a response with a sizeable amount of words/pages/characters remaining, this should ring alarm bells as this may mean that you have missed a crucial ask that you need to consider in order to ensure you score top marks.

 

  1. Leaving Writing Too Late

This top tip cannot be understated, and all bidders will agree that proper time and resource is needed to overcome all of the mistakes we have discussed so far. If you leave an ITT sat on your desk for weeks, without giving it the attention it requires until a week before its deadline then you will naturally have to cut corners throughout the process which creates both quality and compliance risks. The first thing you should be doing is your full review and deconstruct so you have a firm understanding of what is needed for each question, who needs to provide input and you can then start to plan your resource and time effectively. 

Writing a high-quality bid response will always take longer than people expect and the process of creating the best possible submission for your organisation should far extend the initial first draft of your responses. Your organisation should have an established bid review process in place whereby you critique, tailor and enhance your response over several iterations to ensure that your bid is both compliant but also compelling and designed to score as high as possible across every single one of your responses.

 

  1. Skipping Reviews and Quality Assurance

As mentioned in the last section, every response needs a review, even if the first draft is strong there will always be scope for refinement and improvement. Additionally, a fresh perspective checks more than spelling and grammar. It brings an assessment of whether the response is compliant, complete, clear, consistent, aligned to the scoring criteria, and written in the buyer’s language. A good review will always ask:

  • Does the response answer every part of the question?
  • Does the structure follow the question?
  • Is the evidence strong enough?
  • Are commitments clear and deliverable?
  • Is the response within the word count?
  • Are there any compliance risks?
  • Does the answer make sense to someone outside the business?
  • Where does the score currently sit in relation to the Evaluation Criteria?

 

It is also useful to review previous bid feedback from both winning and lost bids. Buyer feedback can reveal what your organisation does well, where responses have fallen short, and what needs to improve next time which you can use to your advantage when you next complete a bid submission.

Where External Support Can Help

Bid writing is a complex skill, which requires clarity, structure, persuasion, compliance awareness, buyer understanding, and the ability to turn operational information into a strong written response.

External support can help when internal teams lack time, specialist bid writing skills, independent review capacity, or confidence in how to structure responses for scoring. It can also provide useful challenge, helping you identify where answers are too generic, under-evidenced, poorly structured, or misaligned to the evaluation criteria.

Evolve can support with bid planning, storyboarding, writing, proofreading, consistency checks, compliance reviews, and quality assurance. This can help improve response clarity, strengthen evaluator confidence, and reduce the risk of avoidable mistakes before submission.

Contact us today for a free informal chat to discuss your bid and proposal needs.

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