A real tender is when you don’t yet know about the upcoming project, but communicate with the future customer, drink coffee (or cognac) and talk about life, about the past and future, about children and vacations, about the best projects and mutual acquaintances. If such a conversation took place and was successful, everything will be fine. If not, there is almost no chance.
If you are participating in a tender that you learned about in an announcement on the official website, then most likely you have already lost. Often the best projects are distributed even before the tender. But this does not mean that there is no choice of supplier at all. It just doesn’t happen exactly as described in the tender procedure.
Customers get acquainted with the agencies they are interested in, get to know the people and their experience. They evaluate whether they can implement this project or not, what difficulties there will be. They are imbued with trust or vice versa. Selected agencies will learn in advance that a serious tender is being prepared. They are prepared - they learn what guests like, what management likes, what problems there were before and successful solutions. And when they start solving the problem, they are much more prepared than other competitors who have read 40 pages of tender documentation.
If the company is not liked, it will not be invited to the tender. And if the agency itself finds out and submits an application for the tender, there will still be a reason to disqualify them. Maybe another time. After all, as long as there is no trust, there are no contracts. But gaining trust is not easy and it takes time.
Another chance to win a real tender. Personal recommendation from a trusted person. When someone vouches for you with their reputation. In order to obtain such a guarantee, you need to try very hard.
Why is this so? This is how the world works. Even in ancient China, the great Sun Tzu wrote about this:
“Victorious warriors first win and only then enter into battle; those who are defeated first enter into battle and only then try to win.” Sun Tzu.
