As a small business in tough times I’m looking at every opportunity to grow my business and find new avenues.  In the process I’ve spent some time getting trained up on government procurement processes, entering my details on their websites and looking at tenders.  It all looks very interesting and quite promising but is it worth the effort?

I have to confess that I hit a brick wall as I downloaded and started to complete a tender offer.  The level of information required and the time commitment I’d have to put in did seem excessive for the possibility of being included in a short list. It also goes against my core beliefs and ignores my strengths. Simply put, how can I get the quality of my service across in paper?  I can dot every ‘i’ and cross every ‘t’.  I can make sure there are no errors and that my text is compelling but I truly don’t believe that I can sell my service without being in front of someone and explaining my way of doing business and show my passion and commitment.

The strange thing is - I’m a systems person - I love creating and managing systems and so I should love the objective simplicity of a form or two.  But there is something about the lack of personality, the dryness of it all that just made me give up and not take it any further.  

Personally I think you need to be committed to that way of working - it’s not something you can dabble at or do alongside another way of working.  Or of course, you could have extra staff and so allocate one person to tenders - getting them trained up on the processes and minutiae of the forms, so they know how to make you stand out.  As a one-woman company I simply don’t have the time to dedicate to it.  Having said that, if you complete these forms regularly then I’m sure they will become much easier and so the time taken up to complete them reduces.

Maybe it’s the mountain that is in front of me that puts me off - I certainly recognise the need to give equal objective opportunities to every supplier and maybe these forms do that. However, I’m not convinced when I see small businesses ruled out on the basis that their turnover is not high enough, even if they are planning to join together with associates to fulfil the project and have proven in the past that they are more than capable of managing the size of project.

No, all in all I think I’ll look for business elsewhere - after all, I want to do business with people, not with paperwork so I’m going to look for people who want to talk to me.