Bid or no-bid: how to decide which RFPs to pursue
A simple scorecard for deciding which opportunities deserve your team's time, and why saying no is part of winning more.
A public bid response takes real time: reading the solicitation, answering every requirement, assembling forms and pricing, and getting it reviewed and signed. Teams that respond to everything spread that time thin and submit weaker responses to the opportunities they could actually win.
A bid/no-bid decision is a short, structured check made before any writing starts. Try the scorecard below to see how it works.
25of 30
Bid
A score of 25 clears the bid threshold of 22. Commit the team and start the compliance matrix.
The criteria that matter
Keep the list short enough to use on every opportunity. Six criteria cover most public bids:
- Fit with your services: does the scope match what you do best?
- Relationship with the buyer: do you know the agency, or have you worked with them before?
- Competition: is there an incumbent, and how many others are likely to bid?
- Time to respond: is there enough time to do it well, given everything else in flight?
- Margin: at a price that could win, is the work worth doing?
- Requirements you can meet: licenses, bonding, insurance, references and experience minimums.
Make some criteria pass or fail
Some requirements cannot be traded off. If you cannot meet a mandatory license, bonding level or experience minimum, the response will not be considered, however strong the rest of it is. Check these first and stop if any fail.
Score, then decide
Rate each remaining criterion on a simple scale and add them up. Set two thresholds: above the first, bid; below the second, pass; in between, discuss. The thresholds matter less than applying them consistently, so the decision does not depend on who happens to be in the room.
Decide early, and write it down
Make the call as soon as you have read the solicitation, not halfway through drafting. Record the score and the reason. When a no-bid opportunity is re-issued next year, or a win or loss comes in, those notes are what let you learn from it.
Learn from the results
Compare your scores with outcomes. If you keep losing bids you scored highly, something in the criteria is off. Ask agencies for debriefs on losses where they offer them: they often tell you exactly where your response fell short.
For the next step once you decide to bid, see how to respond to an RFP, step by step.
Where VelocityBids fits
VelocityBids surfaces the opportunities that fit your business, so the bid/no-bid decision starts from a shortlist rather than a flood, and drafts the response once you decide to pursue one.