Want to win clients? Tell a story

Fiona Brunton

Ever wondered how your competitors get those elusive last few marks on a tender question? The answer is that they provide evidence, evidence and more evidence – and one way of doing that is to tell your potential client a story, says Fiona Brunton.

Theoretical answers are fine – by all means tell the evaluator how you do it… but make it more real and convincing by providing specific, measurable examples to back up the process or the hypothetical answer you’ve given.  In a nutshell, demonstrate that you’ve done it successfully before. A great way to do this is to use a case study.

We all know the acronym SMART – use this when writing a case study or giving an example when you’re recruitment tender writing: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Timed.

 For more formal case studies, you need to: 

• Outline the situation / background – keep this short and factual (include client information, location, sector, requirements, nature of vacancies, service levels etc – be specific)
• Point out the challenges (specify why the requirement was particularly challenging, such as low salary, difficult location, skills shortage, timescale etc) 
• Explain the solution(s) that you selected and demonstrate what you did that was over and above the norm
• Provide details of the outcome / results – again specific – numbers, timescales and facts.

When naming a case study, give it a relevant, meaningful title. So for example, instead of calling it ‘Volume Recruitment Case Study’, use ‘Volume Recruitment – 145 Warehouse Vacancies Filled in 4 Weeks’.

Then use the following headings: 

• Background
• Challenges
• Actions / Solutions
• Results

Make your case study relevant, impactful and easy to read.  Use bullet points, bold text etc to make it really easy for the evaluator to find the relevant information.  Also, make sure it’s recent – an old case study can be worse than not having one at all. Above all – keep it short – ideally 1 page of A4. 

In some tenders you are restricted by word count, so why not just put in a few facts and figures after your answers to demonstrate your competence / experience. For example, you could say: 100% of all complaints resolved within 48 hours in the last 12 months.

Finally – you can make case studies even more impactful by adding a short and relevant testimonial at the end of your case study.  Don’t forget to include the client’s name, job title and company name to make it real.

One of the major challenges with recruitment tender writing is that it is that consultants often have the case study information in their heads, so it’s not documented and the tender writer may not be aware of the existence of the best examples. So why not ask your consultants at the next team meeting to come up with some case studies and statistics for your tender library? Believe me – it’s a lot easier to do this in advance than scrabbling around for information when you’re against a tender deadline.

Further information, advice and examples on how to write case studies can be obtained from our Case Study Template & Instructions document on the Brunton Bid Writing website.

Fiona Brunton is a recruitment tender writer and expert, at Brunton Bid Writing