Most bid teams lose before they start writing

Most bid teams lose before they start writing.

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The biggest risk in public sector bidding is not a weak submission. It is spending weeks writing one you were never going to win.

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In this 45-minute session, Christina West (Founder, BidQuest) and Carsten Schaltz (Co-founder and CPO, Stotles) break down how the best bid teams decide which opportunities to pursue and which to walk away from.

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What you will learn:

• How to tell the difference between "can we bid" and "should we bid", and why most teams only answer the first question.
• How to build a qualification scorecard that reduces bias and forces your team to consider the full picture.
• What information you need before making a bid/no-bid decision, where to find it, and how AI is changing the speed of that process.
• Who should be in the room when the decision is made, and how to run a bid kick-off that actually sets the team up to win.

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This session is for bid managers, bid writers, and business development leads working in or selling to the UK public sector.

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About the speakers:

Christina West is the founder of BidQuest and an APMP accredited bid professional with 13 years leading complex public sector bids. She created the QUEST Framework, a practical bid methodology for growing SMEs entering public sector markets.

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Carsten Schaltz is the co-founder and CPO of Stotles, the procurement intelligence platform that helps suppliers find and win public sector contracts.

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This is part one of a three-part series: How the best public sector teams win more bids.

Part 2: How to manage multiple live opportunities at once
Part 3: AI can write your bid, but it cannot guarantee a win

• A bad bid/no-bid decision costs more than lost time. It drags down win rates, burns out your team, and damages your reputation with buyers.
• "Can we bid" and "should we bid" are two different questions. Most teams stop at compliance and never assess whether they can actually win.
• A qualification scorecard forces consistency and reduces bias. It also makes it easier to say no to opportunities that look attractive but are not winnable.
• The right people need to be in the room early. Exec sponsors, bid leads, sales, ops, finance, and legal all see different risks.
• AI is changing the economics of information gathering. Even if you keep humans on the writing, AI can dramatically speed up requirements extraction and buyer research.