Re: Bidding on Projects

[John Posada <posada -at- FAXSAV -dot- COM>]

Michelle...

There always are "more contracts to come".  There very well may be.  However, my experience has been that you set the precedent with the first one.  Then, when and if the next one comes along, the previous price, no matter how low you went, becomes the baseline and you will be expected to "give a volume price from there".

Unless there are overriding circumstances for this contract (intro, learn new skills, showcase portfolio piece), make each contract stand on its own.  You may get some, you may loose some, but you will alsways be happy with the ones you get.

You may not have the ability to decide how you will structure the price.  They will probably give you the guidelines (per page, per hour, per job, etc.)

However, just becuase they don't spell this out, you can always submit an alternate bid structure and position it on your terms.  They may not accept it, they may not even look at it.  However, bidding is a pain in the **** for them and they may have schedule issues that cannot afford to wait for the rebid.  They may get 3 bids and not like any of them.  They then may do one of atleast three things.

1) Rebid it to another three sources.
2) Look at your alternate and rebid it to everyone based on YOUR format (the bid is now wired for you)
3) Award it to you based on the alternate proposition and they may not make that public knowledge.  

Fellow colleagues:

I am meeting with a software development company on Monday.  They are
collecting bids to have a User Manual written.  The company has
indicated that this is just the first project up for grabs-  there will
be others in the near future.

I have searched the archives, and received some valuable general
information about bids.  I'm wondering if any of you have words of
wisdom from personal experience or more importantly "lessons learned"
you could share with me?  I've never done this before, and do not want
to make that obvious!

Any help you could offer would be greatly appreciated-

John Posada, Technical Writer (and proud of the title)
The world's premier Internet fax service company: The FaxSav Global Network
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