A tender response will typically have a word or character count for each question and it's important that you stick to this. This is not a guideline, many portals will cut you off when you reach the limit so here's some advice from our winning tender writers to help reduce the number of words used.
- Cut the waffle! Get straight to the point and be succinct.
- If your company name is multiple words, i.e. 'Complete Tenders Limited' don't use the company name in the response, instead use 'we'.
- Don't use adjectives unless absolutely necessary, 'the team', as an example is sufficient, you don't need to say 'the experienced team'.
- Use hyphens where possible, 'day-to-day' is one word whilst 'day to day' is three!
- Create new acronyms for commonly repeated words e.g, 'Health and Safety Policy' becomes HSP.
- Consider the use of a back slash.
- Use a semi-colon instead of the word 'and'
- Drop prepositions like it/on/and/to where possible. It may not be grammatically correct but can still read logically.
- Look at if the information can be displayed in a table, this will reduce the word count as you will not need full sentences.
- Consider combining sentences, this can also help the answer being repetitive. You don't want to waste words repeating a point, state it once and move on.
- Read and re-read the response, cutting words each time.
- Don't get attached to your words - you may have crafted a wonderful response but if it's too many words, it has to change.
Whilst reducing your word count is about less words, character count is about reducing the number of characters and spaces used. Here's some tips from our team to help with this:
- Use symbols where appropriate so '&' rather than 'and'.
- Drop full stops from abbreviations - 'ie' not 'i.e.' and 'eg' not 'e.g.'.
- Use the word 'we' rather than the company name.
- When talking about numbers, use the number rather than the word - '17' instead of 'seventeen'.
- Create new acronyms for commonly repeated words e.g, 'Health and Safety Policy' becomes HSP.
- Use a thesaurus to look for shorter words that mean the same thing.
- Avoid using bullet points, some portals count these as two, even three characters.
- Don't use adjectives unless absolutely necessary, 'the team', as an example is sufficient, you don't need to say 'the experienced team'.
- Use a semi-colon instead of the word 'and'.
- Drop prepositions like it/on/and/to where possible. It may not be grammatically correct but can still read logically.
- Don't repeat yourself, state the point clearly and move on.
- Look at if the information can be displayed in a table, this will reduce the character count as you will not need full sentences.
If you need help with your tender response, our team of experienced tender writing team are on-hand to support you prepare a winning bid. Get in touch to find out more.
