When we talk about customers Of your company we usually think about private, but, have you considered that administrations can also be private? Public tenders can be an oxygen balloon for your SME. From iTenderspro they analyze the costs of presenting you to public competitions.
Hiring commercials, meals, visits, advertising on networks, brochures and other printed or audiovisual materials, marketing campaigns, hiring social media managers … The strategies to get private clients are numerous and of course, they have a cost. Have you ever stopped to think how much these strategies cost you versus getting other types of clients such as public administrations? Bidding in a public tender is much cheaper, even if you think not and, calculator in hand, the iTenderspro bid aggregator, proves it for you.
“The main cost of bidding is the cost of personnel. In very few cases, in addition to this cost, it will be necessary to present a provisional guarantee, a percentage of money that the administration requests, a kind of “loan” to guarantee that the company will provide the service. In other cases, we will need to pay for the issuance of commercial register documents, but this is really very economical.“, Explain Gádor Espinosa, CEO of iTenderspro.
The directive indicates that they are not going to how much you can spend to get private clients, because there is a lot of variability: from the number of people who are dedicated to it (commercial), the visits, the calls, the coffees or the meals, the investment in advertising , marketing campaigns, etc. But it is going to detail what it means that someone from the company is dedicated to looking for clients in public administrations, that is, Dive into the sea of public tenders to find one ad hoc to the enterprise. Let’s see:
“Let’s start from the idea that someone from the SME is going to dedicate themselves to looking for that public tender. First, we must assess that there is an initial cost that goes into the searches: an expert employee in the sector can spend around six hours a week searching for tenders, at least if he does it in a moderately exhaustive way. Three hours (twice a week) is the time necessary to carry out the search, one hour reading tender titles and summary variables, and at least two more entering the specifications and jumping to the important parts to see if the company complies with solvency requirements. Assuming that the hour costs you 13 euros, the calculations would be 6 hours x 4 weeks x € 13 = € 312 per month“Espinosa adds.
Then there would be “The deep reading of the sheets. It may take around 4/6 hours to extract these indices to be presented on each envelope from the sheets. That for an employee who reads them for the first time, if he already has experience, an hour will go away. Let’s imagine a average cost of € 26 per tender. If you read an average of eight sheets a month, it would be about 208 euros per month “, Explain.
Later, the papers will have to be prepared: “Prepare the basic documentation (simple certificates and annexes), although it varies a lot, it can be two days of work. Prepare the specialized documentation, at least two more days ”.
The formalization of the contract with the Administration
To sign a contract with an Administration we need the same as to do it with another company: your writing and your powers if you are a company and the DNI if you are autonomous. “The work with respect to a private sale is facilitated, because here the payment method is 30 days after the invoice is approved and all banks and savings banks know it because it is contemplated in the Law. Reason why you usually have direct credit in any entity just by presenting the signed public contract. With a private client we are discussing until the last moment the form of payment, sometimes being up to 180 days. And the rest we run the risk of non-payment, whoever it is. With an Administration, the form of collection is not discussed, because after 30 days of invoice compliance, it is obliged to pay 8% interest on late payment without the possibility of discussion.”Explains Espinosa.
But back to monthly bidding costs, calculator in hand. Imagine a company that participates in four tenders a month after analyzing twelve contracts, for example.
- Tender searches: € 312.
- Sheet analysis: € 208.
- Two complex tenders: € 416 x 2 = € 832.
- Two simple tenders: € 208 x 2 = € 416.
- Deliveries: 4 x 13 = € 52
- Total: 1,820 euros.
“If we are awarded, we must spend more time completing additional documentation to formalize the contract, and we will need time from the CEO or manager of the company to decide the price or for the signature. The best thing, if you are a micro-company and you do not have enough staff that can take on these tasks, is to outsource it to experts ”, He says.
There are thousands of actions for sale that your company can carry out and they all have a cost, “But, in the case of tenders, the collection is now assured and before starting, you always sign a contract”, Espinosa ends.
