At TenderScout, we’re on a mission to share the news about tenders being a growth hack for SMEs with every business-owner. Although people are willing to listen, many have reservations about the tender process, believing it to be time-consuming, tedious and full of bureaucratic obstacles.  

If you’re like the vast majority of small-medium-businesses (SMBs) you’ll have concluded that it’s not really worth the effort – it’s too resource intensive, too costly and the outcomes are too unpredictable to be considered worthy of investment.

Those are just some of the sentiments that I hear from bid managers and sales executive, when I ask them why they’re avoiding government contracts. To a large extent they’re right to. The average win rate for an SME is an appalling 26% according to PwC’s most recent report into European procurement Activity (Report).

As I travel back from the SaaStr 2017, an annual orgy of all that is SaaS, held in San Francisco, I’m musing on what I’ve heard from the founders of leading companies like Facebook, Dumo and Zendesk. Many of the speakers, tell stories of their journey to Annual Recurring Revenues (ARR) to $100m within 5 to 8 year timeframes. They tell stories about cracking $1m in their first 18 months and the struggle to get to $5-6m ARR – when the “cavalry arrives” over the next 18 months.

Last night was a humbling experience for me personally as well as the entire team at TenderScout. We picked up not one, but two awards at the 21^st eir Spider Awards which took place at the Doubletree by Hilton Hotel.

This article first appeared on Dublin Globe.

Generating revenue is a constant preoccupation for small and medium sized businesses (SMBs). For those that have a sales strategy, keeping a pipeline filled with qualified leads that are likely to close is an uphill battle. Yet, every year, the vast majority of SMBs are ignoring over 100,000 contracting opportunities that could help to revolutionise their bottom lines.

At the weekend, the Independent published a story about HSE recruitment: HSE facing huge EU fines over tender delays

Government awards nearly a quarter of all public contracts to mid-market businesses. These tenders represent an exceptional opportunity for companies of all sizes to build new revenue streams. The sentiment towards small and medium business and increasing participation in public sector tendering hasn’t been this high in years, but for companies who want to get involved, where do you start?

The Minister for the Environment Alan Kelly has come under scrutiny and has “serious questions to answer” according to Anti-Austerity Alliance TD Paul Murphy, over his meeting last December with Labour TD Brendan Ryan and Task Community Care, a company that was the successful bidder in a state tender.