How to Manage Multiple Tenders Without Burning Out

Three tenders arrived this week. Two are due Friday. One is due Monday. Sound familiar?

For small bid teams, this is not a crisis. This is Tuesday. You already know there won't be enough hours. The question is how to spend the hours you have so that Friday doesn't end with a half-finished submission and a sinking feeling in your stomach.

The good news: the teams that handle high volume well are not working harder than everyone else. They just have better systems. Here is what those systems look like.

The Capacity Problem

Most SMEs do not have a dedicated bid team. Tender responses are someone's second job. The operations manager writes method statements between site visits. The finance director prices bids between board reports. The MD reviews submissions at 10pm because the day was full of client calls.

The workload is spiky and unpredictable. You might have nothing for two weeks, then four tenders drop in the same Monday morning. There is no way to staff for the peaks without wasting money during the quiet periods.

This is normal

If your bid process feels chaotic, it is not because your team is bad at this. It is because the demand pattern is genuinely difficult to manage. The answer is not "try harder." The answer is better structure.

Triage First

When three tenders arrive at once, the instinct is to start work on all of them immediately. Resist that instinct. The first thing to do is decide which ones deserve your time at all.

Not every tender is worth a full response. Some have low win probability. Some are outside your sweet spot. Some are priced so tight that winning would barely cover costs. Submitting two strong bids will always beat submitting four mediocre ones.

Run a quick Go/No-Go assessment on each opportunity before you commit time. We have written a full framework for this decision, and you can use the free Go/No-Go tool to score an opportunity in a few minutes. Kill the low-probability ones early. Your team will thank you.

Ask: Have we worked with this client before?

Ask: Do we meet the mandatory requirements?

Ask: Is the contract value worth the effort?

Ask: Can we actually win this, or are we making up the numbers?

If the honest answer to two or more of those questions is "no," decline the opportunity. Write a polite "no bid" letter and move on. You have just bought yourself 20 to 40 hours.

A Simple Tracking System

You do not need expensive project management software. You need a single place where everyone can see what is happening across all live tenders. A shared spreadsheet works. A tool like RFP Matrix works even better because it also tracks individual requirements. The point is: one source of truth, visible to everyone involved.

At minimum, track these fields for every active tender:

Field	Why It Matters
Tender Name	Everyone needs to refer to the same thing by the same name
Client	Helps spot repeat buyers and relationship opportunities
Submission Deadline	The single most important date. Highlight anything due within 5 days.
Current Status	Draft, In Review, Ready to Submit, Submitted
Assigned Writer	Clear ownership prevents tasks falling through the cracks
Key Risks	What could go wrong? Missing certs, tight margins, unclear scope.
Submission Method	Portal, email, hard copy. You need to know this before the last day.

Review this tracker every morning during busy periods. A five-minute scan at 8:30am prevents the 4:30pm panic of discovering a deadline you forgot about.

Batch Your Work

Context-switching between unrelated tenders destroys productivity. Every time you jump from writing a method statement for Tender A to pricing Tender B, you lose 15 to 20 minutes getting back up to speed. Over a full day of switching, that adds up to hours of wasted time.

Instead, group similar tasks across all your live tenders:

Day	Task Batch
Monday	Executive summaries and company overviews for all live tenders
Tuesday	Method statements and technical responses
Wednesday	Pricing, commercial terms, and form completion
Thursday	Internal review and revisions
Friday	Final checks, formatting, and submission

This schedule will flex depending on deadlines, but the principle holds: stay in one type of work as long as you can. Your brain works faster when it stays in the same mode.

Templates Save Everything

Every tender asks the same questions in slightly different words. Company overview. Health and safety policy. Environmental policy. Quality management system. Equal opportunities statement. Insurance details.

If you are writing these from scratch every time, you are burning hours you do not have. Build a set of master templates that cover the sections you see most often. Store them somewhere everyone on the team can find them.

Starter template library:

Company overview (two versions: 200-word and 500-word)
Health and safety policy summary with key stats (incident rate, training hours, certifications)
Environmental policy including any ISO 14001 or carbon reduction commitments
Quality management overview referencing ISO 9001 or equivalent
Equal opportunities and diversity statement
Insurance summary table (public liability, professional indemnity, employer's liability)
Key personnel CVs in a standard format ready to drop in
Case studies (three to five, covering different sectors and contract sizes)

These templates should be ready to paste with only minor tailoring for each submission. Update them quarterly so the stats stay current. If you are using a tool like RFP Matrix, you can store these as reusable content blocks and pull them into any response.

Time saved per tender

A good template library typically covers 40 to 60 percent of a standard tender response. That means a 30-hour tender drops to 12 to 18 hours of actual writing. When you are running three tenders at once, that difference is the difference between finishing on time and missing a deadline.

Protect Your Deadlines

Submit 24 hours early. This is not optional advice. This is the single rule that separates teams who submit consistently from teams who miss deadlines.

Here is why:

Portals crash

Procurement portals are notorious for going down on deadline day, especially in the last hour when everyone is uploading at once.

File sizes cause problems

Your 45MB PDF gets rejected because the portal has a 25MB limit and the ITT document did not mention it.

Printers jam

If a hard copy is required, the printer will jam at 4:55pm on deadline day. This is not a joke. Budget the time.

Email attachments bounce

Inbox size limits, spam filters, and server issues can all block your submission from arriving.

Set an internal deadline that is 24 hours before the real one. Put that internal deadline in the tracker. Treat it as the actual deadline. If something goes wrong, you have a full day to fix it.

A practical rule

If the tender is due at noon on Friday, your internal deadline is noon on Thursday. All writing finishes Wednesday evening. Thursday morning is for final review, formatting, and upload. Thursday afternoon is buffer. Friday is free for the next tender.

Better Systems, Not More Hours

The teams that handle volume well are not working longer hours. They are working on fewer things with better systems. They say no to weak opportunities early. They track everything in one place. They batch their work to avoid switching costs. They keep templates ready. And they build buffer into every deadline.

None of this requires expensive software or a bigger team. It requires discipline and a bit of upfront effort to set up the systems. Once they are in place, the same two-person team that was drowning under three tenders can handle five without working weekends.

Triage: Kill low-probability tenders before you start writing.

Track: One place, visible to everyone, updated daily.

Batch: Group similar tasks across tenders to reduce context-switching.

Template: Never write the same section twice.

Buffer: Submit 24 hours early. Always.

Track requirements across all your tenders

RFP Matrix extracts every requirement from your tender documents and tracks your progress across multiple bids in one place. No more spreadsheets, no more missed questions. Get started and see how it works on your next tender.