How to Communicate a No-Bid Decision to Your Team

Making bid/no-bid decisions can be tough. Everyone has skin in the game, and there’s always someone disappointed by a decision, whether it’s a salesperson who was hoping to win more revenue, a business development team member who was hoping to have a successful referral, or a proposal manager who has to work late on an extra proposal.

But getting bid/no-bid decisions right is one of the most important factors in maintaining a healthy win rate, optimizing revenue, and maximizing efficiency. You can read more about how to establish a powerful bid no bid process on our blog here.

But even with a strong bid no-bid decision template in place, it’s important to communicate decisions quickly and empathetically with your team to help improve operating efficiency, manage any hard feelings, and have everyone opportunity aligned.

Below, we’ve included a template email that we suggest using as the basis for communicating no-bid decisions:

No-Bid Decision Communication Template:

Hi all,

I’m writing to inform you that our team has decided that the [INSERT OPPORTUNITY NAME] is a No-Bid.

While the decision is to pass on this opportunity, I do want to thank [INSERT SALES OR BD PROFESSIONAL] for their work in building the relationship with the client and for flagging this opportunity for our review.

Ultimately, the opportunity was decided as a no-bid for the following reasons:

• [BID SCORE] – This score indicates that this opportunity is a poor fit for us.

• The following three items were flagged as weaknesses in this potential opportunity. These gaps made us feel the opportunity would be difficult to capture:

  • [INSERT PATRI IDENTIFIED WEAKNESS 1]

  • [INSERT PATRI IDENTIFIED WEAKNESS 2]

  • [INSERT PATRI IDENTIFIED WEAKNESS 3]

• [PROFITABILITY METRIC] – Because of the potential low win % and the additional cost of proposal preparation and implementation, the expected profitability of this opportunity is low, and as a company, we have made the decision to focus on higher-value initiatives.

While it’s always difficult to say no to an opportunity, this decision is in alignment with company priorities to focus on opportunities/initiatives with strong winning and high-profit potential.

Thanks again to [INSERT SALES OR BD PROFESSIONAL] for their work developing the relationship and flagging the opportunity. We have sent along the identified weaknesses to the relevant parties so that we may consider filling those gaps in the future.

Thanks all,

[YOUR NAME]