Meet the Buyer events are useful for a number of reasons, but many businesses don’t utilise them to their full potential. This article highlights 5 important benefits of attending a Meet the Buyer event. As an East Lothian based company, AM Bid Services took the opportunity to talk with both local buyers and suppliers about bidding for the Council’s upcoming construction framework.
- You won’t know unless you go
Meet the Buyer is not only a chance to quiz the key procurement people that design and evaluate tenders, there is also a mass of additional support and information on offer at these events. For instance, the East Lothian Business Gateway team was there talking to local businesses – offering up to three days free specialist consultancy advice. Their Expert Help Programme can aid you in a number of crucial areas such as Customer Care, Waste Minimisation and HR.
- Understand what scores high
Asking the buyer what in particular they look for could prove invaluable when it comes to the writing and evaluation of your bid. We asked a senior procurement figure at Meet the Buyer East Lothian for Construction what in particular they like to see. One area of feedback was that Snagging and Snag List Traceability could score particularly high if emphasised well!
- Engage with your industry
Meet the Buyer is an excellent chance to interact and develop connections. As a framework is divided into Lots by threshold values, it’s in the interests of all sizes of organisations to attend. Much of the work in high value Lots tends to be sub-contracted out, and by talking to other industry suppliers you are widening your trade network and increasing the potential of forming new partnerships.
- Enhance local awareness
Public Sector work-scheme initiatives depend on the support and engagement of local employers. Meet the Buyer can help bridge that gap between businesses and jobseekers. Initiatives such as East Lothian Works are usually represented and on hand to explain the benefits of partnering with key local agencies to bring training and employment opportunities in the community. This also makes for high scores in your bids!
- Get a foot in the door
What many companies miss is that the procurement process seeks to engage with organisations before sending out their tenders. The difficulty is forming these relationships and gaining that ‘trusted advisor’ status. Of course this will take time, but all long term strategies have a beginning. Meet the Buyer is the perfect opportunity to introduce yourself and establish contact with buying organisations. Over time, you will not only grow more familiar with the characteristics of the procurement process, you may well be in strong position to offer pre-tender advice.
Meet the Buyer events are very useful tools for all organisations who bid, and are specifically designed to help your tendering process. They are very useful for Bid Specialists to understand from a procurement perspective what the evaluators are looking for. For more advice on bidding, please see www.ambidservices.co.uk