therisano

Strategy as foundation: If a competitor can say it too, it is not a discriminator

Wed, 02 Sep 2026 22:59:32 GMT

In a previous blog we covered the 2 inputs which define the battleground a tender is fought on: customer issues and hot buttons, and the competitive landscape. This post covers the 2 which decide whether the response converts understanding into a high score. Discriminators and strategic priorities are the raw material of win themes, the backbone a winning response keeps returning to.

My controversial take: both are exercises in subtraction. Most bids improve by claiming less.

Owning a capability does not make it a discriminator

A discriminator is the reason a buyer selects one supplier over the alternatives. The bar is higher than it first appears. The test is unforgiving. A discriminator has to connect to a problem the buyer actually has, deliver a benefit the evaluator can recognise and value, create separation competitors cannot credibly match and stand up to proof. A claim failing any one of the 4 is not differentiation.

Competitive separation is the condition that removes most candidates. A discriminator exists only where the organisation’s capability intersects with something the buyer needs and the competitive field cannot match. What separated the offer on the last tender may be parity on this one, because a competitor has acquired the capability or the buyer has stopped caring about it.

Table stakes are the most common false positive

Accreditations, familiar methodologies, a capable team, a history of similar work and a compliant staffing model are the entry price. They are necessary to be competitive and compliant, they create no evidence for preference.

The pattern is easy to recognise once it is named. If a claim could be lifted from the response and dropped into a competitor’s document without a word of editing, it is not a discriminator. It may still belong in the response as supporting content. It should not carry the argument.

Where a claim is differentiated and cannot be proven, the safest treatment is removal. Unsupported claims raise the evaluation panel’s scrutiny of everything around them.

Proof is the mechanism, not the appendix

Differentiation without evidence reads as risk to an evaluation panel.

Strong proof is specific, measurable, comparable in scale and complexity to what the buyer is purchasing and verifiable through data, references or documented performance. It sits immediately beside the claim it supports. Panels working through a large response under time pressure do not go looking for validation so it needs to be easy to find.

“Extensive experience in similar environments” carries no evaluative weight. A statement that the same approach “reduced transition time by 20% across 3 named comparable contracts” proves the claim, the scale and the credibility in a single sentence.

Weak proof is not neutral. It lowers confidence, because a panel which cannot verify a strong claim starts to discount the claims it has already accepted.

Strategic priorities decide where the bid does not compete

The final input asks for a trade-off. Not everything can be emphasised.

Word, character and page limits and evaluator attention are all finite. Every paragraph spent on an issue which will not raise your score is taken from one that would. Prioritisation decides the split on 3 tests: impact on evaluation scoring, impact on the buyer’s business or mission outcomes and the advantage or vulnerability sitting in the competitive field. Inputs scoring low on all 3 tests should not shape your response.

The output across the 3 tests includes a decision most teams never make explicitly, when to No Bid. Naming the areas where the offer is at parity, and treating them as compliance rather than competitive value, make the emphasis on differentiation easier.

Bids which try to be strongest on every criterion but miss the 3 tests often read as undifferentiated on all of them.

Strategy is owned, approved and locked

Strategy set by consensus during the writing period is not strategy. It is negotiation, and it often produces responses with competing arguments.

The strategy discipline is sequential. Strategic inputs are validated and prioritised, one accountable person approves them, disagreements are resolved before drafting starts and the approved direction then governs every content decision through to lodgement. Reviews test the response against the approved strategic direction not individual preference.

The part which does not appear in the response

None of this work is submitted. Evaluation panels never see the issue analysis, the competitive assessment, the discriminator tests or the priority decisions.

They see the result. Relevance in the answers, evidence beside the claims, risk addressed before it is raised and win themes consistent enough for the panel to repeat in its own recommendation. This is the value of investing time in building a solid strategic foundation. The hours invested before the writing are worth more than the hours spent on the draft.

Therisano advises Australian organisations on bid and grant strategy, from opportunity assessment through to submission. Some of that work runs across a whole pursuit, some of it is evaluation on competitive positioning about whether the bid is worth the effort.

Strategy as foundation: most tenders are lost before a word is written

Tue, 25 Aug 2026 02:05:24 GMT

The outcome of a tender is usually settled before the response document is opened. An earlier blog post “When every response reads well, writing well stops being what wins the tender” made the case that response strategy decisions often decide tender winners.

Response strategy is specific – its about the decisions on what matters most to the buyer, why it matters and where advantage can realistically be won. It sits ahead of tender writing for a reason: everything written afterwards inherits the quality of those strategic decisions.

Strategy work runs on 4 input groupings. Customer issues and hot buttons, the competitive landscape, discriminators and strategic priorities. Together, they become win themes – the small set of arguments a winning tender response is built around. This post covers the first 2 elements.

Requirements name the deliverable, issues name the problem

A requirement is what the buyer wrote down, you'll find them in the specifications document. An issue is the problem which made them write it.

An agency asking for 24/7 service coverage has a requirement. The issue behind it may be an audit finding on response times, a service failure that reached the Minister or a workforce shortage the agency cannot solve internally. One line in the specification, 3 very different problems.

A response written to the requirement talks about the bidder. A response written to the issue talks about the buyer's problem and what it takes to make the issue away. Panels score the second one higher, because it sounds like someone who understands the problem rather than someone who only read the specification.

Issues surface as implied requirements, which are the expectations the buyer never wrote down and still assumes. A request for monthly reporting carries an implied requirement the reporting survives scrutiny from someone above the contract manager. Meeting the stated requirement satisfies compliance. Meeting the implied one earns confidence.

Hot buttons are the few issues which decide the outcome

Not every customer issue deserves the same weight. A hot button is urgent, it is visible to the people who sign the recommendation and it usually appears in the buyer’s own words, not the bidder’s.

Hot buttons behave differently to ordinary issues in an evaluation. They attract disproportionate attention, they shape how panels interpret ambiguous answers and they frequently decide which of 2 close bids is preferred. A response landing squarely on a hot button earns credibility the evaluation panel carries into every other section, lifting scores on answers which never mention it.

The buyer publishes more about these than most bidders read, (See the earlier post which also talks about researching the buyer’s operating environment). Discipline in reading corporate plans, audit findings, regulatory signals and the tender document’s own language as evidence instead of as background information, makes every response strategy decision stronger.

Validated insight and confident assumption look identical on paper

The most expensive error in bid strategy is treating an assumption as a fact.

A whole response can end up built on what one person believes the client wants, formed during a site visit two years ago and never tested since. The belief may be correct. Unvalidated, it is a bet placed with the cost of the entire bid.

Validated inputs carry a source: a documented statement, a direct conversation, a pattern repeated across the buyer’s recent procurements or corroboration from more than one place. Assumptions which cannot be validated still have a use, provided each one is labelled as untested before emphasis is decided. Separating the two is one of the fastest improvements available to an organisation which bids regularly.

Evaluators are accountable, not neutral

Evaluation panels are not reading for interest. They are short on time, alert to risk and accountable for a recommendation which must survive probity review, internal challenge and occasionally a debrief with the bidder who lost.

Accountability shapes scoring behaviour. Panels are weighing performance, transition, schedule, compliance and reputational risk alongside every claim. Value for money under the Commonwealth Procurement Rules is a judgement about risk-adjusted outcomes rather than lowest price, which puts the reduction of perceived risk at the centre of a competitive response.

A claim which impresses a business owner and a claim which reduces an evaluator’s exposure are rarely the same sentence.

Competitors are answering the same questions

Competitive landscape is the input most often skipped by organisations without a dedicated bid function, and it changes the response more than any other.

Where every bidder can credibly say the same thing, the claim is invisible. Local presence, an experienced team, ISO certification and a proven methodology are usually parity, not advantage. Emphasis spent in these areas is emphasis taken from somewhere that could have scored higher.

Competitive analysis is looking for 3 things: where the field is at parity and should not be emphasised, where competitors share a constraint the buyer cares about and where your offer or solution can credibly separate. Misalignment is the opening opportunity. It appears when a competitor overstates a strength the buyer does not value, misreads the priority order or leaves a live issue unaddressed.

Aligned responses read as though the writer had sat in the buyer’s planning meetings. Misaligned responses read as generic, even when every technical answer is correct.

What this looks like in practice

The output of this stage is not messaging. It is a short, defensible set of validated inputs: the issues which matter, the hot buttons among them, the risks the panel is trying to avoid and a realistic read of the competitive field.

The warning sign is finishing this stage with taglines instead of decisions. Slogans at this point mean strategy was skipped and the team has jumped ahead to messaging. Nobody notices until final review, when the draft reads well but could have come from any bidder, and there is no time left to go back and do the strategic thinking that was missed.

The next blog post covers the 2 inputs which turn this foundation into scoring advantage: discriminators and the strategic priorities which decide where the bid competes.

Therisano works with Australian organisations on the strategy underneath tender and grant responses, well before the writing starts. Where a pursuit matters and the direction is not yet settled, an early conversation is usually the cheapest part of the bid.

What winning executive summaries actually contain

Wed, 19 Aug 2026 22:19:48 GMT

The first article in this series established why the executive summary carries so much weight: the most read, most scrutinised section of any submission, shaping how the evaluation panel receives everything which follows. The next question is what a strong one contains, and the answer is not what most bidders expect.

It is not a summary of your document

The most common mistake in Australian tender responses is the executive summary written as a table of contents in prose: a paragraph on the company, a paragraph on methodology, a paragraph on experience, a closing line of thanks. Everything is accurate. None of it persuades.

The APMP Body of Knowledge starts from a different premise. An executive summary is not a summary of the response. It is a summary of the reasons the buyer should choose you, and every element earns its place by advancing that argument – in short, it is the “why us” combined with the “what’s in it for them”.

Open in the buyer’s world, not your own

Strong summaries open with the buyer: the objectives, the operating pressures, the outcome which sent them to market. The opening demonstrates, in specific terms, that you, the bidder, understands why the procurement exists. Not a restatement of the specification, which every bidder can copy, but the drivers behind it – the growth being managed, the risk being mitigated, the service standard being protected.

Specificity is the test. A summary which would still make sense with another organisation’s name is not specific enough to score highly.

The bidder’s name barely appears in a disciplined opening. Across a strong summary the buyer’s name appears more often than the bidder’s, separating it immediately from the self-focused summaries beside it in the pile.

A value story, not a capability list

Think about it from five moves: the buyer’s situation, your offer and its benefits, the investment, the path forward and a short close.

The offer is presented as a direct response to the buyer’s priorities. Evaluators award nothing for enthusiasm or adjectives. Scoring responds to specific, quantified benefits: what improves, by how much, by when. “Extensive experience and a commitment to excellence” scores nothing. A measurable claim, tied to a stated priority and anchored to evidence, gains you a high score.

Evidence separates assertion from persuasion. Every material claim in a winning summary should trace to proof – a delivered result, a verifiable performance figure, a relevant reference.

Price belongs in the story where the rules allow it. Commercial proposals address the investment openly and frame it against the value delivered. The value-for-money argument can also be made without numbers where applicable.

Strong summaries also look past the award decision. A short passage on next steps – transition, reference contact, an offer to present – signals a bidder already thinking about delivery, reducing the perceived risk of change.

What is deliberately left out

Disciplined summaries are defined as much by what they exclude. No long-winded corporate history. No greeting or thanks for the opportunity, and none of the polite filler which consumes an evaluator’s attention and returns nothing.

The structure is the easy part

The difficulty is the strategic content filling the summary: which of the buyer’s drivers decide the evaluation, which strengths differentiate and make you stand out rather than merely qualify and what all competitors will claim. Without insight, a tidy document will still persuade no one.

The strategic layer, where bids are won and lost, will be the subject of the final article in this series.

An experienced, objective eye across an executive summary belongs before lodgement of your submission, not after the debrief. Therisano provides exactly this service for businesses across Australia.

The 10-minute decision: why your executive summary often decides the bid.

Thu, 13 Aug 2026 08:26:22 GMT

Most tender responses are sorted into contenders and also-rans before the evaluation panel reaches the methodology. The sorting happens in the executive summary, the section most bidders write last.

Who actually reads your response

Executive summaries are not typically read by executives – at least not in the first instance. In Australian government procurement – Commonwealth, state or council – the decision-makers who sign the contract award rely on an evaluation panel to assess each response and bring them a recommendation, supported by an evaluation report.

Panel members are time-poor, accountable for the recommendation they make and aware of the risk attached to getting it wrong. Each member typically assesses particular criteria in depth. The one section nearly every member reads in full, before anything else, is the executive summary.

Decision-makers read the panel’s report and often the executive summary of the top recommendations but rarely full submissions. The executive summary is the bidder’s one chance to shape the report.

The Association of Proposal Management Professionals (APMP), the international body which maintains the profession’s body of knowledge, is unambiguous on the point: the executive summary is the most read and most closely scrutinised section of any proposal. First impressions form there, and they are difficult to shift.

What happens in those first minutes

An experienced evaluator tests three things in the opening pages: whether the bidder understands why the buyer went to market, whether the offer responds to this requirement and represents value or reads as a generic capability statement with the buyer’s name inserted and whether anything on the page reduces the risk of selecting this bidder.

A fourth test sits behind the other three. Panels in Australian public procurement must document why a submission represents value for money. A strong executive summary hands them a defensible line of reasoning they can carry straight into the evaluation report, reducing the effort and risk of recommending you. A weak one sends them hunting through 80 pages for the argument, and most will not go looking.

First impressions compound. Opening pages built around the buyer’s requirement and understanding of the real pain points set an expectation of quality, and the rest of the response is read in that frame. Opening pages built on your company history and adjectives lower the expectation, and the scoring which follows is rarely generous.

The one free space in the response

Australian tenders increasingly confine bidders to fixed response schedules, page or character limits and portal question fields with restrictive formatting. Prescribed answers leave little room to differentiate, leaving the executive summary or cover letter as the one place a bidder controls the argument end to end.

An executive summary belongs in any substantial response, requested or not, unless the buyer’s instructions forbid it. Where a portal allows no summary at all, the cover letter or the opening of the leading schedule carries the same opportunity in compressed form.

Grant applications run on the same mechanics. The project summary at the front of an application is the assessor’s first impression, and the same rules decide it – often in an even more compressed character limit.

Where self-written bids come undone

Businesses writing their own responses put the effort where the word count is: the methodology, the technical response, the schedules. The executive summary is written last, often the night before lodgement, as a polite recap of everything already said. It opens with the bidder’s credentials rather than the buyer’s problems and challenges, and it summarises the document instead of making the persuasive case for selection.

The gap is not writing ability. Capable people write these summaries. The gap is strategic: knowing what an evaluation panel needs to see, in what order, framed against which of the buyer’s priorities and what to leave out. That knowledge comes from experience and feedback across many evaluations and from a disciplined method and specialised skill most businesses have never needed to build in-house.

A panel finishing the executive summary has usually placed the bid as contender or also-ran. Everything after that point either confirms the impression or fights it, and fighting uphill through a scored evaluation is a poor position when the summary was the one section fully within the bidder’s control.

Making the opening pages count

No section of a submission repays effort like the executive summary – in a government tender, a commercial proposal, a panel application or a grant. It deserves to be planned first, not written last, and built around the buyer’s drivers rather than the bidder’s story.

The next article in this series looks inside strong executive summaries: what they contain, how they are structured and why so many well-written summaries still fail to persuade.

Therisano provides an experienced, objective view of whether an executive summary is doing its job, for businesses across Australia with a bid on the horizon.

When every response reads well, writing well stops being what wins the tender.

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 05:18:00 GMT

Anyone can write a tender response now. That is not the same as knowing the right path to winning one.

AI has made it possible for almost any business to produce a clean, compliant, readable tender response. That is a good thing.

Work which used to take a week of evenings now takes an afternoon. A small business with no bid team can read an RFT, draft an answer against every criterion, and submit something coherent before the deadline. More businesses competing is good for the market and good for buyers. It has also changed what wins.

What AI changed, and what it did not

Evaluators do not score fluency. They score responsiveness, understanding of the requirement, risk, capability and value for money, against a matrix which was written before your response arrived.

When every response in the pile reads well, writing quality stops separating them. The decision moves back onto strategy.

What we see in the market now is a lot of responses which are compliant, tidy and interchangeable. The same reading of the requirement, taken straight from the RFT. The same methodology. The same claims about quality, safety, local employment and continuous improvement. Nothing for an evaluator to hold onto when they compare five responses which all say yes.

Let's talk about tender response strategy

The first action on Therisano's tender response strategy hit list is understanding the customer's issues and needs.

Where a response demonstrates a well-developed understanding of the customer's pain points, going deeper than what is set out in the RFT documents, and then presents a solution which directly addresses those issues, that response is already ahead of the field.

The RFT tells you what the customer is asking for. It rarely tells you why they are asking for it now. What failed under the last contract. Which stakeholder complaint reached the executive. Which regulatory change lands mid-contract. Which internal capability the buyer no longer has. Those are the things the response has to speak to.

We start with analysis of the tender documents and research.

First, research the customer's broader operating environment

Public reports, annual reports and media releases carry sector-specific challenges in plain sight. Government initiatives and strategies show the direction the buyer is being pushed. Regulatory and compliance news shows what is about to become someone's problem. Common pain points across comparable organisations tell you what is likely true here, even where nobody has written it down.

Second, supplement those insights using AI tools

This is where AI earns its place. Analysis at a volume and speed no human bid team can match, across:

Sentiment – across the broader industry and the general public. Is there a general feeling for industry-specific pain points?
Keywords – which specific terms recur across the tender documents and the customer's own media releases?
Competitors – what are competitors doing in this space to address these issues, and which innovations are being developed?
Trends – what is moving in the local industry?

Third, develop hypotheses and win themes

From the research, propose plausible pain points and test each one against the tender documents. Some hold. Some collapse. The ones which hold become the basis of the response strategy and the win themes which run through every answer.

Build your strategy on the customer's problem, not on your capability.

Where AI stops and people start

We use AI. We are direct about that, because the alternative is pretending research and analysis happen by magic. What AI does not do is write the response.

A win theme is a judgement call. Which pain point to lead on, which risk to name, what to leave out, how hard to push on a competitor's weakness without breaching probity. Those decisions carry consequences, and they need someone accountable for them.

Evidence has to be true and defensible . Contract values, referees, outcomes, staff numbers, certifications. Every claim in a response has to trace back to something real, because an evaluator can ask, and a contract manager will hold you to it later. Generated text fills gaps with plausible material. We flag gaps instead.

Evaluators recognise generated writing. They are reading multiple responses in a compressed week. Generic structure, hedged claims, benefit statements attached to nothing and a paragraph which restates the previous paragraph all read the same way, and none of them score highly.

Tone carries the argument . Naming a shortfall and the control which manages it builds more confidence than unbroken upside. Writing about a client's capability in a way they cannot comfortably write about themselves takes a person who understands both the client and the reader.

Analysis is accelerated. The thinking, the strategy and the written response are human.

What this means for your next bid

If you are already using AI to get responses out the door, keep going. Use it for the compliance work, the first pass on a schedule you have completed twenty times before.

What it will not do is tell you why this buyer should choose you over the incumbent or other competitors. That is the work we do first, before a word of the response is drafted. Research, hypothesis, win strategy, and then a written response which answers the question the buyer is actually asking.

If you have a tender in front of you and you are not confident your response says anything the other bidders will not, talk to us at Therisano.

Business Women Australia Shout-out

Wed, 29 Jul 2026 00:59:02 GMT

Business Women Australia recognises Nicole Dunbar, founder of Therisano

Nicole Dunbar is a highly skilled professional consultant with deep expertise in bid management, strategy development, and tender writing. With a strong track record of leading multi-million dollar projects and bid teams, Nicole has built a reputation for delivering high-quality, strategic outcomes across government and industry sectors.

What sets Nicole apart is her innovative approach to integrating Conversational and Generative AI into bid and tender processes. Drawing on her collaboration with specialised AI consultants, she has developed practical, forward-thinking methods that augment human expertise, streamline workflows, and significantly enhance the quality and impact of client outcomes.

Through Therisano, Nicole supports organisations with:

Bid strategy and end-to-end management
Proposal management and tender writing
Grant writing and pre-submission reviews
Stakeholder engagement and positioning
AI-enabled process improvement and innovation

Nicole’s portfolio spans a diverse range of sectors, including employment and human services, global technology, social enterprise, resource recovery, and education and training. She has successfully led tender projects across Federal, State, and Local Government, as well as the Public Safety sector, supporting organisations to both enter new markets and expand their existing footprint.

Her work includes major programs such as Workforce Australia, Inclusive Employment Australia, Remote Australia Employment Service, Next Generation CAD, End User Managed Services, and high value grants across cyber security, education, training, manufacturing and community services.

A certified CF AI-M, SRM-M, and APMP professional, Nicole combines technical expertise with strategic insight, ensuring her clients are not only competitive but positioned for long-term success.

Beyond her professional achievements, Nicole is also passionate about competing in the equestrian sport of “Cutting,” regularly travelling across Australia to participate in national events, a reflection of her discipline, focus, and drive both in and outside of work.

We are proud to spotlight Nicole Dunbar, a forward-thinking consultant who is redefining how strategy, technology, and human expertise come together to deliver exceptional results.

What is the value of reviewing your tenders?

Mon, 13 Jul 2026 00:32:34 GMT

It is one of the BEST ways to ensure you stand out!

Not sure if having your tender or grant application reviewed before submission is necessary or worth the time and financial investment?

It is one of the BEST ways to ensure you stand out!

I've reviewed a number of pre-submission responses recently and have identified several potential issues:

Non-compliance owing to missing or incomplete information
Incomplete responses where the written content did not answer all of the requirements
Oversized response where the word/character limit had not been adhered to
Poor quality writing with obvious ChatGPT, typos and grammatical errors
Lack of clarity and cohesion in response narrative

Having your response reviewed by an experienced bid and tendering professional can be a worthwhile investment to stand out from the crowd.

Pirate vs Navy

Mon, 13 Jul 2026 00:20:22 GMT

"It's more fun to be a pirate than to join the Navy." – Steve Jobs

This quote has come up in a few conversations recently, both with clients and at home. Pirates are bold, daring and undeniably cool. They challenge the status quo and keep us thinking outside the box. Let's be honest — most of us like the idea of being pirates and swashbuckling around.

But here's the catch: even the best pirates need a bit of Navy to stay on course. Structure, strategy and discipline are what turn wild ideas into lasting success. Without it, the ship runs aground or everyone nicks off in different directions with pieces of treasure.

This balance plays out in my own life. I'm Navy — methodical, strategic and focused on long-term goals. I like lists. My husband? A full-on Pirate — creative, agile, risk-taking and always ready to jump into the unknown. Not a fan of lists.

The magic lies in the mix, same as for great teams. Most need both: pirates to challenge and innovate, and navies to ground and execute. And sometimes, we need to borrow from the other's playbook — whether it's the Navy embracing creative risks or pirates learning the value of strategy and coordination.

Pirates may TRY and steal the spotlight, but without a bit of Navy, the ship doesn't sail. So, which one are you? Pirate, Navy — or maybe a hybrid with a foot in both worlds?

Owning the use of AI in our bids and tender work

Mon, 13 Jul 2026 00:18:08 GMT

I was asked by a new client if I use AI in my bids and tenders work. My answer – you bet I do!

With so many tools and AI agents available today, even for small businesses like me, you'd be mad not to be getting your fingers into AI. It doesn't mean I am compromising on quality or originality.

I use AI tools to do research, organise information, compile compliance matrices, draw out requirements, brainstorm initial drafts and perform repetitive tasks.

For example, I used an AI tool to create a graphic with ONE BUTTON CLICK. While corny, it illustrates my point. If I need to, I have full flexibility to edit and adapt something like this to suit my narrative and can then have a designer elevate it to the next level.

The result of using AI tools the right way? Sharper strategic content and proposals that stand out. AI is a tool, not the driver — human expertise ensures the magic happens.