Transcript: Tendering and Applying with Confidence: Two-part workshop series | workshop 2

Music playing for opening of session: Money Money Money by ABBA - Isolated Piano and Keyboards by The Keyboard Chronicles.

Sherryl Reddy: Hi everyone. Thanks so much for joining today's open learning session. It's great to see so many of you interested in the topic of social procurement, tendering and preparing compelling applications. My name is Sherryl Reddy from Social Enterprise Australia.

We host these open learning sessions as part of the Social Enterprise Development Initiative, which is funded by the Federal Department of Social Services. Our aim is to create a space for change makers and supporters across the social enterprise community to share knowledge and experiences to help strengthen connection and collaboration across the social enterprise sector.

Today's session is convened by the Queensland Social Enterprise Council, or QSEC, in collaboration with Gov Ready. It's a real pleasure to be joined by Hannah O'Brien from QSEC and Thomas Pollock from Gov Ready. Thank you both for your time and expertise.

We do have sincere apologies from one of our speakers, Elisabeth Lette, who is unable to join us today. Before I hand over to Hannah and Thomas, I'd like to acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of the unceded lands from which we're all joining today. I'm thankful to be on beautiful Dharawal Country and pay my respects to Elders past, present and emerging. I recognise their continuing connection to the waters, skies and lands that we all have the incredible privilege of living and working on. I also pay respects to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander participants joining us today and recognise that your presence here holds over 65,000 years of systems thinking and relational care for people, place and planet.

So now it's my pleasure to hand over to Hannah and Thomas. 

Hannah O'Brien: Thank you so much for that. And thank you everybody for joining us. My name's Hannah, I am the Operations and Events Officer here for QSEC, and we are the peak body for Social enterprise and purpose-led businesses here in Queensland. We represent, support and advocate for the interests of social enterprise and social entrepreneurs to drive high social, cultural and environmental impact. 

I am joining you from the Yuggera and Turrbal lands here in Brisbane, Queensland, and I'm thrilled to be hosting this webinar with Thomas from Gov Ready.

Now I think it's always better for someone else to do their own bio rather than me awkwardly read off a piece of paper. So Thomas, I will hand it over to you.

Thomas Pollock: Awesome. Thank you so much, Hannah. Thank you so much for having me here today. Thank you to Social Enterprise Australia. Thank you for hosting and convening QSEC and Hannah. It's really cool to be here. I think most businesses were in the first session, which we ran about a month ago. This is part two. 

I am going to cover off a couple of things that I spoke about in the first session. So if you were here this will be a little bit of reinforcement. Preemptive apology as well. You're going to be stuck with me for the next hour and a half. Elisabeth is awesome in this space, she has alot of knowledge. But I'm sure I will be able to fill the brief and my goal, really, if everyone here in this audience can take one or two things away that are going to help with your future tendering for government and big business, to me that's a win. So that will be the goal over the next hour. 

I'll give you a bit of background. I do feel I need to do this, so you guys know I'm not talking from stuff I've learned on the Internet. I've got 20 years of small to medium business experience. People think I actually have been in the government sector. I have never worked for the government. I know lots of awesome people in Government, but no, I've always worked in that SME sector. My background in this particular space, though, I'm going to take you back to the early 2000s. I was General Manager of a professional services firm, and the only sector we weren't doing any business with was government. Frustrated the heck out of me. I got the okay from my CEO to delegate half my role to targeting the government, and then I went about doing that.

Honestly, I spent the next three and a half to four years, crickets, tumbleweeds, please come again, thanks, but no thanks. I had no idea. I had no idea what the government really look for in their supplies when tendering. I had no idea what they look for from small businesses.

So during those three and a half to four years, I spent hundreds of meetings with government buyers, big business buyers, and decision-makers, figuring out what they want smaller businesses to have in place from a readiness perspective. And also how SMEs should engage with government and big business buyers the right way. 

We started winning contracts then. We got our first one. It was only small, it was only about 30 grand. That was almost four years in, but within two years of that, we're growing our government revenue to 30% of our business. And then we stop there because there's a lot of risk as well. Like getting caught up in government contracts, change of government, change of policy, change of buyers. And a lot of businesses have been caught with their pants down, and their cash flow dries up. So 30% was the figure that we worked on, which we talk to our clients about as well.

Fast forward to 2017. I always wanted to be a published author. I love small business, but I had three young boys then, and I didn't really understand the value of the local community and helping you raise kids until I'd actually had kids.

So I was in my early 40s, midlife crisis? Who knows? Decided I wanted to get that book published, and I wanted to write a book that would help local communities. I figured out what I knew, that most people don't, most smaller businesses don't, is how to get ready for government tenders, contracts, etc, and how to win and fulfil those contracts.

Whether you know this or not, I'm going to hazard a guess that we've got an audience of largely small businesses, in government size is less than 20 staff. So if you have less than 20 staff, you might not know this, but 44 cents of every dollar your company makes stays in your local community. And that's really powerful, right? Big business, it's about 1 cent. So the book was designed to help small businesses grow and scale, and that filters directly into your local communities. Got that book published just before the first COVID lockdown.

But it was interesting, just before I finished the book someone said to me, you need to have someone who's going to write the foreword for the book. And I said, What do you mean? And they said, well, someone's got to write the foreword, right? I'd completely forgotten about that. So I reached out to Mark Burrows, a few of you might know of him. He goes Yeah, yeah, yeah, send me over the manuscript and I'll have the team take a look at it. I did that, and I never heard back. Which was sort of soul-destroying at that time. But I'm Irish, half Irish. I'm very stubborn. So I went to a lady by the name of Kate Carnell, and at the time, she was the inaugural small business ombudsman.

I contacted her office, got their media advisor, and she said yeah, send the manuscript through, and we'll have Kate take a look through it. Thankfully I got a call back about a week later, and Ms. Carnell said Love the book, it's really good, it's going to help a lot of small businesses. Happy to write the foreword. Which made me really happy as well. 

About three days later, I got the foreword in my inbox, double clicked on it, opened it up, and this was the first thing we saw. “Thomas Pollock's been there, done that. He's failed over and over, only to fail again.” So, a bit shocking, right? When I initially got that, but then when I thought about it, it made me smile. And I promise you, if you ever read the full foreword, there is a lot more good stuff there.

But what made me smile was she'd actually read the book because it is full of all my mistakes. I spent three and a half years making mistake after mistake after mistake. And now Gov Ready exists to ensure that other small businesses don't. 

So let's get into it. What's the opportunity? This is a slide directly from the first session, but I want to remind you of the opportunity. Total public sector procurement every 12 months sits at $600 billion. I'm talking about all sectors, local, state and federal. That is a large sum of money or a large pool of cash which is allocated every year.

Big business procurement from the SME sector is $302 billion every year, and then we've got the Olympic Games. That is obviously in Queensland, but there are suppliers from all around Australia who are already being engaged to supply for the Olympics. Treasury's forecast $180 billion spend for that, all my guys in government indicate it's going to be north of 250. But who knows? But this is another large opportunity for small businesses. 

COVID has changed the landscape for tendering for small businesses. Every state government now has incentives in place to encourage smaller businesses and medium-sized businesses to bid, to get ready and start bidding and fulfilling government contracts. Procurement targets have been set up by almost every state government. In Queensland, it sits at 30%. So 30% of everything they buy has to come from the small business sector. Some state governments also have targets in place for social enterprises, which is really cool for you guys. Victoria has led the charge in that space, and other state governments have followed. I expect all of them will follow over the next 12 to 18 months. So there's a really big opportunity here, and I'm really happy that all of you are here today to find out more about it.

Here's a big problem and here's why readiness is so important for businesses getting to tender. Most tenders, when they're released, whether it's public or private sector, not all, but most, you've only got about three to four weeks to respond, and you need to be aware of this. This is what knocks most SMEs, most smaller businesses and most social enterprises out. So when a tender is released, you've got to get together a lot of documents and assets and complete usually pretty large submissions. Now, at the same time as doing that, you're running your own business, alright? There's not enough time to get everything in order. So if you're not already ready, then essentially you're behind. 

The majority of smaller businesses get excited about a tender when it's released, and then when the rubber hits the road, they realise they can't allocate the time and love necessary to get a quality submission or a quality tender response in.

That's why readiness is so important, and it's a big part of why my company, Gov Ready, exists. Heaps of really good social enterprises are missing out on contracts. Four main reasons, and I say social enterprise, but honestly, this is the majority of small businesses in general, alright?

Firstly, they don't know where to find the work, and that's key. Government opportunities are in a lot of different places. You've got to know where to look. Second thing, a lot of businesses aren't visible to buyers and decision makers within government and big business. So you know there's 2.2 million small businesses in Australia. So that visibility is a key issue for businesses when they're trying to get into government work. 

Last-minute scrambling responses, that knocks out so many businesses as well. They just run out of time. And the businesses also don't look procurement-ready, even if you are. There's a lot of really good businesses out there that are ready for government supply, but they don't realise it, or they don't have the things in place or visible on their website and other assets that actually show government and big business that they are ready. We're going to unpack a fair bit of this over the next hour or so.

So what do government buyers look for? Firstly capability. Can you actually do the work? If you can't, don't bid; don't waste your time. Capacity. Do you actually have the staff, the resources, and the track record to deliver reliably? Government are pretty risk-averse. Big business are not so risk-averse but they still certainly are. They want to be partnering with businesses they know have capacity to deliver and fulfil projects. 

The one that most people dread, the compliance side, especially for small businesses. Are you covered and safe? So this compliance landscape is changing a little bit, particularly within government circles, but certainly, compliance, we want to have these in place before we start bidding. 

Credibility as well, is really key. Credibility and trust. I talk about trust and credibility a lot to our clients. We want to be building trust and credibility at every touch point with every government or big business buyer.

Connection. We're not going to talk about this much at all today, but this sits in the engagement space. There's six main areas that government look for in their suppliers, sitting on top of that, you've got readiness, and then you've got engagement. So that connection piece dovetails into that engagement piece.

Last but certainly not least, value for money or overall value. So back in the 90s and the 2000s, government were just looking for, they won't tell you this, but they certainly were looking for the cheapest provider. Now, since probably mid-2000s, that has evolved, as it should have. Government are looking for a lot more in that value category. They're still looking for a fair price, but not the cheapest price. Good news for social enterprises. You guys are already strong on value and purpose, which is where most small businesses fall over. That value and purpose, you guys are businesses for good, doing good things and giving back in meaningful and impactful ways.

Buyers, government buyers, and big business buyers, these are the big-ticket items that they're looking for from their suppliers. You guys are built for impact, right? But you need that proof, processes, paperwork and evidence that you are a good business first. You need to be a good operating business first. And then we want to play on the social enterprise, the values and purpose and the impact that you're bringing to the table. Because if you just bring impact, but you don't actually have a business that has the capability and scale to deliver projects, you're going to be considered risk heavy, for want of a better phrase.

So a little bit of an example about that timing piece, because it dovetails into that readiness piece. So tender opens, you get excited, you see that tender, and you think this tender is built for us. I've had this feeling a few times over the last 20 years. It's like, did they write this just for us? Because it's everything we can do. So you kick off, you get into reading and registering, clarifying different things throughout the tender document. Week two, you're scrambling for docs and assets and templates, case studies, etc, etc, which you need to fit into that submission as well. Then you start getting into the writing and rewriting, and potentially again rewriting your submission. And then week four comes around. There's a lot of panic. There's a lot of freaking out. Are we going to get it in? Are we not? Now, the important thing to note here is: add on top of this that you are also running your own businesses at the same time.

This is why readiness is extremely important, because think about if you can build out a lot of the assets that we already know you're going to be asked for in these submissions. You're not chasing your tail; you're not scrambling anywhere near as much as everyone else who doesn't have these in place. The timing is really crucial. 

What are we looking for? Some assets to have ready. Capability statement. I am going to unpack that one shortly, in a lot more detail. Insurance is another one and this is a massive bugbear for a lot of small businesses. Why do we need $20 mill insurance for this? It is important. This one actually doesn't take that long to get into play, so it's not a big ticket item, but you certainly need to be aware of it. But also be aware a lot of tenders in the pre-COVID world were saying you must have these insurances in place now. And smaller businesses would wonder why should I pay for that insurance? Especially if I haven't actually been picked to deliver the contract. Tenders are coming out now where they're asking please tick this box agreeing if you haven't got the insurances now, that if you are successful, you will get these insurances in place. So you want to be able to at least tick that box. 

WHS documents. Anything to do with WHS, document it. Case studies, testimonials or what we call in our Gov Ready world, evidence. Really important. Case studies as well, when we talk to clients about these, they sort of freak out a bit and go, we don't have time to put a case study together. Think back over the last 12 months. Pick three clients who you delivered a good service or good product to. A little one pager:

• Who was the client? 
• What was the client's problem? 
• What did you do to solve the problem? 
• Maybe a nice little quote from the buyer or the decision maker saying how much of a great job you did and we would happily, use you in future. 

That's a case study and it's also really good evidence.

Social value or impact summary. I'm not going to speak to this because I'm going to assume that everyone in here has all the data around your social value and your impact. 

Quality assurance. You might hear in the government world in particular and big business, they look at ISO 9001. Very expensive to get that QA model in place, but it is highly respected. A lot of the businesses here, you don't need ISO. You know, you may not be bidding for 1, 2, 3, $5 million plus contracts, which is where ISO becomes important. But for the lower level contracts, you won't need ISO, but you will want to have some framework in place just to tell these buyers that if something goes wrong, this is what we do. These are our next steps. A lot of businesses that we work with, when we talk about this piece they've all got QA models in place. A lot of the time though, it's in their head. Oh yeah, when something goes wrong, if something doesn't arrive, we follow these steps. X, Y, Z.

Great, pull that out of your head, document it, and then you can attach that as a QA framework when it's required for future tender submissions. 

References, sort of like testimonials, really, really valuable. Why are these valuable? These are third party endorsements. This is other people saying good things about you and the work you've done for them. Government and big business buyers, they love those third party endorsements, or independent third parties who are saying good things about you. It means so much more than you saying good things about you, because we all say that.

I want to flesh out the capability statement in a little bit more detail. How many businesses do we have here who have a capability statement in place? We're getting some floating thumbs up and some claps. Great. Wow, there's a lot of you with capability statements. This is not a nice to have, this is virtually a must have. If you don't know what a capability statement is, it's essentially a resume for your business. Government buyers in particular, it's an expectation at some stage, early on, they're gonna wanna see your capability statement. And that capability statement, it needs to shine. Sometimes it can be the first impression you make and you think about when people make first impressions. We make a lot of judgment calls in the first 20 to 30 seconds when we meet a new person. Exactly the same thing with your capability statement. 

I have seen some absolutely horrendous capability statements over the years, for any number of different reasons. Some are just basic word docs with walls of text, some of them are 30, 40 pages long, which no one's going to get through, some look like they've done them at the pub on the Friday night. I think you get the idea. It's a true reflection of your business. So it's the first port of call with making a positive impact and starting to gain some trust and credibility with buyers and decision makers.

Keep it simple though, right? Two to four pages maximum. If you don't have the design skills inhouse, there are businesses which exist just to do capability statements, believe it or not. The basic information though:

• What do you do?
• Who you've worked with.
• Your point of difference. What differentiates you from other businesses who are offering similar services or products? 
• And again, testimonials, can again start building trust. 

There's a few other things which would be nice to have in a capability statement, but that should get you started.

Other things that can make you attractive. A clear problem statement. The core problem that your business solves. Now this is not an easy question. To boil down everything your businesses do to one short, succinct sentence is not an easy exercise. Marketing branders will charge you anywhere between 10 and 20k to do this. 

I'll give you an example though. It's a company called Wemo, and the problem they solve is: We give people back their weekends. Anyone want to hazard a guess as to what Wemo does? Monica, you nailed it. Wemo, mowing lawns and a little bit of landscaping. The problem they solve for me is time. They give me time to do other things that I really want to do on the weekends. So we tell our clients all the time, this is not easy. Sit yourself in a room, get a bottle of wine, a couple of beers or whatever your poison might be and a big whiteboard and maybe one or two other people in your business who know the business well and just throw around some ideas. You will land on something. That problem statement. Get it on your capability statement. Get it on the front page of your website. Because when buyers hit your site and they see the problem that you solve and it aligns with a problem they've got, they're going to be much more likely to engage with you.

Any assets you build from a Gov Ready perspective, have them sitting in one place. This is simple, but a lot of businesses don't do it. So they end up scrambling when a tender comes out. Have these assets in one place so that when they come up, you can just rip out your capability statement, your case studies, your evidence, your insurance, whatever it might be.

Evidence is key when you're tendering for government, everything you say, you need to back up with evidence. You can't just say we're the greatest at this and we're the greatest at that and we're fantastic at this and just trust us, please, just trust us. They want to see evidence, right? And evidence can be in many different forms. We've already talked about a few of them. Case studies is one great way to provide evidence. Testimonials, another great way to provide evidence. Awards, great, great way to provide evidence. 

Hands up. Any businesses here who have won any industry awards or sector awards? We got a few, yep. I hope those awards are listed on the front page of your website. When Gov Ready clients come to us, we talk to them about awards and they say we've got this award, we've got that award, we've won this, we've won that. And then we go through the site and ask, Where are they? They answer, We haven't put them on the site. It's not bragging or anything like that. It's showing capability. Independent, third parties have said your business is doing good for XYZ reasons. So shout it from the rooftops. Front page of your site, your about us page, your proposals, your tender submissions. It's a really good asset that you need to be using.

Finding the right opportunities. Where to look for your government tenders. Firstly, look at your local council. Most of them will have their own tendering portal/site or they'll point you in the direction of a third party that they use. Start local with your local councils because most local councils now, since COVID have a buy local policy or a local buy policy. They've all got different terms for it, but essentially what they're saying is we look local first. A lot of councils throughout Australia, any contracts worth $50,000 or less have to go local and if they can't go local, if there's no one offering those services, then they can look outside. Those contracts under 50k can be a really good sweet spot, especially when you're starting to dip your toes into these waters. 

State government. Every state government has their own tendering portal. Buy NSW, QTenders for Queensland, Buying for Victoria, for Victoria. Register with those particular platforms and you'll receive notifications. Tier ones for small businesses, tier one suppliers to government are a really good opportunity as well to embed yourselves into tier one suppliers. A lot of those prime contractors, it helps them if they have social enterprises as part of their supply chains. Those tier ones in the private sector, definite opportunity for everyone in this room. 

Panels and prequalified lists. Don't have time to go into panels, but panels are what government do if they know they're going to purchase a product or service frequently. They'll set up a panel of any number, could be 5, 10, 15, 20 different businesses on that panel. Once you're on the panel usually for three years or more, government buyers can buy from you a lot quicker and a lot simpler. 

And then you've got your procurement platforms, your vendor panels, your tender links, your procurement Australasia, there's lots of these out there.

I would encourage you to not pay for these services. A lot of these businesses will charge you a subscription every month, somewhere between $50 and $150 a month. The majority of tenders are available free of charge. Now if you're in NSW and you want to work with NSW state government, register with buy.nsw. Tick the categories that you want to be alerted about and then you will be automatically emailed/notified about opportunities that state government reaches out to with regards to those categories that you picked. So just be careful. I'm not saying don't pay for a tender notifications and stuff, but think twice about it before you actually hand over your credit card details. 

Well the hidden gold for small businesses in particular is business as usual.

And back in the day when we were targeting government, this was low hanging fruit for us. Every government body, local, state or federal have BAU purchase brackets if you like. And BAU is common, low risk items that they buy on a day to day basis. Maybe some office supplies, catering, I'm giving you some examples there; signage, maintenance, professional development training. They're quick, low risk buys, right?

To give you an example, Queensland government BAU, is 10 grand or less. So who has a product or service which Queensland government could purchase which costs less than $10,000? We got heaps coming through. BAU, low hanging fruit. 30% of all the government business we wrote back in the day came under BAU. It's paid on credit cards. They're short, sharp, low risk, really good for cash flow. And the beautiful thing is the big guys, the bigger businesses who are tendering aren't really going for BAU work.

Business as usual work will never go to tender. It's going to businesses who have basically been visible to the buyers within different government and big businesses. Again, you're probably one of 2.2 million small businesses in Australia. So if they don't know who exists, they're not gonna buy from you. Very rarely, they might do a Google search and if you happen to come up on the first page, maybe. The BAU work is going to the businesses who have basically let themselves be known amongst different government and big business circles.

They don't need to be sold to, they need to know you exist and they need to know the problem you solve, but they don't need to be sold to. Actually, as a 3% rule, it's an unwritten rule, the government in particular, they only need your product or service 3% of the time. The other 97%, they don't. The big mistake that a lot of suppliers or small businesses make is they try and sell, right? They give the hard pitch. This is who we are. This is why you need to be buying from us. We're the greatest at this, this, this and this. That's absolutely pointless. If they sit in that 97% bracket where they don't need you or don't have that problem yet. They need to know you exist, they need to know the problem you solve, but they don't need to be sold to. So if you are doing the hard pitch now, don't, or pull back on it a little bit. 

If you can, not always going to happen, but if you can, really handy to build some relationships before the tender goes out. You're already starting to do this, QSEC and Social Enterprise Australia, they are clued in tightly with different state government and federal government bodies. So you want to definitely make yourself aware to your industry sector bodies. A lot of government, council, state government and the feds, they run info sessions and supplier briefings. Go to those. 

Show up at networking events. Government put on a lot of these. I know there's going to be people here who may start going to a few, and you're going to walk away from one or two shaking your head thinking, Tom, there's two hours of my life I'll never get back, thank you very much. And I'm sorry for that, but there will be other events as well that you'll go to. You might not thank me, but you will walk away from them thinking that was pretty cool, found some opportunities, met some good people, might have some opportunities there. Not always possible to do this, but, starting to build these relationships before departments go out to tender.

This is another thing as well, that not a lot of smaller businesses are aware of, but you need to be. Back in the day, we missed out on millions and millions of dollars worth of contracts because we'd look at a tender and think, you know what, we can only do half of that or we can only do 60% or 30-40%. We would just pass on it because we couldn't do it all. I had a meeting about this back in 2005, 2006, I remember it was a meeting with one of my government guys who was getting really friendly, you know, pretty open with me by that stage. I remember telling him about an opportunity which we wanted to bid for but we couldn't do it all. You know that look that you get sometimes, usually from close friends or family when you've said something stupid? I got that look from him and he proceeded to tell me about collaborative bids. That is where two, three or four smaller businesses come together to present one solution.

So when you're looking through upcoming tenders that come out and you can do half of it, but not the other half. If you've got a bit of a partnership ecosystem in play, if you've got other partners that complement your business but don't compete. That's the key we tell our clients with partnerships, complement you but don't compete. These are potential partners that you can do a collaborative bid for government. They can fill gaps in your capacity and your capability. Really powerful.

Think about it as well, government like collaborative bids because if they award a contract to a collaborative bid, it could be two, three or four local communities that are going to benefit directly off the back of that contract. The thing about collaborative or partnerships they are just as valuable to you, if not more valuable to you in the private sector. Big business do partnerships so well, they know the value. Small businesses, we do this terribly. If you partner up with a couple of other businesses that complement you but don't compete, think about the power of that. You can expose your partners to your client base and they can do the same with you. Referrals and a lot of things can happen on the base of partnerships. More small businesses need to be building out their partnership ecosystem. 

If you only remember one thing, being this; if you wait until the tender drops, you're already behind. I can't tell you how true this is. You can start getting ready now; there's nothing preventing you. The assets that you build out, a lot of them that I've spoken about today with case studies and testimonials and capability statements, etc. You don't need to wait; you shouldn't wait for an opportunity to come up. Start building these out, because these are also going to be valuable to you in the private sector as well. A lot of the things I've spoken about here today, yes, they help you get ready for government tenders and big business tenders, but they actually make your business a better business, a stronger business.

Start small, flirt with some of those smaller opportunities. Don't go all in on a big opportunity because if you muck it up, word travels pretty fast. Bid on what you're capable of delivering to a what we call a remarkable level.

What can you do now? Start building out some of the key assets that we've already spoken about today. Your website. Keep the website simple. Could talk to you a long time about what government and big business look for from client websites. Your policies, and a bunch of other things that we've spoken about today, and if you get that summary document that I said we put together. That'll list a lot of those out as well. Register on one to two procurement platforms. VendorPanel is the one that I would say first and foremost. That'll take you about 20 to 30 minutes to set that up, so it's not a long, onerous use of your time. 

Reach out to your local council or a buyer. Within councils, a lot of the time it's the economic development team or the economic development agencies. They're meant to be looking after small businesses in their jurisdiction. So I'd be poking my head in and saying hi to them. Like anything within organisations and government, there's some really cool councils and there's some not-so-cool councils. Like anything, right. We don't want to sell them, though. They need to know the problem you solve. We don't want to be pitching them because they probably don't need you at that moment in time.

You could either create or refresh your existing capability statement, and if you want, reach out to me. I've given you some ideas of what should go on to a capability statement; there's a bunch of others. Contact me and we can get those through to you. And then set up an alert on one of the tender sites. These are pretty small steps now, but they will help you from a readiness perspective. So when those opportunities come up you're not frantically racing around as much as everyone else. 

This is really important. There's a lot of businesses out there who are already ready for government contracts, they just don't know it. So we developed a few years ago now what we call the Gov Ready pulse check. Those six main areas the government look for in their suppliers, this pulse check is basically 22 questions which wrap around those six areas. Once you spend 10 or 15 minutes, you complete the pulse check, you'll get sent a report and that'll score you and show you the areas where you're strong, the areas where you're weak and everything in between. So check it out. That will give you a really good idea. We get a lot of these when the pulse checks come back at 90 or say 85 or higher, and we have the pleasure of ringing that business and saying, If you've answered these questions honestly, you are ready. Get going, start bidding for these contracts because government need you as a supplier. And then there's the bottom 10% who are scoring between 10 and 30 to 40. Ironically a lot of the ones who are scoring really low are businesses that have been consistently bidding for big business and government contracts for the last couple of years but not won anything. Then it's a case of us stepping in and saying you really need to reevaluate where you're at here. Stop bidding, stop wasting your time on bidding now because you're not ready. Start building out some of this stuff. Start tightening up those areas that you scored really poorly on.

I mentioned my book at the start. For Social enterprise it's free. You can scan the QR code that'll take you to our website.(remove after adding to the resources) Go to the website, punch in your details. What are we going to do? Are we going to be spamming your inbox now that we have your details? Yes, but only once a month.

We do a Gov Ready newsletter once a month where we pinpoint opportunities for businesses, new things that have been released, and things that are going to help you separate yourself from others. We get a lot of good feedback from them, so yes, you will receive that once a month if you want a copy of the book.

Just very quickly before I hand back. What do we do? Why do we exist? Gov Ready. We essentially help businesses. We only work with small businesses. We help them compete and beat big business to government contracts. We work with them from a readiness perspective and an engagement perspective. We build out customised government engagement plans or GEPs, which are basically a step-by-step cookie crumb trail customised for that client. Where they go, what they need to do, what policies, what panels, when they open, when they close, basically condense everything in that one source of truth. Essentially, we give our clients an unfair advantage to getting into and winning contracts. Big thank you to Social Enterprise Australia. Massive thank you to QSEC.

I also had a conversation with the CEO of QSEC this morning and she said I could mention this, although I don't have too much detail yet, for Queensland businesses, QSEC are looking at putting on some sort of a deep dive. They want to engage with Gov Ready to put a program together.  Stay tuned. 

With that, I want to thank everyone for coming. We are going to hand over to Q&A now.

Hannah O'Brien: That's great. Thank you so much, Thomas. We've already had really great feedback. I believe someone called you quotable, so I think that's a great outcome from this.

One thing that did come to mind when you were talking about connecting with councils, which we have seen here at QSEC, it's so crucial, particularly for those BAUs that you were talking about. One thing that I found really helpful, if anyone's on LinkedIn, if you can find the people that you want to connect with on LinkedIn. Even if you're not connected with them as a connection, you can also follow them and often you'll see them post about attending this event or that event and that's a way that you can see them in more of a networking, casual environment and make those first connections. So that can be a really great avenue. Not everyone in the councils are really active on LinkedIn, but some of them are on there all the time. So just a little tip from me. That's a really great place to connect with people directly. 

Thomas Pollock: Yeah, that's awesome Hannah and add to that same for state government and federal government. We've had some clients who have followed some particular decision makers and then they spent the next three months liking stuff they were posting and that was getting their profile brought up in front of these particular buyers. Then these buyers directly reached out to a few of our clients and opportunities were uncovered that way as well. So don't be afraid to like what they're posting as well. 

Hannah O'Brien: Absolutely. As someone who does a lot of the comms here for QSEC. A not very well-known fact about LinkedIn is once you connect with someone or once they've interacted with you, your posts are shown to them more frequently for the next two weeks. So as soon as you connect with someone, that's when you make sure that you're posting relevant content that you want that person to see, there's a higher likelihood that they'll see that. 

But one question that has come through says often tender requests require you to respond within a certain tender document, like a Word document or in their platform. It's hard to make these look good. First of all, I'll just commiserate with you. They're such a pain. They say they want to be consistent and professional. Does that matter what it looks like? And do you have any tips when you're applying through that format? 

Thomas Pollock: Yeah, really good question. You're probably not going to like my answer, but I will explain it. You need to work within the documents that they provide. Don't get fancy. You know the one where most businesses go wrong is the pricing template. You'll get to the pricing template and think oh my God, I can't use that, that doesn't fit my business. Then think we're not going to use that, we'll just use our own pricing template and insert that into the tender docs. 

As soon as you do that, you are officially a non-conforming tender response and they will not pick you; you will be cancelled out. They won't even read any further. The reason being they need to compare apples to apples. So it's got to be fair. There's a lot of governance around this now in probity. They need to be able to compare everyone's submissions across the board, which is why you need to use the same template. Don't bother about prettying it up and whatnot. If you've got some pretty little documents that look good, ie capability statement. Yes. Attach it or reference it or put in the link, but in the actual submission itself, keep the format that the government or big business have given you.

I'll give you an extreme example, right. Quite often they'll say, in 300 words or less tell us about your business. Now if you do 301 words, you are a non-conforming response, non-conforming tender and the assessors will look for reasons not to read any further. That's an extreme example, right? One word, you might think, but again, they need to compare apples to apples. If they give you 301 words or they give you 350 words and everyone else has 300 words and does it within 300 words, well, how fair is that? That's not very.

On that same example, just another point as well. Keep it succinct. You know, if they say, give us 300 words on how good your business is. Don't feel as though you've got to use 300 words. If you can say it and explain it in a hundred words, then explain it in a hundred words. Procurement, assesses, buyers, they will love you for it. If you use bullet points and keep it short and succinct because they might have another 30 or 40 of these to get through by the end of the day. 

Hannah O'Brien: Yeah, that's fantastic. Thank you so much, Thomas. We've got some more questions that have come through. How do you respond to tendering questions aimed at larger organisations that might have a bigger number of policies and procedures? Great question. 

Thomas Pollock: Yeah, it is a great question. Just because of the size of the organisation doesn't necessarily mean that because you're smaller, you don't need to have some of these key policies in place. So my short answer here is, there's six or seven main policies the government look for in particular for their suppliers to have. That's part of the readiness piece. Get those policies, build those policies out over the next couple of weeks or so. There is a little thing called Chat GPT, which can actually help you build those policies out. You want to customise them, you want to tweak them a little bit and make them relevant to your business. But that can be a very cost-effective way to get those policies. There are tools out there that can help you get those policies in place very quickly. So why not spend half an hour, get those policies up and get them noted on your website. Does that answer that question?

Hannah O'Brien: Yeah, I think that's great. I will do the normal caveat of if you do anything at all in AI, do not assume that AI knows things correctly. State and federal governments might have templates for this. I think there is modern slavery templates and some of those policies that they are quite happy for you to take and adapt for your business. So I would say do a Google first, check those government websites before you go elsewhere and then you can just plug in the rest. 

We've got another one here. What type of social impact metrics are valuable for tendering? 

Thomas Pollock: Good question. Any way that you are supporting social and economic problems or issues that are affecting communities and regions throughout Australia. Any positive impact, environmentally, socially. Any ways that your business is giving back to the wider community in meaningful ways. It's all data. It's all evidence. It all shows government buyers that you're not in business just to make a profit. You guys are, yes you are capable businesses doing good things but you exist also to give positive impact. 

Hannah O'Brien: That's great. 

Thomas Pollock: Suggestions for crafting a CSR pitch for corporate partnerships.

Corporates are looking for similar CSR and ESG requirements as to what government are. Pretty much rinse and repeat what I just said, it’s going to be as relevant to big business buyers as well. By doing that, if they embed you in their supply chains, it makes them more attractive to government as well. They'll be highlighting you and saying hey, if we win this contract, one of our suppliers will be doing XYZ, and that supplier happens to be a social enterprise and giving back. So when government look at that, they'll think well if we order from this business then there is going to be some real impact that flows back to the community through the social enterprise suppliers.

Hannah O'Brien: Yeah, absolutely. The government, all departments, they love to shout out when they're working with social enterprises. We had a really big contract that was won by one of our members here in Queensland, and there was press releases, they really like to share that. 

Could you expand a little bit on what government and big businesses look for in your website?

Thomas Pollock: Yeah, we can talk about that for ages. A lot of the stuff we've already spoken about. Firstly your policies, they're definitely going to look for your policies. So many Gov Ready clients, when we do the discovery session with them, which is a lot of questions for them, we ask do you have an environmental management policy? Do you have diversity policy? Do you have privacy policy? Quite often they'll say, yeah we've got half of those or some of them have all of them. The next question we ask is, are they on your website? Most of the time we get, no. 

You don't know when a buyer is going to be on your website. Your businesses need to be seen as aligning with the values or the perceived values of government and government buyers. Policies are one way to go about doing that. So you don't have to list the whole policy out. Somewhere on your drop-downs, little policies drop-down and then they can go to that page to see the list of policies you have in place. Also include a statement, should you want to see a copy, please email us at [enter relevant email]. If anyone does email you, happy days, because they're at the end of their buying process. They're just crossing T's and dotting I's and chances are you've got some business about to come your way. So policies. 

Another page that they go to when they're considering a new supplier, one that they've never used before or rarely used before. They will always go to your About Us page. A lot of businesses still don't have an About Us page, which blows my mind. They want to get a look, especially if it's a small business, they want to get a look and a feel under the bond of the business. Why did you set this business up? Where did you start from? Where are you now? The customers that you serve. Again, a lot of stuff we've talked about, some testimonials, maybe a video testimonial from a client. If we know they're going to go to your About Us page, you can populate that page with a lot of good assets that we know government want. And a lot of those assets are spoken about throughout the last hour. 

Capability statement. A lot of businesses spend all this time and sometimes money to build really nice capability statements. And then we say to them, why isn't it on your website? Why can't a buyer download that? And they say, we don't want our competition to know. Well, your competition already knows about you, right? Because most of the stuff on your capability statement is coming from your website anyway. So if you get a capability statement, make it easily downloadable from your website on that About Us page. 

Your impact. Every one of you must have a dedicated page just for your impacts. Without a doubt, because it is a massive point of difference between you and probably 99.5% of businesses out there.

Case studies, and any video content you can get from third parties. If you can, next client that says to you, you guys did an amazing job, thank you so much. Go, Mr. And Mrs. Decision maker. Could we perhaps sit down? If I ask you two or three questions on my little phone camera, which is good enough for video nowadays, you answer those, and would we be able to use that on our website? Most businesses will be happy to do that. Human beings generally want to help other human beings out most of the time. 

Hannah O'Brien: Yeah, and I found when I'm doing that also that business is really happy to be on someone else's website. That helps their profile and their SEO and things like that. So I think it's a really great thing to add. 

One thing I will add to the website thing, get your basics right. How do people contact you? It's amazing, even in my role when I'm trying to figure out what region a business might be in, there isn't an address, there isn't a contact number or anything like that. So make sure that if someone comes to your website and they're wondering, who are you? How do I get in contact? Make sure that's available. We actually sometimes have government departments contacting us (QSEC) to get contact information and there's a lot of people who are just too busy, they're not going to bother to reach out. So yeah, websites are really important. 

Great question here from Bridget. Can you talk about what we spoke about, which I think was back on the policies and things like that, speak about it from a sole trader social enterprise because it feels like a bit of overkill.

Thomas Pollock: Yeah, it does. I know. And it is. A lot of times it is. Why as a sole trader, why would you need a Domestic family violence policy? The biggest reason you'll need one is because it's going to make you more attractive in government and big businesses eyes. That's the best way for me to answer that.

I agree with you 100%. Many businesses actually don't need these documents. But if you have a strong desire to target government and big business, then, as that policy example, spend a bit of time and get a few of those up on your website.

Hannah O'Brien: The great thing is once you've got them, they're not the sort of documents that you need to refresh too often. Unless there's a major legislation change or something else that's happened. So it's a one-time pain, and then you'll just have it there and you can facilitate it. But you will see in a lot of tenders that it is a requirement. So it's great to be prepared.

We did have another question come through. Is there a list of required policies? 

I think we've kind of answered this but is there a definitive list that people should be organising for their business? 

Thomas Pollock: There's no definitive list as such. The policies that I mentioned earlier though, they're your big ticket ones; Modern Slavery, Domestic Family Violence, Privacy Policy, CSR. Indigenous Support Policy, not a lot of businesses have that, but Government buyers are really looking for businesses that are actively supporting First Nations communities. So that's five, and there's one more which escapes me now, which is the sixth. You see some companies have 10, 15 different policies up and that's way overkill. There's those five or six major ones which will make you more attractive when government come looking and big business come looking. 

Hannah O'Brien: That's great. Now Raylee's got her hand up. I'm gonna unmute you. 

Thomas Pollock: How you going Raylee? 

Raylee Golding: Hey. How are you? I heard my name, but I wasn't sure how I raised my hand. That was accidental. But, I am Head of Governance and Legal with Social Enterprise Australia. So it feels like it was meant to be, when you're talking about policies. It's great to hear you talking about the policies. I've also worked in local government, so I really understand the importance for those entities when tendering to see that an organisation is thinking about their policies and implementing them.

I'd probably mention the code of conduct. It's always the base one for an organisation that is the Northern Star and helps to center the intention in how an organisation and the individuals within it operate.

Thomas Pollock: And I remember the last policy or the sixth one now, Environmental Management Policy. That's a big one that's not going to disappear anytime soon. That's on the radar of every government buyer when they're looking at their suppliers. Thank you for reinforcing that, Raylee. Appreciate it.

Raylee Golding: Thanks for letting me sneak a word in. 

Hannah O'Brien: I had someone who was saying before that they love the stories that you're telling and I think it helps to contextualise a lot of what we're talking about here, and put it into a real-world application. Is there any more stories you've got for us?

Thomas Pollock: I got heaps. I got heaps, but I'll tell you one. When you submit for a tender and you lose, and you will lose, I can almost guarantee. Especially if it's your first time bidding, you'll lose. I love to be corrected here, if I'm wrong and you contact me and say, Tom, well, guess what? We won first time through. I'll be the first one to congratulate you and shout you from the rooftops. But the majority will lose your first. Don't do what I did. 

So back in the day, we had a contract, tender came up. It was perfect for us. You know, this is way before my Gov Ready days, right? So this is back when I was trying to figure out how to get into government. Looked like the tender had been written for us. And so we did the submission. I'd almost spent the profits that we were going to make off the tender before we'd even won it, we were that confident that we were going to win it. Of course, about six weeks later, I get the email saying, dear Thomas, thanks but no thanks, please come again another time or however they worded it. I was so angry. I was a lot younger and a lot less wise.

I don't know if I consider myself wise now. But anyway, on the front page of every tender, there is a contact officer and as soon as I got that letter, big mistake, I picked up the phone, called that person and basically it wasn't my proudest moment, it wasn't my finest moment.

But you know, I was very, I wouldn't say aggressive, but certainly, if I had my time again, I would handle that conversation differently. Anyway, luckily I had a really nice lady on the other end of the phone and she said, thank you for your call. How about you come down and have a chat with us about what happened and why we didn't pick you? I said, what do you mean? She said, you can request a debrief with us. We'll go through and explain to you here's what we like, here's what we didn't like, etc, etc. So I did that. I was really unprepared for it. Two weeks later, went to the meeting and didn't get much intel out of it.

My advice to you is request the debrief. And when you lose, flick me an email. I'll send you a list of questions which are going to be handy. Two weeks before your debrief, email them a list of the questions because the person you're going to meet is probably pretty low level. They may not have even been involved in the buying process. So quite often, if you don't send that list of questions, they'll just say you're a bit too expensive. But if you send them the list of questions two weeks before the meeting, they have to go up the chain to get the real responses that you want. Then when you sit down for the debrief, you'll get a lot more relevant intel. 

To all of our Gov Ready clients, when they win their contracts, we always tell them to request a debrief as well. And quite often, they'll ask, Why, we won? Well, we need to know, we want you to know what they loved about it, because guess what? When we know what they love, that's what we're going to use in a lot of future tenders. 

Hannah O'Brien: That's really smart. We've noticed that some places, when they have a tender, they will offer you a debrief, but we find most of them don't. But when you request it, there's usually a pretty high rate that you'll be able to speak to somebody.

Thomas Pollock: Yeah, they don't want to do a debrief because it takes up their time. Right? 

Hannah O'Brien: They've moved on. 

Thomas Pollock: Ask the question. Just ask politely, respectfully ask the question. Thank you for letting us know we've lost. Would it be possible to arrange a debrief, whether virtually or in person? And then follow the steps that I just mentioned. 

Hannah O'Brien: That's great. So do you have a standard set of questions that maybe we could send out with the recording, or add to that sheet of yours or not really? 

Thomas Pollock: It's more tailored. Depending on the submission and depending on the tender and depending on the client sector. But just so you know, you're not going to find out information like who won, or you could. They may tell you who won it, but they're not going to tell you what pricing or why they went with them. It's all about you. It's not about the others. They're only going to talk to you about you and your submission.

Hannah O'Brien: That's great. I've also just got the thumbs up from Sherryl. We have just confirmed that the Workshop 1 link is now live. So if anyone didn't attend the first session, it was really valuable and you can catch the replay of that.

Another question that's come through, can you share a story of a social enterprise you've helped with a successful government tender recently and key learnings for how social enterprises can work and partner with you at Gov Ready?

Thomas Pollock: Unfortunately I can't. We don't target any businesses, we work on referrals and word of mouth, but we've not actually had any social enterprises come to us saying, we want to get gov ready, what do we have to do? Well, we have. We've only had one, and that was only recently, on the Sunshine coast in Queensland. A company called Aqua Ubique.

We only handed over the works to Shannon about a week ago. So he's starting on the implementation and bringing all that together. I have absolutely no doubt he will be writing a lot of work with government entities over the next three to six months. But unfortunately I can't tell you. Can tell you about almost every other sector and what they're winning. But yeah, love to work with more social enterprise and work on giving you guys the keys to the castle as well. 

Hannah O'Brien: Well, I think you've definitely given us a lot of tips in just this session, that will really help to boost people. Do you have anything else that hasn't come up that you wanted to slide in? I've put you on the spot with that question. I know. 

Thomas Pollock: Yeah. No, no. I think what we've covered over the last hour, 20 or so, are the big things. I get brought in to run two, three, four-day workshops and you know, in an hour and a half I've crammed a lot in here. I know there's a lot of people out there thinking, there's a lot for me to do. I guess my last piece of advice would be you don't have to do everything today, and certainly don't take time away from your core business. Just chip away at some of the things we've talked about today. When you've got half an hour here, half an hour there, which no one has, or give us a call and essentially a lot of clients use Gov Ready because we simplify a lot for them. We’d definitely love to have a chat with you, but start small. Don't think you've got to do everything today or even this week or this month and just start building out the readiness assets over time. 

Hannah O'Brien: Yeah, I think that's great. Thomas, you've been fantastic. I think we've covered a lot in this session and I think between the two workshops, that's almost a masterclass for entry-level knowledge into tendering. So thank you so much. This has been a really fantastic session. If anyone wants to reach out to you, we'll make sure that your contact details are in the email that you'll get that'll have the replay link. But also just a massive thank you to everyone who's taken their time to be with us today. We know it's been a bit of a longer session, but incredibly valuable and we hope that you really see some, continued hopefully success in your tender process. 

And thank you to SEA. I would be remiss if I didn't mention Social Enterprise Australia for hosting this session and inviting QSEC to be a part of it. We've really enjoyed it. 

Sherryl Reddy: Oh, thank you so much. Thanks Hannah and Thomas, for a really eye-opening session. So many of us just don't know this when we see a tender, when we get excited about how much the tender opportunity resonates with what we do and when we do the hard yakka of submitting a tender response. So, the submission process is time consuming, it's a hard juggle while we're doing business as usual, and I think you both really helped lift the veil on procurement behind the scenes. So huge thanks to both of you. 

I'm really impressed, Thomas, that you only spent three and a half years making mistakes. I think my years of making mistakes in tendering would probably run a lot longer than that. There's so much good stuff for social enterprises that you shared in your presentation and Keys to the Castle, to use one of your quotable quotes. Three things that really stick in my mind is it's great to know that the total public sector procurement is $600 billion per year. That opportunity is just huge. Loved your advice on collaborative bids, encouraging smaller businesses to come together, present a complementary partnership ecosystem approach to fill gaps in capacity and capability. And loved your final advice around it's limited time frames when a tender is released, so get ready in advance, start small and gradually build out those readiness assets. 

So just want to thank everyone who took the time to join us today. And huge thanks to the team at the Department of Social Services who are supporting the development of these learning communities. Last but not least, thanks to the Social Enterprise team behind the scenes that make these open learning sessions happen; Caragh, Megan, Bree, Athanasia, Liz, Raylee and Christina. Mountains of gratitude, Hannah and Thomas, really appreciate your time and generosity today.

Thank you, everyone.