Bid Services Subscriptions (BSS) | Bidding Limited

We become part of your team.

With Bid Services Subscription (BSS), we provide you with bid services whenever you need them throughout the year. No limits on the number of bids per month, no day rates that you’re out of control of – just one, simple monthly fee. Without doubt, this is the most cost-effective way of outsourcing your bid writing in the UK. On average, our clients save around 35% vs ad-hoc fees.

Our BSS customers range from multi-national tech providers with busy bidding pipelines, to SMEs with limited bidding expertise – and plenty in between.

Underpinned by AutoGenAI, with our teams building each BSS client their own digital answer bank for unbeatable consistency, Bid Services Subscription seamlessly integrates our brilliant people, our innovative process, our unbeatable content libraries and cutting-edge, market-leading bid writing technology.

Some clients use BSS for their key strategic bids – some use it for every bid that they write. Others mix between the two.

Proof of our success

14

Average number of bids we write for our subscription clients per year. For our biggest client, we write close to 100.

86%

Client win rate

300

Plus bids worked on each year

87

Sectors written for in 9 years

Interested in BSS?

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Bid Services Subscription (BSS)

We’ve worked with hundreds of clients over the past decade or so and, if we’ve learned anything, it’s that waiting for bidding opportunities can be a challenge. There’s often very little for months, and then a number of opportunities arise at once. Similarly, ‘outsourcing’ things like bid writing is rarely budgeted for. With BSS, we can fit into your budgets at a cost that will surprise you.

We’ve got you covered

Our BSS offering allows you to call on our expertise when you need it. That might be resources to help you get your bid written, or it might be a review at the end of your internal writing to make sure that you’re scoring every quality mark that you can. Either way, we can help – always.

You know what support you need the most. At the beginning of the process, we’ll work with you to understand your experience in bidding, how you make bid/no bid decisions and, crucially, we’ll look to define the overall amount of bids that you’re likely to work with us on in any given year. Don’t worry, we’re flexible in our agreements and we’re always open to things changing. We’ll discuss where your requirements are likely to be based, which buyers you tend to work with, where you could improve and more.

We’ll look at your bidding history, the types of bids that you usually write, the size of them and more. We’ll factor in the fact that we’ll get to know you, your value proposition and your team as time goes on. Our pricing is built to reflect the efficiencies that we gain from the from day one.

Once signed up, you’ll have a Bidding Limited Account Manager. Whenever you need us, they’ll be the first person that you call. We’ll work with you to define what services you need us for on a specific opportunity, and what support that’ll leave you with for the rest of the subscription period.

You can always expect the same Bidding Limited quality regardless of the services that you choose in your subscription. Our pride in our output always drives us to deliver the best bids that we possibly can.

Once we’ve completed each piece of work, we’ll be waiting for you to contact us again. We want our clients to use the services that we offer, and we’ll always be on hand when you need us.

Frequently Asked Questions about Subscriptions

Absolutely, you have the option to do so. Many of our clients maintain internal bid teams and use our services as overflow capacity. However, it’s important to consider that internal bid staff come with additional costs beyond their salary—such as pension, National Insurance contributions, benefits, leave, and management time. For instance, a Bid Manager with an annual salary of £50,000 may actually cost your business closer to £60,000 in real terms.

In bidding, timelines can be very tight. We find that most bid writers have a three month notice period in their current employments, meaning a potentially lengthy wait once you’ve found that perfect hire. Add to that the usual onboarding and induction period for new staff members, and we think that BSS offers a very practical alternative to hiring new team members, without losing any of the benefits.

Apart from costs and timelines, internal bid teams in SMEs often focus exclusively on one organisation (yours) and typically handle a specific type of bid. This can lead to bid fatigue, complacency, and, eventually, a loss of broader context and skills. In SMEs, bid teams may also feel isolated due to the nature of their work and limited day-to-day involvement in the business. It’s worthwhile to question if this approach is the most beneficial for your company.

With our Bid Services Subscription (BSS), you pay a single monthly fee and gain access to our continually trained, cross-sector experts. They are consistently honing their skills, staying updated on bidding trends, and monitoring market changes. We ensure you always have the best team for the job, taking full responsibility for delivering exceptional bids, and sparing you from any stress.

Well, you don’t. And – as much as we’d love to – we don’t either. That’s why our agreements are inherently flexible. We build each proposal from the ground up – working with you.

Firstly, if you commit to our services for 12 months, regardless of your average contract award size, we’re certain that you’ll see a significant return on your investment in us. Our average BSS client returns their entire annual payment before their first month has finished.

Secondly, the commitment length is to benefit both parties. Our quality is consistent for all of our clients – but the more we work with you, the better it gets. Across an annual period, we can improve even the best bids, and deliver that back to you in contract wins.

Each agreement is built in tandem with our clients, and the price depends on the bid profiles across the year, among other things. That said, vs our ad-hoc consultancy fees, you can be certain of at least a 30% discount across the year on BSS. Some of our clients bidding on 10+ projects a year see savings closer to 45%.

There’s no need to worry, but obviously there are some considerations here. We never work with 2 clients on a single-award tender, but in a case where multiple suppliers can be appointed to a framework, we review each bid case by case to judge if we could work with multiple suppliers, and would only do so if it was appropriate. Ordinarily, we would work with a maximum of 20% of the overall number of appointed suppliers.

We will always try to match the most compatible bid specialists with you and your bids. That might be those who have the most relevant experience in your industry, or who have worked with your business before. It might even be a team with specialities with certain buyer types. However, regardless of the team, our robust infrastructure, processes and methodologies mean that you’ll get the same experience every time.

“Honestly, having the subscription service saved us thousands of pounds in bid writing every year. We’d used a mix of consultancies and in house resources previously – nothing matched this”

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