Welcome to the Bidding Paradox.
We’re part of a profession built on clarity, persuasion, and order but often run on chaos, last-minute miracles, and contradictory instructions. Judging by the memes doing the rounds (and the comments from my recent APMP Foundation V4 class), we’re not imagining it.
Let’s play a game. Tick off every one you’ve faced in the last month:
Pricing arrives at the final hour
Everyone expects a win, but no one shares customer or competitor intel
A sales exec says, “It’s just a copy-paste job, right?”
A colleague had three weeks to write content… but starts 30 minutes before deadline using a dodgy AI draft
If any of the above sounds familiar, congratulations! You’re officially a bidding survivor.
Here’s the paradox. We’re asked to deliver high-quality, strategic proposals with too little time, too few insights, and barely enough resources. We ask for early input. We get silence. We build schedules. They implode. We chase scope. It changes.
And yet, we show up. We plan, write, review, chase, rewrite, format, reformat, and submit. We do it while juggling multiple deals, short notice bids, and the occasional existential crisis.
It’s exhausting. And still we care.
We care because we know what’s at stake. We’re not just ticking boxes. We’re helping win work that creates jobs and sustains livelihoods. We fight for strategy. We advocate for the buyer. We ask the hard questions no one else wants to face.
And when it all aligns, when leadership backs us, when content sings, when the deadline is met and the win email lands – it’s magic. That’s the high we chase. That’s why we stay.
If nothing else, you’ll know you’re not alone. Take comfort that you do add value.
But we can’t fix what we don’t call out. So let’s talk about it. The late inputs. The broken processes. The volume-over-value mindset. The reactive scrambling. Let’s name the paradoxes and push for better.
Proposals are not an afterthought; they are a critical part of business development and a powerful lever for growth. It’s time businesses start seeing bid offices as strategic powerhouses. The companies that win more already do.
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