Why, Thank You, Kind Customer!

Let’s start from the premise that buyers want to buy products and services that will meet their needs and give them their desired return on investment. Let’s add the premise that suppliers are keen to deliver said products and services with the same aim. A perfect match – we all enter the tendering process on the same page. Why, oh why, do buyers then sometimes appear to go out of their way to prevent a perfect match?

Imagine you are reading a tender document and are genuinely foxed by a question. Maybe it’s unclear, ambiguous, contradictory, incomplete or just downright unintelligible. You decide to use the clarification question process to unravel things. Surely it’s to everyone’s benefit to clear things up?

So you ask away. “Please clarify…” And the response is “Suppliers should answer the question as posed.”

Why, thank you, kind customer, for clearing that up for us (not).

I’m sure this has happened to you. It’s certainly happened to me. But what can we learn from this Catch-22 situation?

It’s essential to start bid planning early, before the clarification window closes. And bid planning includes deconstructing every question and checking that the entire team understands each part and the whole. If there’s any doubt, ask.

If you get the obtuse response noted above, you have time (if you are inclined) to ask again in a different way – consider being more specific about the problem with the question, point out the consequences of leaving it as is.

And what if the answer is still the same? Probably best not to go back a third time. Instead, live with the risk of misinterpretation and mitigate that risk by using your best judgment. One tip is to include a definition of any ambiguous terms in your response.

A recent example involved a buyer who used the term “service delivery” twice in a two-part question, but with what we felt were different meanings. The buyer provided an obtuse response, so we included a definition in each part of the answer to explain our interpretation.

There’s no doubt that if you don’t give due care, attention and time to checking your understanding of the questions, you risk re-work. I became stricter about this validation step after several instances of late disagreement about question meanings. Now, no one starts writing until everyone involved agrees. My content plans include deconstructing questions, providing definitions, and offering a clear, plain English description of what each question is asking. The Catch-22 clarification conundrum hasn’t gone away but I’m much savvier about its management and mitigation.