You can have the best solution and the strongest team, but still lose a tender if your response feels generic, supplier-centric, or disconnected from what the customer actually cares about. This usually happens because teams start writing before they agree on how they are going to win.
Defining clear Win Strategies and Win Themes upfront ensures your tender tells a focused, persuasive story that evaluators can easily understand, remember, and score highly.
A Win Strategy is the deliberate plan for how you will win a specific opportunity. It is set before writing begins and guides every decision made during the tender process.
To work out your win Strategy, you need to identify the following.
A well-defined Win Strategy:
A Win Strategy is not:
Think of the Win Strategy as the blueprint for the tender. Without it, even well-written responses tend to feel unfocused and are much harder to win.
Win Strategy:
Win by demonstrating our strong technical capability, experienced team, and proven delivery methodology. Respond thoroughly to all RFT questions and highlight our certifications, tools, and past projects to show we are a safe choice.
❌ Figure: Bad example - Bad Win Strategy (generic & supplier-centric)
Why it’s bad
Win Strategy:
Win by positioning SSW as the lowest-risk path to fast, measurable outcomes by leveraging our prior experience with the client’s .NET ecosystem and governance model.
Focus the response on reducing transition risk, accelerating value in the first 90 days, and giving executives confidence through evidence of similar deliveries in comparable environments.
Reinforce this through 2–3 Win Themes tied to the client’s stated priorities of speed, reliability, and internal capability uplift.
✅ Figure: Good example - Good Win Strategy (focused & client-specific)
Why it’s good
Win Themes are the small number of client-specific messages (typically 1–3, no more than 5) that explain why the customer should choose your company over every other option.
They are not slogans or generic value statements. A Win Theme must be tangible, customer-relevant, and supported by evidence.
Win Themes are the evaluator’s reasons to believe that your company is the best choice.
Effective Win Themes:
Strong Win Themes are:
Win Themes are not:
Tender responses should always be about what matters to the customer, not just what we think is impressive about ourselves.
“SSW stands above other vendors because of our hiring process and the quality of our people.”
❌ Figure: Bad example - Supplier-centric, impossible to verify, and something every competitor can claim.
“SSW’s experienced delivery team ensures high quality outcomes and reduces delivery risk for the customer.”
🙂 Figure: OK example - More customer-focused, but still generic and unsupported by evidence.
“Because SSW has already delivered and supported custom solutions within your .NET-based platform, we understand your architecture, integration points, and delivery standards. This reduces onboarding time, lowers delivery risk, and enables measurable progress within the first Sprint, rather than the typical discovery-heavy start required by new vendors.”
✅ Figure: Good example - Client-specific, clearly differentiated, outcome-focused, and supported by implied evidence.
Tender responses are often split into sections, with different evaluators scoring different parts independently. Every major section should reinforce at least one Win Theme.
This ensures that:
Win Strategies and Win Themes are critical to winning tenders. The Win Strategy sets the direction, while Win Themes provide the memorable, customer-focused reasons to choose you. When done well, they make your tender more persuasive, consistent, and far more likely to win.