One of the biggest mistakes when starting to bid is trying to cover everything. There are thousands of tenders published every week, and most do not fit your company whether by size, location, or type of service. Searching without criteria only leads to wasted time and frustration.
The first step is to be clear about your actual profile: what you do, how much you can handle, and what type of contracts you are interested in taking on. Not all tenders are good opportunities, even if they look attractive on paper.
The problem is that tenders are scattered across many different platforms, and checking them one by one is unfeasible. Furthermore, if you don’t check every day, many opportunities pass you by. This is why companies that take tendering seriously do not rely on manual searches.
A best practice is to use a paid tender alert service; they will profile alerts for new tenders that match your profile, following the rules you have provided.
Generally, these rules consist of two elements: CPVs, which are codes that classify tenders (you must inform the provider of the codes you are interested in), and keywords that must appear in the tenders that have already been filtered by CPV (Common Procurement Vocabulary).
