Outsourced Business Development and Bid Team
An outsourced business development function gives you a bid team on a monthly retainer instead of a payroll. The provider finds and qualifies opportunities, decides with you what is worth bidding, writes and submits the responses, and builds an evidence library you own. It is scoped to your pipeline rather than sold as a package, on a minimum six month term, because public sector award decisions lag submissions by months and a shorter arrangement cannot be judged fairly by either side.
Key facts at a glance
- What it is
- A bid and business development function you rent monthly rather than employ, covering pipeline, qualification, writing and submission
- Commitment
- Minimum six months. Public sector award decisions lag submissions by months, so a shorter term cannot be judged fairly by either side
- How it is priced
- Scoped to your pipeline and submission volume, quoted as a fixed monthly fee before anything starts. Not a package, because no two pipelines look alike
- What hiring costs instead
- A £55,000 bid manager runs roughly £65,000 to £75,000 fully loaded once employer National Insurance, pension, holiday and equipment are counted, plus a recruitment fee and three to six months to hire
- What you own at the end
- The bid library, the evidence base, the case studies and the qualification framework. It belongs to you and leaves with you
- When it is the wrong answer
- If you bid more than roughly two or three times a month sustainably, an in house team is cheaper per submission and you should hire
Hire a bid manager, or retain a team?
This is the only comparison that matters, and almost nobody in this sector sets it out honestly, so here it is.
A bid manager in the UK commands roughly £45,000 to £65,000 depending on sector and location, with bid directors well above that. Take £55,000 as a midpoint. Add employer National Insurance, workplace pension, holiday, equipment and software, and the fully loaded cost lands somewhere around £65,000 to £75,000 a year. Add a recruitment fee, typically 15 to 25 percent of first year salary, and a realistic three to six months to find and onboard someone good.
That buys you one person. One person with one sector background, one writing style, one set of framework experience, who takes holiday, occasionally leaves, and whose capacity is fixed at whatever one person can write in a month. If your bid volume is lumpy, which it always is, you are paying full cost in the quiet months and running short in the busy ones.
We do not publish a retainer price, and the reason is not coyness. A retainer is scoped to your pipeline: how many submissions a month, in which sectors, at what complexity, and how much of the evidence base already exists. Two companies of identical turnover can need work that differs by a factor of three. Quoting a headline figure would mean either overcharging the simpler engagement or underdelivering on the harder one, and we would rather quote you a fixed monthly fee against a defined scope once we have seen your pipeline.
What a retainer buys that a hire does not: a team rather than a person, sector specialists rather than one background, capacity that flexes with your pipeline, no recruitment lag, no employment risk, and an evidence library built as a deliverable rather than as a by-product.
The honest test is volume, not price. If you sustainably bid more than roughly two or three times a month, an in house team wins on cost per submission and you should hire. Below that you would be paying a full salary for partial utilisation, and retaining is the better arithmetic. Most companies in the £2m to £50m turnover range sit below that line.
What a retained month actually contains
Opportunity sourcing. Continuous monitoring of Find a Tender, Contracts Finder, the framework operators and the portals relevant to your sector, plus award notices read backwards to find contracts coming up for renewal before they are advertised.
Qualification, which is where most of the value sits. Every opportunity assessed against your capability, capacity, financial standing and the published weightings, with a recommendation to bid or decline and the reasoning written down. A pipeline of things you should not have bid for is worse than no pipeline.
Writing. The scored quality responses, method statements and social value sections, written to the published criteria using your evidence rather than generic claims.
Submission management. Compliance matrix, evidence gathering, clarification questions, document assembly and the portal submission itself, which is where first time and occasional bidders most often come unstuck.
Library development. Every submission feeds a reusable evidence base: case studies, standard answers, accreditations, CVs, social value commitments. This is the asset that makes month nine cheaper than month one.
Outcome tracking. Wins, losses, scores and buyer feedback logged and fed back into the next round. A provider who does not obtain feedback on unsuccessful bids is not learning on your behalf.
Why the minimum term is six months
Not to lock you in. Because of how public procurement timing works.
A tender published in month one is typically submitted in month two and awarded in month four or five. Frameworks run longer still. If you judge a retainer at three months you are assessing it on submissions that have not been decided yet, which tells you nothing and is unfair to both sides.
Six months is the earliest point at which there are enough completed outcomes to have a real conversation about whether this is working. At that review the numbers to look at are submissions made, win rate, contract value secured and cost per submission, against the baseline from before we started.
If those numbers do not justify continuing, they will say so plainly and you should stop. A retainer that cannot be measured is a subscription, not a service.
When a retainer is the wrong answer
You bid frequently and predictably. More than two or three submissions a month, sustained, and an in house bid function is cheaper per submission. Hire, and use external support for overflow and specialist sections.
You have one specific tender in mind. Take fixed fee bid support for that submission. Do not commit to six months to solve a six week problem.
You are not yet eligible for the work you want. If you lack the turnover, accreditations, insurance levels or reference contracts that your target opportunities require, a pipeline is premature. Readiness work comes first, it is a smaller piece of work, and it is quoted separately.
You cannot supply the evidence. The writing is ours, but the facts have to be yours. A retainer needs a named person on your side who can answer questions about projects, people and processes within a couple of days. Without that the bids get generic, and generic bids lose.
Your margins do not survive it. If the contracts you are chasing carry thin margins at modest values, the arithmetic may not work at any level of success, and we would rather tell you that at the first conversation.
What we ask of you
One named contact with authority. Someone who can answer questions about delivery, people and past projects, and who can make a bid or no bid decision without convening a board meeting.
Access to your evidence. Project records, accreditations, insurance, accounts, CVs, photographs, client contacts for references. Most of this exists somewhere and has never been assembled.
Honesty about capacity. If you could not deliver the contract, we need to know before we write the bid, not after you win it. Public sector performance problems follow you into future procurements.
A decision rhythm. Bid or no bid calls taken promptly. The most common way a retained pipeline underperforms is opportunities lapsing while a decision waits for someone to be back from holiday.
Who this is built for
Companies with delivery capability and no bid infrastructure. You can do the work, you have done it well for private clients, and public sector procurement is a format you have never had to learn. This is the most common profile and the one where a retainer moves fastest.
Companies who bid and keep scoring just below the threshold. The delivery story is fine and the submissions are not landing. Usually this is evidencing rather than capability, and it is fixable.
Companies who have just joined a framework and have no plan for it. Getting on a framework is not winning work; it is the right to compete for call offs. Plenty of suppliers sit on frameworks for four years and win nothing from them.
Principal contractors with more tenders than bid capacity. Here the retainer is overflow rather than the whole function: specialist writing on technical or social value sections, and independent evaluator style review before submission.
Companies with an owner doing the bidding at weekends. If the person writing your tenders is also the person running the business, the real cost of that arrangement is not the bid, it is everything else they are not doing.
Frequently asked questions
What is an outsourced business development function?
A bid and business development capability you retain monthly rather than employ. The provider sources and qualifies opportunities, agrees with you what is worth bidding, writes and submits the responses, and builds a reusable evidence library that you own. It replaces or supplements an in house bid team.
Is it cheaper than hiring a bid manager?
It depends on your bid volume, which is why the honest answer is a test rather than a number. A £55,000 bid manager costs roughly £65,000 to £75,000 fully loaded once employer National Insurance, pension, holiday and equipment are counted, plus a recruitment fee and three to six months to hire, and buys one person with fixed capacity. Above roughly two or three submissions a month, an in house team wins on cost per submission and you should hire. Below that you are paying a full salary for partial utilisation.
How much does a bid retainer cost?
We do not publish a figure, because a retainer is scoped to your pipeline rather than sold as a package: submission volume, sectors, complexity, and how much of the evidence base already exists. Two companies of the same turnover can need work differing by a factor of three. You get a fixed monthly fee against a defined scope before anything starts, and readiness work to close eligibility gaps is quoted separately because bundling the two dilutes both.
Why is there a minimum six month term?
Because public sector award decisions lag submissions by months. A tender submitted in month two is often not awarded until month four or five, so a three month arrangement would be judged on outcomes that have not happened. Six months is the earliest point at which there are enough results to review honestly.
What happens if we do not win anything?
At the six month review we put submissions made, win rate, contract value secured and cost per submission against your baseline. If the numbers do not justify continuing we will say so. What we will not do is guarantee wins, because no honest provider can control an evaluation panel, and anyone offering a guarantee is either excluding it in the contract or planning to blame you.
Do we keep the work if we stop?
Yes. The bid library, evidence base, case studies and qualification framework are yours and leave with you. That is deliberate: a supplier who keeps your content is selling you the same work again next year.
How is this different from a bid writer?
A bid writer responds to tenders you bring them. A retained business development function finds the opportunities in the first place, tells you which ones to decline, and builds the infrastructure that makes each subsequent bid cheaper. The writing is one part of it, and often not the part that changes the outcome most.
Can you work alongside our existing bid team?
Frequently, and for principal contractors that is usually the arrangement: overflow capacity at peak, specialist writing on technical or social value sections, and independent evaluator style review before submission. The retainer is scoped to what your team does not have capacity or specialism for.
What sectors do you cover?
Construction, civil engineering, rail, highways, utilities and energy, fire safety, facilities management, cleaning, healthcare and NHS, social care, patient transport, pharmacy and medical devices, technology and digital health, security, logistics, education staffing and fit out. If your sector is not listed, ask, because the procurement mechanics transfer further than people expect.
How quickly can a retainer start producing?
Opportunity sourcing and qualification begin in week one. Submissions follow as suitable opportunities appear, which depends on your sector procurement cycle. The compounding effect, where each bid is faster because the library exists, is usually visible from around month three.
Start with what you are winning now
Bring twelve months of submissions and outcomes, the sectors and contract sizes you want, and what has gone wrong before. We will tell you whether a retainer is the right answer or whether you should hire, and we would rather say hire than take a retainer that does not suit you. Call 020 3668 5488.