Guide
How to bid on government contracts, step by step
Bidding on public contracts is a process, not a talent. Once you have done it twice, the steps repeat. This guide walks through the full sequence — from registration to submission — and where most first-time bidders lose time.
Step 1 — Register your business
For US federal work you need an active registration in SAM.gov (System for Award Management), which issues your Unique Entity ID. Registration is free and typically takes a few business days to validate. For EU tenders, registration happens per contracting authority or through the e-submission platform named in the notice.
Step 2 — Find notices that actually fit
Federal grants are published on Grants.gov, contracts on SAM.gov, and above-threshold EU tenders on TED. Filter by your NAICS/CPV codes, geography and value range before reading anything. A notice that is outside your delivery capacity is not an opportunity, no matter how attractive the budget looks.
Step 3 — Read the solicitation properly
Read the evaluation criteria first, then the scope, then the submission instructions. Evaluation criteria tell you what the buyer will actually score. If you cannot see how you would score well on the top two criteria, stop there — that decision alone saves days.
Step 4 — Make an honest bid/no-bid decision
Estimate your realistic win probability and the cost of preparing the bid. Multiply contract value by win probability and subtract bid cost. If the result is negative or marginal, pass and spend the time on a better-fitting notice. Disciplined no-bids are what raise a small team's win rate.
Step 5 — Build the response
Answer in the order the buyer asked. Mirror their vocabulary, address every requirement explicitly, and include the mandatory documents — certificates, financial statements, references — as separate, clearly named files. Most disqualifications are administrative, not technical.
Step 6 — Price to win, not to survive
Public buyers evaluate value, not only the lowest number. Show a clear cost breakdown and justify anything above the cheapest plausible offer with concrete delivery advantages.
Step 7 — Submit early and debrief afterwards
Submit at least a day before the deadline; portals get slow and uploads fail. Whether you win or lose, request the debrief. Recorded scoring feedback is the cheapest market research you will ever get.
Where a tender radar fits
Steps 2 to 4 are where teams burn their week. Bidly automates them: it monitors official sources daily, gives every notice an explainable fit score, an estimated win probability and an expected value net of bid cost, and produces an AI bid brief with strengths, risks and required documents. You still write the proposal — you just stop wasting effort on bids you were never going to win.
Always verify deadlines and eligibility on the original notice at Grants.gov, SAM.gov or TED before submitting.