Practical guide to successful tendering in 2025

The Key Steps to Effectively Responding to a Call for Tenders

Step 1: Identify the Right Calls

The first step to successfully submitting a call for tenders is knowing how to identify opportunities that truly match your business. Too often, companies waste valuable time responding to poorly targeted requests, with little chance of success. In recent years, the number of publication platforms has multiplied, and effective business intelligence has become a real competitive advantage.

For public procurement, several tools allow you to consult current calls for tenders. In France, the Marchés publics.gouv.fr website remains the reference, while in Belgium, the e-Procurement platform brings together most of the requests for tenders. Other aggregators such as BOAMP, France Marchés, MarchésOnline, or regional platforms can also be useful. At the European level, the TED (Tenders Electronic Daily) database centralizes large-scale calls for tenders.

For private markets, prospecting involves other channels: professional networks, sector-specific calls for projects, specialized platforms, or even direct relationships with clients.

The ideal is to set up personalized monitoring, with automatic alerts based on keywords, geographic areas, and areas of expertise. This strategy allows you to remain responsive and focus your efforts on projects where you have a real competitive advantage.

Step 2: Analyze the Selection Criteria

Once a call for tenders has been identified, the next step is to analyze the selection criteria in detail. This phase allows you to assess the real chances of success, adjust the response, and highlight the best arguments. In 2025, both public and private buyers are paying increasing attention to the overall quality of the offer, well beyond price alone.

The selection criteria are always specified in the consultation rules or the notice of call for competition. They generally fall into two main categories:

• Eligibility criteria, which concern administrative documents and the company’s legal, technical, and financial capacity.
• Award criteria, which are used to select eligible bids based on a weighted scoring grid.

These frequently include:

• The technical merit of the bid (quality of the method, human and material resources, deadlines);
• The price or overall cost;
• CSR commitments and environmental initiatives, which are now major criteria in many calls for tenders.

Thus, presenting a clear and up-to-date carbon footprint can strengthen your position in markets that include an environmental dimension. Some calls for tenders allocate up to 20% of the final score to criteria related to the ecological transition. Understanding this weighting allows you to develop a targeted and effective response. 

Step 3: Prepare your response package

Preparing a response package for a call for tenders is a strategic step that requires rigor, organization, and anticipation. In 2025, client expectations are high: they are looking for reliable, responsive, and committed service providers. Your package must therefore reflect both your professionalism and your ability to precisely meet the expressed need.

A complete package generally consists of several mandatory elements, including:

• Administrative forms (DC1, DC2, DUME, or equivalents depending on the country);
• Legal certificates (URSSAF, taxes, insurance, social security certificates, etc.);
• Recent and relevant references, illustrating your expertise in similar projects;
• And above all, the technical brief, the heart of the package, in which you detail your method, resources, deadlines, quality commitments, etc.

Furthermore, the presentation of your package is taken into account. Thus, a well-structured, clear, and error-free package inspires greater confidence. Also consider adapting your response to the rating criteria identified in advance and highlighting your differentiating elements.

Successfully Writing Your Technical Brief

The technical brief is the central element of your response to a call for tenders. It demonstrates your understanding of the need, the quality of your methodology, your human and material resources, and your concrete commitments. In 2025, clients expect a brief that is clear, personalized, and focused on the added value you provide.

To successfully complete your technical brief, start by analyzing in detail the expectations mentioned in the specifications or the tendering rules. Each criterion must be addressed specifically. A good brief outline generally includes:

• A presentation of the company and its similar references;
• The proposed methodology to deliver the service;
• The technical and human resources mobilized;
• The execution schedule, deadlines, and deliverables;
• Quality, safety, and environmental commitments;
• Useful appendices: certifications, environmental assessments, CVs, technical data sheets, etc.

When writing your technical brief, be sure to adopt a professional and fluent tone and avoid vague or overly generic language. Personalize each brief based on the client’s context and priorities to maximize your chances.

Carbon footprint: a decisive asset when responding to a call for tenders

Why include a carbon footprint in your call for tenders response?

In 2025, environmental criteria will play an increasingly important role in calls for tenders, whether public or private. Including a carbon footprint in your response is no longer a simple marketing tool, but a real competitive advantage. Faced with increasingly stringent requirements for social responsibility, buyers expect service providers to make a concrete commitment to the ecological transition.

Thus, presenting a carbon footprint demonstrates that your company understands and controls its environmental impact, and that it is capable of rigorously quantifying it. It is a guarantee of reliability and transparency. Carrying out a carbon assessment can help you meet a specific sustainability commitment criterion, or even earn decisive points in the final evaluation.

In some public procurement markets, particularly in France and Belgium, specifications now require you to provide justification for your actions to reduce emissions. Having already carried out a carbon assessment not only allows you to respond quickly to this request, but also to differentiate yourself from the competition.

Finally, including a carbon assessment in your technical brief reinforces your image as a responsible company, in line with current challenges. This inspires confidence and can make a difference compared to a technically equivalent competitor without a formal environmental commitment.

How to carry out a carbon assessment as part of a call for tenders?

Carrying out a carbon assessment can seem complex at first, especially given the sometimes tight deadlines involved in responding to a call for tenders. However, accessible tools and simplified methodologies allow companies, even small ones, to produce a clear and structured carbon assessment quickly.

The first step is to define the scope of the assessment. For a call for tenders, it is often relevant to focus on the direct and indirect emissions linked to the requested service: travel, energy consumption, material use, logistics, etc. It is also possible to integrate broader data (the company’s overall performance) to enhance an already implemented environmental strategy.

Next, you must collect the necessary data (invoices, distances traveled, volumes consumed), then process it using a suitable tool. Specific software such as D-Carbonize simplifies this step by automating part of the calculation, providing up-to-date emission factors, and generating a summary report that can be easily integrated into a technical brief.

Finally, it is essential to showcase the results by explaining your approach, your emission reduction choices, and your future commitments. This transparency reassures buyers and positions you as a proactive partner, capable of combining performance and environmental responsibility. Thus, a carbon footprint is a major strategic asset for winning a call for tenders in 2025.