To have any shot at winning a government tender, you first need to get your head around the selection criteria. This isn't just about writing answers; it's about systematically deconstructing each requirement, mapping it to real-world proof of your capability, and then building your tender response using a clear, evidence-based framework like STAR.

Forget just listing your skills. The Commonwealth Government spends over $70 billion annually on procurement, and you need to prove you are the lowest-risk, highest-value choice to win your share. This guide will show you how.

Decoding the Selection Criteria Roadmap

Winning government contracts starts with understanding the questions. The selection criteria aren't there to trip you up; they're a roadmap detailing exactly what the government agency needs. Learning to read this map is the single most important step in building a compliant, high-scoring tender response.

Think of the Request for Tender (RFT) as your playbook. Buried inside, you’ll find different types of criteria, and each one plays a very different role in how your tender response gets scored. Getting this right from the start is how you focus your effort where it counts.

Key Selection Criteria Types in Australian Tenders

This table is your quick reference guide to understanding the different categories of criteria you'll find in government RFTs.

Criterion Type

What It Means for Your Tender Response

Example from an RFT

Impact If You Miss It

Mandatory

A non-negotiable, pass/fail hurdle. You either have it, or you're out.

"The supplier must hold a current Builders Licence recognised in NSW."

Instant disqualification. Your tender response will be deemed non-compliant and won't be evaluated.

Weighted

Where the tender is won or lost. These are scored and ranked by importance.

"Demonstrated experience in delivering similar projects (40%)."

Low score. This is the competitive part. A weak response here means a competitor will outscore you.

Desirable

The "nice-to-haves" that can be a tie-breaker.

"It is desirable that the supplier has an office located within the Greater Sydney Region."

Competitive disadvantage. If your score is tied with another supplier, this could be the deciding factor.

Getting these distinctions right is absolutely fundamental to your tender strategy.

The Three Core Types of Criteria

Your first job is to go through the RFT and categorise every single criterion. This simple exercise dictates everything that follows.

Mandatory Requirements: These are the black-and-white, deal-breaker requirements. Think specific licences, a minimum level of public liability insurance, or being on a particular government panel. If you can't tick every single one of these boxes, your tender response is dead on arrival.

Weighted Criteria: This is where the real competition happens. These criteria—things like your demonstrated experience, proposed methodology, and the strength of your team—are scored and weighted. The evaluation panel uses these scores to work out who offers the best overall solution.

Desirable Criteria: Think of these as bonus points. While not essential, meeting them can give you the edge over a competitor who has scored similarly on the weighted criteria. It could be anything from experience with specific software to having a local office.

The bedrock of all government procurement is 'value for money'. This is not just about being the cheapest. It’s a careful balance of cost against the quality you deliver, your fitness for the job, and the overall risk you present. Every part of your tender response must prove you offer the best value across all these dimensions.

The numbers tell a compelling story. Each year, over 80,000 contracts are awarded through AusTender. While Australian SMEs win a good portion of these by number, they often miss out on higher-value contracts. Why the gap? Because larger organisations have mastered the art of responding to complex criteria with robust, compelling evidence.

Understanding modern evaluation methods can also give you an edge. Many large agencies now use AI resume screening tools to sift through key personnel submissions, so optimising for both human and machine readers is becoming increasingly important. By learning what procurement teams look for, you position your business to win more small business government contracts in Australia for SMEs.

Structuring Your Response with the STAR Method

Once you've figured out what the government agency is actually asking for, you need a way to structure your answers persuasively. Let's be blunt: vague claims about your experience just won't cut it. You need to show them concrete evidence, and the STAR method is the absolute gold standard for doing just that in Australian government tendering.

This simple framework is incredibly powerful. It forces you to go beyond generic fluff and prove your capability with real-world examples. It’s how you turn a hollow claim like "we have excellent project management skills" into a compelling story that actually proves it to the evaluation panel.

Breaking Down the STAR Framework

The acronym stands for Situation, Task, Action, and Result. Each piece of the puzzle plays a critical role in building a narrative that evaluators can easily follow, understand, and—most importantly—score highly. Let's pull it apart.

Situation: Briefly set the scene. Where and when did this happen? What was the context? This is just a concise intro to the project or challenge, giving the evaluator enough background to understand what was going on.

Task: What was your specific goal? What problem were you actually trying to solve? This part clearly defines the objective you were given, directly linking your work to a specific business need.

Action: This is the heart of your response. What specific steps did your company take to tackle the task? Use active language here and get into the detail of the process, skills, and resources you used. This is where you shine.

Result: So what happened? This is where you close the loop with cold, hard proof. Use numbers, percentages, and tangible benefits to show the positive impact of your actions. Make it impossible to ignore.

Using this framework brings a logical structure to your storytelling, ensuring every part of your example serves a purpose and proves your value.

A Real-World Australian Tender Example

Let’s apply this to a criterion you see all the time: "Demonstrated experience in managing complex IT infrastructure projects on time and within budget." A weak response would just be a list of past projects. A powerful, STAR-based tender response, however, looks like this:

Situation

A large Victorian government department, our client, was struggling with an outdated and unstable server infrastructure. This was causing frequent system outages that compromised their ability to deliver critical public services and posed a serious data security risk.

Task

Our company was engaged to lead the complete migration of their on-premise infrastructure to a secure, cloud-based environment. The key objectives were clear: execute the migration with zero unplanned downtime, stay within a tight $250,000 budget, and complete the project within the non-negotiable three-month timeframe.

Action

Our project manager commenced with a comprehensive risk assessment and developed a phased migration plan, which was signed off by all key stakeholders. We then deployed a dedicated team of certified cloud engineers who worked in agile sprints, starting with non-critical systems to validate the process. We held weekly progress meetings with the department's IT team for full transparency and used automated tools to validate data integrity at every single stage.

Result

The project was completed one week ahead of schedule and came in $15,000 under budget. Post-migration, system uptime hit 99.99%, and the department reported a 40% reduction in IT support tickets related to system performance. This success directly led to us being awarded a subsequent three-year managed services contract.

This example works because it doesn't just tell the evaluator the company is good at IT projects; it shows them. Every claim is backed by a specific action and a measurable outcome, hitting the core of what the selection criterion is asking for.

Tips for Nailing Your STAR Responses

To make your tender responses even stronger, keep these pointers in mind:

Choose Relevant Examples: Don't just pick your biggest, flashiest project. Select examples that most closely mirror the scope and complexity of the tender you're actually bidding for. Relevance beats scale every time.

Quantify Everything: Numbers are your best friend. Instead of saying you "improved efficiency," say you "reduced processing time by 30%." Concrete data is infinitely more persuasive than vague statements.

Focus on 'We', Not 'I': When you're writing on behalf of your company, use "we" to describe the actions taken. It shows a collaborative, team-based approach, which government agencies value.

Keep it Concise: Yes, you need detail, but you also need to be sharp. Ditch the jargon and get to the point. An evaluator should be able to grasp the core of your example in less than a minute.

Mastering this method will fundamentally change how you write tender responses, turning each selection criterion into a genuine opportunity to showcase your best work. If you're building out a full tender response, you might also find our guide on creating a government request for proposal template useful.

Building Your Evidence and Capability Matrix

A winning tender response isn't just well-written; it's built on a bedrock of undeniable proof. Vague claims like "we are experienced" are worthless to a government evaluator. You have to show them, with tangible evidence for every single capability you claim.

This is where a methodical approach becomes your secret weapon. The best way to manage this is with a capability and evidence matrix. It’s a simple but incredibly powerful tool—usually just a spreadsheet—that maps each selection criterion from the tender directly to the concrete evidence you have to back it up.

Mapping Criteria to Your Proof Points

Before you even think about writing a single sentence of your tender response, your first job is to build out this matrix. It forces you to think like an evaluator from the very beginning and guarantees your final document is evidence-based. This simple planning step stops you from making unsupported claims, which is one of the fastest ways to get a low score from the evaluation panel.

Your evidence can come from all corners of your business. You need to think broadly about what constitutes real proof:

Project Case Studies: Detailed write-ups of past projects, ideally using the STAR method, packed with quantified results.

Client Testimonials and References: Direct quotes or contactable referees who can vouch for your performance on similar work.

Staff CVs and Biographies: The specific qualifications, certifications, and project experience of your key people.

Industry Certifications: Formal proof of your company's quality, safety, or environmental standards (e.g., ISO 9001).

Methodologies and Policies: Your documented processes that prove you have a structured approach to project management, risk, or quality assurance.

Organising this information isn't just for one tender; it's about building a reusable arsenal for every future bid you submit.

From Matrix to Centralised Knowledge Library

Manually hunting for this information every single time a tender drops is a massive time sink and a recipe for stress. This is exactly why high-performing bid teams don't do it. Instead, they use a centralised knowledge library.

Creating a central repository of your best evidence is a game-changer. The average tender response takes 40-80 hours to complete, but this system can cut that time by more than half. More importantly, it ensures every tender response you submit is built on your strongest, most consistent, and most compelling proof.

Here at GovBid, our AI-powered platform lets you store, categorise, and quickly pull all these proof points. Instead of starting from a blank page, your team can grab pre-approved, high-quality content—like case studies, staff bios, and policy documents—and simply tailor it to the new tender. This saves dozens of hours and dramatically improves the quality and consistency of your tender responses.

This system also helps you develop a powerful company profile, which is a core component detailed in our guide to crafting a compelling sample capability statement.

A Practical Example of a Capability Matrix

Here’s a simple look at what this matrix might look like for a hypothetical IT services tender. This structure helps you map the tender's requirements to your company's evidence and assign clear ownership for drafting the response.

Sample Capability and Evidence Matrix

Use this structure to map tender criteria directly to your company's evidence and assign internal responsibility.

Criterion Number

Criterion Summary

Our Evidence and Proof Point

Team Member Responsible

Completion Status

C1

Demonstrated experience in cloud migration for a government agency.

Case Study: VIC Health Cloud Project (2023). Testimonial from John Doe.

Sarah M.

Draft Complete

C2

Evidence of certified project management methodology (e.g., PRINCE2).

CVs of Jane and David (PRINCE2 certified). Company PMO Manual.

Ben P.

In Progress

C3

Must hold ISO 27001 certification for information security management.

Copy of current ISO 27001 certificate (expires Dec 2025).

Compliance Team

Ready to Insert

C4

Capacity to provide ongoing support with a 2-hour response SLA.

Support Team Roster. Existing SLA reports from 3 major clients.

David L.

Awaiting Data

This structured approach transforms tender writing from a chaotic scramble into a systematic, evidence-driven process. It’s a simple change, but it puts you in a far stronger position to win.

A Practical Workflow for Writing and Refining

Okay, you’ve mapped your evidence and locked in a strategy. Now it’s time to turn that plan into a persuasive, compliant document that actually wins contracts. This is where the magic happens—where your claims, evidence, and narrative all come together.

A structured writing and refining workflow is what separates a rushed, disjointed tender response from a polished, professional one.

The goal here is to build a document that’s dead simple for the evaluation panel to read, understand, and, most importantly, score highly. It’s a process of moving from individual draft responses to a single, cohesive submission that’s completely free of disqualifying errors.

From First Draft to Polished Response

Your first draft has one job: get your STAR-method responses and all your evidence down on paper. Don’t get bogged down with perfect prose—focus on substance. Weave in the proof points from your capability matrix, making sure every single claim is backed by solid evidence.

Once that’s done, the real work begins. Refinement is where you elevate your writing from just "good enough" to genuinely compelling. To win over evaluators, you need to apply strong strategies for persuasive writing that make your value impossible to ignore.

This level of diligence is critical when you consider the scale of government procurement. Competition is fierce, and government agencies need suppliers who are meticulous. All too often, we see responses fail because they don’t properly address the complex criteria found in massive defence, health, or infrastructure tenders—creating huge compliance risks.

The Power of AI-Assisted Drafting

Let's be honest, manually writing every tender response from scratch is the biggest time-sink in the entire process. We’re talking 40-80 hours of pure grind. This is exactly where GovBid's AI tender writing becomes a game-changer for SMEs.

Our platform generates high-quality, compliant first drafts using the tender's specific criteria and your own stored capability evidence. The AI knows Australian government procurement standards inside and out, so the tone, language, and structure are already aligned with what evaluators expect. You get to skip the blank page and jump straight into refining, saving dozens of hours and positioning us as a far more affordable option than tender writing consultants, who can charge anywhere from $5,000 to $50,000 per tender.

Here’s how that evidence-building process looks inside the GovBid platform.

This simple workflow—Gather, Link, and Reuse—is the heart of efficient tender writing. It’s how you turn scattered company info into a powerful, reusable library of evidence.

Establishing a Robust Internal Review Cycle

Never, ever submit a tender response that hasn’t been through a tough internal review. A fresh pair of eyes is your best defence against embarrassing errors, glaring compliance gaps, or weak arguments. Make this a non-negotiable part of your workflow.

We recommend a multi-stage review:

Peer Review: A colleague reads it for clarity, grammar, and consistency. They should approach it as if they know nothing about the project.

Compliance Check: One person’s sole job is to check the response against every single mandatory requirement in the RFT. A great way to manage this is with a compliance matrix for government tenders.

"Red Team" Review: Someone plays the role of the government evaluator, scoring your response against the official criteria. This is your final chance to find weaknesses before the real panel does.

Don't treat the review as a simple proofread. It's your last line of defence against non-compliance. A single missed mandatory requirement can get your entire tender response thrown out, no matter how strong the rest of it is.

By combining AI-powered drafting with a structured human review, you build a workflow that is both brutally efficient and highly effective. It frees your team from the tedious grunt work, letting them focus on the high-level strategy that actually wins government tenders.

Common Mistakes That Will Cost You the Contract

I've seen so many capable businesses get knocked out of a tender process because of simple, avoidable errors. Getting shortlisted often comes down to not just what you do right, but what you don't do wrong. Think of this section as your final quality check—a rundown of the classic pitfalls that send good tender responses straight to the rejection pile.

Steering clear of these mistakes will give you a massive advantage over the competition.

Using Generic Copy-Paste Responses

Government evaluators have seen it all. They can spot a recycled, copy-paste tender response from a mile away. When they see generic text that could apply to any tender, it immediately signals a lack of effort and a failure to understand their specific needs.

Before (Weak):

"Our company is a leader in project management, consistently delivering projects on time and budget for a range of clients."

This is pure fluff. It’s vague, offers no proof, and could have been written by anyone.

After (Strong):

"For the NSW Department of Education, we managed a $1.2M system upgrade, delivering the project two weeks ahead of schedule and 5% under budget by implementing an agile methodology. This directly addressed their need for a rapid, risk-averse rollout."

See the difference? The 'After' version is packed with specific, quantified proof and is tailored to a government context. It replaces generic claims with hard evidence.

Failing to Answer the Actual Question

This one sounds so basic, but it trips up suppliers constantly. You get excited about a project you're proud of, write a brilliant STAR response for it, but completely miss the point of the actual question being asked. You have to directly address every single part of the criterion.

An evaluator’s job is to score your response against their marking sheet. If your answer, no matter how well-written, doesn't align with the criterion, they cannot give you the marks. It's as simple as that.

For example, if the criterion asks for "experience managing projects with diverse stakeholder groups," don't just write about your project management skills. You must specifically detail how you managed communication and expectations across different groups like community members, government officials, and technical teams.

Making Unsubstantiated Claims

Every single claim you make needs to be backed up by evidence. Saying "we have a strong safety record" is meaningless on its own. Saying "we have maintained a zero Lost Time Injury (LTI) rate across all projects for the past three years, supported by our AS/NZS 4801 certification" is a powerful, verifiable statement that builds immediate trust.

Weak Claim: "We provide excellent customer support."

Strong Evidence: "We maintain a 98% customer satisfaction score, measured by quarterly surveys, and guarantee a four-hour response time under our standard Service Level Agreement (SLA)."

Without proof, your claims are just words. Concrete data, certifications, and client testimonials turn those words into undeniable facts. For a deeper look at other bid-killing errors, check out our guide on the top 10 tender mistakes that lead to rejection.

Ignoring Formatting and Presentation

A messy, poorly formatted document is a nightmare to read. Evaluators are human, and a wall of text with inconsistent fonts or spelling mistakes makes their job harder. More importantly, it reflects poorly on your professionalism and attention to detail.

Here are a few simple rules to make your submission stand out for all the right reasons:

Use clear headings that mirror the selection criteria numbering.

Bold key metrics and results to draw the evaluator's eye.

Use bullet points to break up complex information and make it scannable.

Ensure consistent branding and formatting from start to finish.

A clean, professional document shows you respect the evaluator's time and reinforces the quality of your work. It's an easy win that has a huge impact on how your entire tender response is perceived.

Got Questions About Selection Criteria? We’ve Got Answers.

Even with the best plan in place, you’ll inevitably hit a few curly questions when you're in the thick of writing a tender response. We get it. Here are some of the most common queries we see from businesses, with straight-up answers to help you get unstuck and sharpen your tender response.

Selection Criteria vs. Evaluation Criteria: What’s the Difference?

This one trips a lot of people up, but the distinction is critical.

Think of selection criteria as the set of questions in a job application. They’re public-facing and mandatory—the things you must address, like ‘Demonstrated experience in delivering large-scale IT projects’.

The evaluation criteria, however, are the internal marking sheet the panel uses to score your answers. This includes weightings that are often kept private (e.g., ‘Project delivery experience - 40%’, ‘Team management skills - 30%’). Your job is to answer the public selection criteria so well that you nail their private government tender evaluation criteria.

How Long Should My Responses Be?

Quality always trumps quantity. Before you write a single word, scour the Request for Tender (RFT) document for any specified character, word, or page limits. Government agencies are notoriously strict on these, and going over can get you disqualified on the spot.

If there are no limits, aim for concise and powerful. A strong response using the STAR method usually comes in at around three to five solid paragraphs. It’s far better to give one or two knockout examples with quantified results than a long, rambling list of vague points. Make it easy for the evaluator to tick their box and give you full marks.

We’re a New Business. How Do We Address ‘Past Performance’?

This is a massive concern for SMEs, but it’s far from a deal-breaker. If your company history is short, you need to pivot the focus from the business’s age to the deep experience of your team.

Here’s how you tackle it:

Lead with Your People: Your senior staff didn’t just appear yesterday. Showcase their specific, transferable experience from previous roles. Use their successful projects as your evidence, detailing exactly what they did and the outcomes they achieved.

Spin ‘New’ as a Strength: Position your business as agile, innovative, and unburdened by the bureaucracy of larger competitors. Emphasise that the client gets direct access to your top experts.

Hunt for SME-Friendly Tenders: Keep an eye out for opportunities on platforms like AusTender that have specific quotas or preferences for SME, regional, or Indigenous business participation. The evaluation panels for these are often told to weigh current capability more heavily than a long corporate track record.

A short company history isn't a weakness. It's an opportunity to highlight your team's agility and concentrated expertise—a powerful differentiator that bigger firms can't match.

Can I Reuse Answers from Old Tenders?

Yes! In fact, you absolutely should. Building a library of proven, well-written responses is one of the single biggest things you can do to make your tender process more efficient. It’s a core reason we built the reusable library into the GovBid platform.

But—and this is a big but—never just copy and paste. Every single response needs to be tailored to the new tender.

Customise the language to mirror the terminology in the new RFT. Tweak your examples to directly address the new agency's specific challenges. Make sure the scale of your evidence matches the scope of the project you're bidding on. An evaluator can spot a generic, recycled answer from a mile away, and it screams that you’re not that interested.

Smart reuse is about adapting proven content, not just duplicating it. Get this right, and you can consistently submit high-quality tender responses without burning out your team.

Ready to stop wrestling with selection criteria and start winning more government tenders? The GovBid AI-powered platform helps you find opportunities, generate compliant tender responses, and manage your evidence library, all in one place.

Start your free 7-day trial at GovBid.com.au