Writing a winning government tender response means every single answer must be a direct hit. The key isn't making empty claims; it's proving your capabilities with concrete, evidence-based examples from your past work. You have to show the evaluators you've successfully tackled similar challenges before, and this guide will show you exactly how.

Decoding Government Tender Selection Criteria

Staring at a government tender can feel like trying to crack a secret code. But those selection criteria? They're your roadmap to a winning tender response. They aren't just suggestions; they are the exact questions on the exam, signalling precisely what the government agency values and what problems they need you to solve.

The ability to methodically break down and respond to these criteria is what separates the winning tender responses from the ones that get tossed aside. In a competitive environment where the Commonwealth Government spends over $70 billion annually, evaluators are actively looking for reasons to shrink their pile. Failing to directly answer a single criterion is a fast track to the ‘no’ pile.

Understanding the Different Types of Criteria

Not all selection criteria are created equal, and your strategy needs to adapt to each one. Government tenders typically use a mix of criteria types to assess suppliers. Getting your head around what each one means is the first step to crafting a response that will actually score points.

These criteria are the building blocks of the entire evaluation, guiding how the panel will score your submission and compare it against your competitors. To help you get it right, here’s a breakdown of the common types you'll encounter.

Understanding Different Selection Criteria Types

Criteria Type

What It Means for Evaluators

Your Strategic Approach

Mandatory

These are the non-negotiables. If you don't meet them, you're out. It's a simple pass/fail gate before they even start scoring.

Don't just meet them, prove it. Create a compliance checklist and provide clear, undeniable evidence for each point (e.g., certificates, signed forms).

Weighted

These are the core of your tender response where you score the most points. They are ranked by importance, with weightings like 40%, 30%, 20%, etc.

Focus your time and effort here, especially on the highest-weighted criteria. This is where you need your strongest evidence and most detailed examples.

Desirable

These are the "nice-to-haves." They won't disqualify you if you don't have them, but they can be the tie-breaker between two otherwise strong tender responses.

If you can meet them, it's a bonus. Address them clearly, but don't sacrifice space or effort that should be dedicated to the heavily weighted criteria.

Comparative

This is where they directly compare your solution against others on a like-for-like basis (e.g., specific technical specs or features).

Be specific and quantitative. Use tables or side-by-side comparisons to make it incredibly easy for the evaluator to see how you stack up.

Knowing the difference between these types is crucial. It stops you from wasting precious time on low-value sections and helps you focus your energy where it will make the biggest impact on your final score.

To really get inside the evaluator's head, you need to understand not just what the criteria are, but how they’re combined to produce that final score. We cover this in our deep-dive on how government tender evaluation criteria and scoring works.

The Core Principle of 'Value for Money'

Everything in government procurement comes back to one core principle: 'value for money'.

This is probably the most misunderstood concept in tendering. It absolutely does not mean the cheapest price. It’s a holistic judgement of your entire offer. A tender response with a higher price tag that demonstrates exceptional capability, lower risk, and better long-term outcomes can easily be seen as better value for money than a cheap but mediocre alternative.

Your response to each selection criterion must contribute to this overall picture. It’s not just about ticking boxes; it's about building a compelling argument that your solution offers the Australian taxpayer the best possible return on their investment.

By decoding each requirement, you shift from simply listing your services to demonstrating the real, positive outcomes you can deliver. Nail this, and you're well on your way to crafting a tender response that isn't just compliant, but genuinely persuasive.

Using the STAR Method for Winning Responses

Simply saying you have a skill is never enough for a government evaluator. They’ve heard every claim in the book. Your job is to make your capabilities undeniable by wrapping them in a compelling, evidence-backed story.

This is where the STAR method becomes your most powerful tool. It’s a simple but brilliant way to structure your responses, turning a flat statement into a persuasive mini-case study that proves your worth. STAR stands for Situation, Task, Action, and Result.

Using this framework forces you to go beyond vague claims like "we're great at project management." Instead, you prove it with a concrete example of how you delivered a complex project on time and under budget. It’s the difference between getting shortlisted and getting overlooked.

Situation: Set the Scene

Start by painting a quick picture. Who was the client? What was the specific challenge or opportunity they were up against? Keep this part brief—just enough detail for the evaluator to grasp the context.

For example, instead of a generic opener, get specific: "The Department of Health needed a new patient booking system for its regional clinics in Western Australia, aimed at cutting administrative overhead and improving appointment accessibility." Right away, the evaluator knows you’ve done relevant work.

Task: Define Your Role

Next, state exactly what you were brought in to do. What was your specific mission or objective within that situation? This is critical for showing your direct involvement and accountability. It zooms in from the big picture to your specific contribution.

For instance: "Our task was to design, develop, and implement the custom software solution. We had to ensure it integrated with existing legacy systems and met strict government data security standards, all within a tight six-month timeframe."

Action: Describe What You Actually Did

This is the heart of your response and where you need to get detailed. Describe the specific actions you took to deliver on the task. Use strong, active verbs and walk the evaluator through your process step-by-step. What methods did you use? What roadblocks did you hit, and how did you navigate them?

This is your chance to really showcase your expertise. Don't just say, "we managed the project." Detail the how: "We kicked off the project with stakeholder workshops, working directly with clinic staff to map user journeys. Our agile team then built the platform in three two-week sprints, incorporating their feedback after each stage. To solve the integration challenge, we developed a custom API..."

Remember: The goal here is to show, not just tell. The 'Action' section is your prime opportunity to demonstrate your methodology, problem-solving skills, and technical chops in a real-world scenario.

Result: Quantify Your Success

Finally, and most importantly, you have to land the punchline. What was the outcome of all your hard work? This is where you connect your actions to tangible, positive results. Whenever possible, use hard numbers, percentages, and metrics to prove your success.

A weak response fizzles out without proof. A winning one delivers a powerful, measurable conclusion that screams 'value for money'.

Weak Result: "The new system was well-received and improved efficiency."

Strong Result: "The system went live one week ahead of schedule and 5% under budget. Within three months, administrative time spent on bookings fell by 40%, and patient no-show rates dropped by 15%, saving an estimated $120,000 annually."

This quantifiable result gives the evaluation panel the concrete data they need to justify awarding you top marks. Every STAR response you write should be a self-contained story of success, making it dead simple for the evaluator to see why your business is the right choice.

STAR Method Component Checklist

Use this checklist to make sure each part of your STAR response is comprehensive, compelling, and ready to impress evaluators.

Component (S-T-A-R)

Key Questions to Answer

Example Snippet

Situation

Who was the client? What was the core problem or opportunity?

"A local council in NSW was facing challenges with community engagement for a major urban renewal programme..."

Task

What specific goal were you responsible for achieving?

"...our task was to develop and execute a multi-channel communication strategy to increase public participation by 30%."

Action

What specific steps did you take? What skills did you use?

"We implemented a targeted social media campaign, hosted four community town halls, and distributed 10,000 informational flyers..."

Result

What was the measurable outcome? Use numbers, percentages, or concrete benefits.

"...resulting in a 45% increase in community feedback submissions and a 90% positive sentiment rating in post-programme surveys."

By mastering this simple framework, you'll be well on your way to crafting responses that don't just meet the criteria—they prove you're the best supplier for the job.

Finding Evidence and Quantifying Your Achievements

A powerful story built on the STAR method is a great start, but it's only half the battle. To really convince a government evaluation panel, your claims need to be backed by undeniable, concrete evidence.

Vague statements like "we improved efficiency" are easily dismissed. What evaluators are looking for are hard numbers that prove your impact and scream 'value for money'. This is where you have to put on your detective hat.

It’s the difference between a weak claim and a powerful one. For instance, instead of saying you made things better, you say, "we reduced project delivery time by 15% and saved the client $50,000 annually." Now that's a statement that gets remembered.

Where to Uncover Winning Data

Your business is probably sitting on a goldmine of evidence. You just need to know where to look. The best proof points are often buried in everyday business operations and project wrap-ups.

Start digging in these key areas:

Project Management Records: Dust off those project close-out reports, Gantt charts, and resource spreadsheets. Did you deliver ahead of schedule? Come in under budget? By how much?

Financial Statements: Your profit and loss statements or client invoices can reveal the exact cost savings you delivered, the revenue you helped generate, or efficiency gains that hit the bottom line.

Client Communications: Search through old emails, meeting minutes, and feedback forms. A direct quote from a happy client praising your work is pure gold.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Data: Your CRM can spit out metrics on improved customer satisfaction scores, faster response times, or increased client retention rates that resulted directly from your work.

The most compelling evidence directly links your actions to a number. Think in percentages, dollar figures, time saved, or units produced. This is the language that government procurement teams understand and value.

Quantifying the Qualitative

So what happens when you can't find a hard number? It's a common problem. Not all achievements fit neatly into a spreadsheet. Sometimes the value you provided was qualitative, like improving team morale or strengthening stakeholder relationships.

In these cases, your job is to make the intangible, tangible.

Look for Proxies: You might not be able to measure "morale" directly, but you might have data on reduced staff turnover or fewer sick days. Those are strong indicators of a happier, more productive team.

Use Testimonials: A glowing reference or a quote from a senior stakeholder can act as powerful social proof. For example: "The Director of the division noted our collaborative approach was 'instrumental in aligning the three departments for the first time'."

Describe the 'Before and After': Paint a clear picture. Describe the messy situation before you stepped in and contrast it with the improved state afterwards. This narrative can be just as impactful as a statistic.

Proving your capability with numbers—like 'Improved service delivery by 30% through targeted training for 50 staff'—is what will lift your tender response above the competition.

Building Your Evidence Library

Digging for evidence shouldn't be a frantic scramble every time a tender drops. The most successful suppliers build a central repository of their best case studies, statistics, and testimonials. This 'evidence library' becomes one of their most valuable assets.

For each major project you complete, make it a habit to document the STAR components and, most importantly, the quantifiable Results. As you build this out, you can map each piece of evidence back to common selection criteria like "demonstrated experience" or "stakeholder engagement."

A well-organised library, perhaps managed with a compliance matrix, makes future tender responses faster and far more effective. You can find out more by reading our guide to best practices for a government tender compliance matrix. With a few clicks, your team can pull pre-approved, evidence-backed examples, ensuring consistency and quality across every single tender response.

Writing and Formatting for Maximum Impact

You’ve mapped out your evidence and built a compelling story using the STAR method. Now comes the crucial final step: presenting it in a way a time-poor government evaluator can easily understand, score, and champion.

Even the most brilliant answer can get lost in a sea of jargon, dense paragraphs, and sloppy formatting. Professional presentation isn’t just about looking good; it's a sign of respect for the evaluator's time. When they’re sifting through dozens of submissions, a clear, scannable document immediately builds credibility and makes your key points impossible to ignore.

Write for Clarity and Impact

Let's be clear: government evaluators aren't looking to be impressed by your vocabulary. They value clarity above all else. Your writing needs to be direct, confident, and incredibly easy to digest.

A simple trick is to always use an active voice. It sounds more direct and authoritative. Instead of saying, "The project was completed by our team," write, "Our team completed the project." It's a subtle shift, but it puts your company firmly in the driver's seat.

While you're at it, mercilessly cut out internal jargon and acronyms. If a term isn't universally understood within that specific government agency, don't use it. If you absolutely must, define it on its first use. Your goal is zero ambiguity.

Mirror the RFT's Language

This is one of the simplest yet most powerful techniques in tender writing. When you respond to a criterion, use the exact keywords and phrasing from the Request for Tender (RFT).

This does two critical things:

It proves you’ve paid attention. You are directly answering their question in their own terms.

It makes scoring easy. The evaluator can literally tick the box, confirming you’ve addressed the specific requirement they're looking for.

For example, if the criterion asks for "demonstrated experience in stakeholder engagement," your response should start with something like, "We have demonstrated experience in stakeholder engagement across several major projects..." It’s a direct echo that signals a relevant, compliant answer is about to follow.

Navigating Strict Word and Page Limits

Word and page limits aren't suggestions; they are mandatory requirements. Exceeding them is one of the fastest ways to get disqualified, no questions asked. Every single word has to earn its place.

When you're staring down a tight word count, your first instinct might be to chop the 'Result' from your STAR examples to save space. Don't do it. The result is the most important part—it’s the proof of your value. Instead, be brutal in trimming the 'Situation' and 'Task' sections.

Be ruthless in your editing. Hunt down and eliminate filler words, redundant phrases, and anything that doesn't add direct value. This skill is vital for every part of your tender response, especially when you need to craft a powerful executive summary for a government tender.

Formatting for Readability

How your response looks is almost as important as what it says. A solid wall of text is intimidating and a nightmare to read. Good formatting guides the evaluator's eye to your most important points, making your entire submission scannable and professional.

Make these formatting practices non-negotiable:

Use Headings and Subheadings: Break up your response with clear headings that mirror the selection criteria numbering and wording.

Embrace Bullet Points: Use bulleted or numbered lists for processes, benefits, or key features. They are infinitely easier to scan than a chunky paragraph.

Keep Paragraphs Short: Stick to one main idea per paragraph. A good rule of thumb is a maximum of three to four sentences.

Use Bold Strategically: Make key metrics, outcomes, and conclusions pop by using bold text. It draws the eye and reinforces your value.

Finally, proofread your document until your eyes hurt. Then, have someone else proofread it again. Typos and grammatical errors scream "lack of attention to detail"—a fatal flaw in the world of government contracts. A polished document shows you're a supplier who gets the details right.

Common Tender Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

Jumping into government tenders can feel like navigating a minefield. Many incredibly capable businesses watch their tender responses get rejected, not because they weren't the best choice, but because of a simple, preventable error. One wrong step can lead to instant disqualification.

These mistakes usually boil down to one thing: a failure to understand what the evaluation panel is really looking for. They aren't just buying a service; they're trying to find a low-risk partner who can solve their problem with absolute certainty. Every little mistake you make chips away at that confidence.

Failing to Answer the Specific Question

This is, without a doubt, the number one reason tender responses fail. An evaluator has a checklist, and if your answer doesn't directly address their question, you score a zero. It’s that simple.

It doesn’t matter how impressive your experience is if it’s not relevant to what they’ve asked. For instance, if a criterion asks for your "methodology for managing project risks," a brilliant story about your overall project management success is useless if it doesn't explicitly talk about risk identification, assessment, and mitigation.

You have to answer their question directly, using their keywords, before you launch into your evidence.

Making Vague, Unsupported Claims

Statements like "we are industry leaders" or "we provide excellent customer service" are just empty noise to an evaluator. They're trained to ignore them. Without proof, these are just words on a page.

Every single claim you make about your capabilities must be immediately backed up with hard evidence, ideally using the STAR method. A weak response makes a claim. A winning response proves it with data, examples, and measurable outcomes.

Ignoring Formatting and Word Limits

A sloppy, poorly formatted document is an immediate red flag. It screams a lack of attention to detail—a fatal flaw in the eyes of a government buyer who needs contractors to follow instructions precisely.

Dense walls of text, mismatched fonts, and a failure to use clear headings make your response a nightmare to score. Even worse is blowing past the mandatory limits. If the response is capped at 500 words, submitting 501 can get your entire tender response thrown out. These aren't suggestions; they're hard rules.

The Dangers of Mindless Copy-Pasting

Reusing content is a smart way to be efficient, but blindly copy-pasting from old tender responses is a recipe for disaster. Each tender is unique. Your responses must be tailored to the specific needs, language, and context of the RFT you're actually targeting.

It's painfully obvious when a response has been recycled. It might mention the wrong client, refer to irrelevant details, or just fail to hit the specific nuances of the new criteria. This tells the evaluator you haven't bothered to put in the effort, immediately putting you behind competitors who have.

Want to see more of these common tripwires? Check out our deep dive into the top 10 tender mistakes that lead to rejection.

Using GovBid as Your Safety Net

Avoiding these pitfalls takes discipline and a sharp eye. It’s tough to catch your own mistakes when you’re deep in the weeds of writing a tender response. This is where a platform like GovBid becomes your secret weapon, acting as a built-in quality control expert.

The GovBid dashboard centralises your entire tender process, from discovery to response management, giving you a clear overview.

Our platform's AI-powered tender writing and compliance checking automatically scan your draft against the RFT's rules, flagging any missed requirements or formatting issues before you hit submit.

Furthermore, our smart content library lets you store and categorise your best STAR examples, making it easy to find and—most importantly—tailor them for each new tender response. No more risky copy-pasting. GovBid helps ensure every response you send is compliant, targeted, and professional, dramatically cutting down on unforced errors and boosting your chances of winning.

Answering Your Top Selection Criteria Questions

Even with the best strategy, you’ll inevitably hit a few curly questions when you're in the thick of writing a tender response. Let's dig into some of the most common ones we see from businesses trying to get their selection criteria responses just right.

What if I Only Partially Meet a Criterion?

It’s a classic scenario. The tender asks for five years of experience, but you’ve only got three. The absolute worst thing you can do is gloss over it or, even worse, try to stretch the truth. In government tendering, honesty is everything.

Don't try to hide the gap—address it head-on. Your goal is to shift the focus from the exact duration to the quality and relevance of your experience.

For instance, you could frame your response like this: "While our direct experience delivering these services spans the last three years, our team’s capability is built on over a decade in the adjacent [Related Industry] sector. This background gives us deep expertise in [Skill A] and [Skill B], both of which are critical to solving the challenges outlined in this tender."

This approach shows you’ve understood the requirement perfectly, been transparent about your position, and still made a compelling case for why your equivalent experience is just as valuable, if not more so.

How Long Should My Answer Be?

It's a balancing act. You need to provide enough meaty detail to be persuasive, but you also need to respect the evaluator's time. Your first and most important guide is always the word or page limit in the Request for Tender (RFT). Treat these as sacred—they are not suggestions.

Beyond that, look at the criterion's weighting.

High-Weighting (e.g., 40%): These criteria are where you earn your points. They demand your most detailed, evidence-rich STAR examples. Use the space to build a comprehensive case study that leaves no doubt about your capability.

Low-Weighting (e.g., 10%): A more concise answer is the smart play here. Get straight to the point with a solid piece of evidence and move on. Don't burn precious words on a 10% criterion when you could be strengthening your 40% sections.

Always aim for impact over volume. A tight, 200-word response packed with measurable results will always beat 500 words of fluffy description.

Can I Reuse Answers From Previous Tenders?

Yes, but with a big, flashing neon warning sign. Building a library of your best STAR examples is one of the smartest things you can do to be more efficient. The danger is thoughtless copy-pasting.

Reusing content is about deploying a proven asset, not just avoiding the work. Each response must be meticulously tailored to the specific language, context, and unspoken needs of the new tender.

An evaluator can spot a generic, recycled answer from a kilometre away. It might mention irrelevant details or fail to use the new RFT's keywords, signalling a lack of care that can sink your credibility fast.

Instead, treat your content library as your raw material. Pull your strongest case study, then rework it to directly answer the new criterion. Update the language, reframe the 'Result' to align with the new agency's priorities, and make sure it reads like it was written just for them. This tailored approach shows you've done your homework and are genuinely focused on solving their specific problem.

Ready to streamline your response process and win more government tenders? The GovBid platform gives you an all-in-one solution for finding opportunities, managing your responses, and using AI to craft compelling, compliant answers faster.

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