Bid teams spend thousands of hours on tenders they were never going to win. A simple go/no-go framework can cut that waste by more than half.
Bid teams are expensive. A single tender response can consume 20 to 80 hours of skilled time, plus the cost of any subcontractors, consultants, or specialist inputs needed. When you multiply that across a year of bidding activity, the total investment is significant.
The uncomfortable truth is that most SMEs win only 15 to 25 percent of the tenders they respond to. That means 75 to 85 percent of all that effort produces no revenue. A well-structured go/no-go process is the single most effective way to improve that ratio without hiring more people.
What is a go/no-go decision?
A go/no-go decision is a structured assessment of whether to invest resource in a specific bid opportunity. It happens before any writing starts. The goal is to make an honest, objective judgement about whether your organisation is genuinely competitive for this particular contract.
Skipping this step and jumping straight into writing is one of the most common and costly mistakes in tendering. It leads to mediocre responses that spread effort too thinly and an overall win rate that demoralises the team and drains the business.
The five factors to assess
Sector fit. Do you have genuine, demonstrable experience in the exact sector or sub-sector being procured? Buyers can tell the difference between organisations that truly understand their environment and those applying from adjacent sectors.
Capability match. Can you actually deliver every element of what is being asked? Partial capability, where you plan to subcontract significant elements, is not necessarily disqualifying, but it adds risk and needs to be managed carefully.
Certifications and compliance. Many public sector contracts have mandatory accreditation requirements (ISO 27001, Cyber Essentials, CQC registration, etc.). If you do not hold what is required, you will be excluded regardless of the quality of your bid.
Contract value range. Buyers have informal but real expectations about the size of organisations they want to award to. Bidding for a contract that represents more than 30 to 40 percent of your annual turnover raises financial risk flags. Bidding for something far too small for your size raises credibility questions.
Capacity and timing. Do you have the operational capacity to deliver if you win, and the team capacity to write a competitive bid by the deadline?
Scoring your go/no-go
Score each factor from 1 to 5. A total score below 15 is a strong signal to walk away. A score of 15 to 20 is a marginal go that requires a clear plan for addressing weaknesses. A score above 20 is a genuine go.
Be honest. The temptation is always to rationalise a go decision because the contract looks attractive. Resist it. A lost bid costs you the writing time plus the opportunity cost of the work you could have been doing instead.
How KimonBids automates this
KimonBids runs this assessment automatically for every tender it surfaces. When a new opportunity matches your profile, the AI scores it across all five dimensions and returns a recommendation: Strong Go, Go, Maybe, or No Go. The full reasoning behind each score is visible so you can review the AI judgement and override it with additional context you hold.
For most SMEs, the go/no-go process goes from an ad-hoc judgement call to a consistent, data-informed decision in every case. Over time, the AI learns which types of opportunities your organisation performs well against, further improving the accuracy of its recommendations.