How to write a bid that gets approved
Bidding · 6 min read
A bid gets approved or declined by someone reading a paragraph. They are working through a queue, they have the photos open beside your note, and they are looking for a reason to cut the line. Most rejected bids are not rejected on price — they are rejected because the note gave the reviewer nothing to approve.
We read every bid document on our own book to find out what the approved ones had in common. Four things showed up consistently.
1. Write in sentences, not capitals
This is the single cheapest change available to anyone in this industry. Sentence-case descriptive write-ups beat telegraphic capitals by six to twenty-seven percentage points across nearly every work type on the largest national in our book.
BID TO REMOVE 19 CYDS INTERIOR DEBRIS
Debris totalling approximately 19 CYD across the interior per the attached photos. The debris is a health and safety hazard and pest harborage at a vacant property. Work includes gathering, loading, hauling away and disposing at a licensed facility. Before, during and after photos will document the cleared property.
Same work. Same price. Different outcome.
2. Put the measurement in
A number a reviewer can check against the photos is what converts a claim into a fact. Grass measured at 36 inches. A lot measured at 4,900 square feet. Twenty linear feet of trim. Approximately 10 cubic yards. Without a quantity, the reviewer has no basis to approve an amount, so the safe decision is to decline.
If you are estimating debris, measure the pile and say so: length by width by height, then divide by 27 to get cubic yards. Writing down how you arrived at the number is more persuasive than the number itself.
3. Name the standard you are citing
Preservation work exists because a property is failing some requirement. Say which one. Grass over the two-inch maintenance standard. An active municipal citation risk. A re-conveyable condition. Uncapped lines that will fail a pressure test at conveyance. The reviewer is not judging whether the work would be nice — they are judging whether it was necessary.
4. Define the scope so it cannot be trimmed
List what the price actually covers. A full cut of all turf areas, string-trimming at the structure and fence lines, edging of walks and drive, removal of all clippings from hard surfaces. A vague scope invites a reduced approval; a specific one is harder to argue down.
Then close by promising the evidence: before, during and after photos will document completion. That sentence tells the reviewer their file will be defensible, which is the thing they actually care about.
What about price?
Price matters less often than people assume, and it is not consistent across work types. For shrub trimming we found approvals clustering well below the median rejected bid — there, bidding lower genuinely wins. For tree trimming, approval was flat across every price band, meaning price was not the lever at all and anyone discounting was giving away margin for nothing.
You cannot know which of those you are dealing with without measuring it. That is the argument for tracking your own approvals rather than guessing.
The part nobody likes
Some bids will not be approved at any price with any wording. One national in our book approves almost no interior or exterior debris, across hundreds of attempts, regardless of how the note is written. That is policy, not persuasion.
It does not mean stop bidding it. In preservation every damage has to be reported — that is an obligation, not a choice. It means stop expecting a better paragraph to change the answer, and put your effort where the writing actually moves the number.