Insights and news

Alex Footman Alex Footman

Stephen Alexander appoints new head of marketing

Stephen Alexander, the bid, marketing, and business development consultancy, has appointed Anna White as head of marketing to help drive its growth plans and expand its outsourced marketing services.

Read More
Alex Footman Alex Footman

Understanding client strategies in a bid process

Understanding client strategies is key to developing a winning bid. It proves you’ve done your research and considered how you will support each client in achieving their goals. Unsure where to start? We’ve created some helpful tips on how to identify client strategies and embed them across your submissions.

Read More
Alex Footman Alex Footman

A quick guide to market engagement sessions

Early market engagement provides opportunity for clients to engage with potential suppliers, prior to procurement. It provides suppliers with the opportunity to both inform the specification, and to determine if the opportunity is viable.

Read More
Alex Footman Alex Footman

How to create your bid / no bid process

A bid process is a set of key criteria that defines what opportunities would be suitable for your business. Taking the time to develop the criteria as a well-defined bid /no bid checklist can be the difference in you winning or losing a bid.

Read More
Alex Footman Alex Footman

Stephen Alexander supports first school careers fair

Our directors Alex Footman and Stephen Timmins were invited by Mount Carmel First School to support their Careers Fair at the end of May. As part of the school’s programme to engage local businesses and help its pupils understand more about the world of work, they invited our team and several other businesses to attend and showcase their business to their pupils from Year 3 and 4.

Read More
Alex Footman Alex Footman

Stephen Alexander wins new start up award

We recently won the 'New Business/Start-Up of the Year 2023' accolade at the Midlands Service Excellence Awards – one of the region’s leading awards programmes that recognises organisations for delivering exceptional client service.

Read More
Alex Footman Alex Footman

A complete guide to the five stages of bidding behaviour

Bidding for new work can be complicated, intense, and stressful and this can often lead to some typical behaviours that can dilute the quality of a bid response. From our vast experience of managing bid and tender processes across a range of industry sectors, we've compiled an overview of the behaviours we see in businesses and bid teams from spotting an opportunity to finalising and submitting a response. At each stage, we have summarised key hints and tips for how to overcome the challenges we see as the bid process progresses.

Read More
Alex Footman Alex Footman

Our first six months

Six months ago we launched Stephen Alexander. Since July last year, it’s been a busy time working with businesses across a range of different sectors supporting their bids, marketing, and business development activity. Check out our video to see what we’ve been up to.

Read More
Alex Footman Alex Footman

A guide to winning new work: bidding fundamentals

Work wining guide: in this guide, we have collated some of our key tips all in one place - providing businesses with a reference tool to help them improve many of the ways in which they approach bidding for new clients and contracts and how they promote their business.

Read More
Alex Footman Alex Footman

The importance of deconstructing a bid

The process to manage a successful bid submission can be complex and daunting. The key to navigating the process begins and ends with comprehensive planning and deconstructing every opportunity and bid. Take a look at our short guide.

Read More
Alex Footman Alex Footman

Choosing your bid win themes

A key starting point for any bid is the identification and agreement of your win themes – why should the buyer choose you? Read our top tips in this short article.

Read More
Alex Footman Alex Footman

Creating compelling case studies

Compelling case studies are critical to marketing your business and winning new work. Read our short article on how to make the most of them.

Read More