It does count. But not in the way most organisations assume. And the gap between what incumbents think their position is worth and what it actually delivers in a competitive evaluation is where a lot of retained contracts quietly disappear.
The bid and proposal profession is consistent on this point: complacency is the number one reason incumbent contractors lose. Not price. Not a superior competitor. Complacency. The incumbent assumed the relationship would carry the submission, treated the rebid as an administrative exercise, and lost to a challenger who wanted it more.
This is the rebid trap. And it is more common than most organisations would like to admit.
You know more than anyone. That is not enough.
The instinct when you are the incumbent is to lean on what you know. You have delivery evidence, established relationships, and a demonstrated track record. Those things are genuinely valuable. The mistake is assuming the evaluation panel sees them the same way you do.
Procurement evaluators are often entirely separate from the client-side stakeholders who know and value your work. The person scoring your submission may have no visibility of your delivery history, no context for your relationship with the contract manager, and no interest in how things have been done for the past three years. They are scoring the document in front of them against the criteria they have been given.
Lohfeld Consulting noted, presenting at APMP Bid and Proposal Con, that the single thing most likely to irritate evaluators reviewing an incumbent’s submission is a proposal that repeatedly states the supplier is the incumbent rather than proposing a thoughtful solution. The relationship is not the submission. The submission is the submission.
This means the rebid requires exactly the same rigour as a new bid: approaching it with the vigour of new business, shaping your solution from the ground up, and resisting the pull to simply resubmit what you delivered last time.
The pricing trap
Incumbents are uniquely vulnerable on price, and most don’t realise it until the feedback comes in.
Three years into a contract, your team knows exactly what delivery costs. They know where the original estimates were optimistic and where they were conservative. That knowledge is useful for delivery. For rebid pricing, it can be a liability.
Incumbent pricing teams often overlook cost reduction opportunities because they have internalised the current resourcing model as the only workable one. The experienced team on the contract is more expensive now than when they started. The processes that felt lean in year one have accumulated overhead. Corporate management has grown accustomed to a certain margin from this client.
A well-prepared challenger, by contrast, looks at the requirement with fresh eyes. They are not anchored to the existing cost base. They can take a bottom-up approach to resourcing, explore different delivery structures, and price to what the client actually needs rather than to what has historically been delivered. That flexibility is a genuine competitive threat, and incumbents who don’t actively interrogate their own pricing before submission are exposed to it.
The discipline here is to separate what you know about delivery from what you allow that knowledge to do to your pricing. Model it as a new opportunity. Then sense-check it against your operational reality.
Bid for the contract that was written, not the contract you are running
One of the most consistent failure modes in incumbent rebids is submitting a response to the contract you have been delivering rather than the one the client has put out to tender. Requirements shift over contract terms. Priorities evolve. The new RFP reflects where the client wants to go, not necessarily where they have been.
If the RFP introduces new requirements, updated evaluation criteria, or a revised scope, those changes are intentional. Treating them as noise, or assuming your existing delivery model satisfies them by default, is an error that evaluators will score against you.
Read the RFP as if you have never delivered this contract. Answer the questions as written. Do not assume that what you have been doing is what they are asking for. As one senior procurement executive put it at an APMP UK roundtable: incumbent teams look back, while newcomers look forward. A successful rebid has to do both.
Start the rebid on day one of the current contract
The organisations that retain work most reliably treat the entire contract term as preparation for the next submission. That means maintaining performance metrics throughout, soliciting regular client feedback, capturing evidence of outcomes, and identifying where delivery could be stronger before the RFP arrives.
By the time the retender is issued, the best-prepared incumbents have a documented record of performance, updated case studies, a clear view of the client’s evolving priorities, and a pricing model that reflects the current market rather than the original contract assumptions. They have been listening throughout, not just at renewal time.
That preparation cannot be assembled in the weeks between RFP release and submission deadline. It has to be built continuously. The rebid clock starts at contract award.
The bottom line. Incumbency is an information advantage, not a guaranteed outcome. The clients who know your work are not always the ones evaluating your submission. The experience that makes delivery easier can make pricing less competitive. And the complacency that feels like confidence is the primary reason retained contracts are lost.
Treat the rebid with the same discipline you brought to winning the work in the first place. That is the standard your competitors are preparing to meet.
Want to talk through your rebid strategy before the RFP lands? Book a complimentary 30-minute call at bidfusion.com.au
Sources: Lohfeld Consulting Group, Lisa Pafe CPP APMP, “The End of the Incumbent Empire,” APMP Bid and Proposal Con · APMP UK, “Attitudes to Incumbents” research via PublicTechnology.net
#Incumbency #BidManagement #TenderStrategy #ContractRetention #ProposalProfessionals #APMP #BidFusion
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