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Join for freePosted: Wed 11th Nov 2026
Could your next big customer be a major corporation, local council or government department?
Many small businesses overlook opportunities to win larger contracts simply because they don't know where to start.
In this practical Lunch and Learn, Kemi Solanke, founder of LearnBids, explores how small businesses can access corporate and government markets, identify new opportunities and position themselves to compete for bigger contracts.
Whether you're new to tendering or prospecting or looking to grow your business, this session provides practical insights to help you take the next step.
Understand the opportunity: Discover how corporate and government organisations buy from small businesses and the different routes to securing contracts
Find the right opportunities: Learn where to identify relevant contracts and how to recognise opportunities suited to your business
Position your business to win: Understand what larger buyers look for in suppliers and the practical steps you can take to become contract-ready
Kemi is a commercial bids and business development specialist with extensive experience leading bid teams and helping organisations compete for and win contracts across the public and private sectors.
As the founder of LearnBids, a UK-registered learning provider, she supports businesses and professionals through practical training, bid consultancy and commercial growth programmes.
Kemi is passionate about making corporate and government contracting more accessible to small businesses, equipping them with the knowledge, confidence and strategies to compete for bigger opportunities.
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Lightly edited for clarity.
Beth: Hello, everyone, and welcome to today’s Lunch and Learn. My name is Beth, and I’ll be your host today.
For those of you attending a Lunch and Learn for the first time, Enterprise Nation is a vibrant community platform for start-ups and small businesses. I’m very pleased to introduce Kemi Solanke, founder of LearnBids.
In this session, Kemi will explore how small businesses can access corporate and government markets, identify new opportunities and position themselves to compete for bigger contracts. As always, if you have any questions as we go along, please post them in the chat or the Q&A box, and we’ll do our best to answer them at the end of the session.
Today’s webinar is being recorded, so you will receive the recording along with a few follow-up resources later today. So, over to you, Kemi.
Kemi: Thanks, Beth. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you to Enterprise Nation for inviting me to this fantastic Lunch and Learn. Today, I really want to challenge the way you think about your potential customers.
There’s quite a lot of content, but I’ll try to get through as much as possible so that I can leave a little time for Q&A. If we run out of time, please DM me on the platform or contact me on one of my handles, and I’ll be able to answer your questions there.
Today, we’re going to be thinking about who your next big customer could be. Is it going to be a major company, a local council or a government department? If you haven’t thought about these types of buyers, this Lunch and Learn will help you start thinking about the types of customers you can attract.
Let’s talk about figures. £45.2 billion is the amount the public sector spends with SMEs – that’s the value of contracts awarded directly to small businesses like yours in 2024 – and £28.1 billion was how much local government spent with small businesses. This is the money you’re leaving on the table if you’re not actively pursuing these opportunities in the public sector.
70% of suppliers invoicing in the public sector were small businesses, so there are other businesses like yours bidding and tendering for opportunities and submitting proposals. For those of you who are really focused on the private sector, £3.3 trillion in UK non-financial business purchases were made in 2024. There are a lot of organisations out there buying goods and services.
So where do you find these opportunities and contracts? If you want to start bidding in the public sector and look for contracts issued by various bodies, you really need to be on what we call portals.
There are several portals out there, but the main one you really need to be looking at is Find a Tender, and it’s very simple to use. You go there and filter for what you’re looking for – whether it’s cleaning or security contracts, which areas and what kind of values – and it will bring up live opportunities you can bid for. It’s then up to you to choose one, click into it and apply.
Contracts Finder is another, very similar, but for higher-value opportunities. You also have local council and NHS procurement portals. There are many portals out there, but these are the ones you should typically start with because they’re free to use.
When you become a little more mature in your approach to tendering, you can move on to paid portals like Stotles and Contracts Advance, and further ones like Tussell that also give you market intelligence. They tell you who your competitors are, who has previously won that contract, the buying patterns of that particular buyer and any other intel that could help you differentiate yourself when you’re bidding.
If you’re focused on the private sector, there are also corporate supplier registration portals to look out for. Always go to the websites of the companies you want to do business with, as they may have their own procurement portals.
Make sure you’re looking at LinkedIn and other social media sites as well, because a lot of opportunities are put out there. Market engagement events are also shared across LinkedIn, and they give you a chance to attend something like this webinar, where the buyer talks about the opportunity. Buyers like to do that a lot for small businesses, so they can understand some of the complexities of bidding to that organisation.
Something people really miss is that a lot of organisations have existing contracts or are on existing frameworks and need subcontract partners. Partnerships are the best way to start getting into bidding, because they help you build up your credentials, your trustworthiness, your case studies and your evidence by working with somebody on an existing contract. Even though you weren’t awarded that contract, working with the awarding body builds up that experience and credibility.
So always look out for these. I saw one the other day on LinkedIn from a construction company that was already on an existing framework and had certain lots it needed help with.
Some organisations do this because they need more resources, or because they’re not operating in a particular region of the country and need suppliers in that area to support them. So always look for potential subcontract partners, no matter what areas you’re delivering into.
So, are you contract-ready? Let’s say you’ve found the opportunity, you want to get started, and you really want to start bidding. There are a few things buyers look for that you really need to understand.
Number one is financial stability. This is really important – I’d say it’s the number one thing you need to make sure you’re ready and capable for.
It’s about whether you can manage the costs and cash flow required to deliver the contract. You don’t want to find yourself in trouble because you’ve been awarded a contract but need to buy equipment, pay staff and so on, as it can take quite a while before you even get your first payment. So you need to make sure you’re financially viable as an organisation.
You also need to be aware that some contracts have stipulations about turnover, so you might need to turn over a certain amount before you can even bid. So always do a financial stability check.
The next one is experience and track record. Can you demonstrate experience of the work you’re trying to deliver, express figures for customer satisfaction and show that you’ve successfully delivered similar work before?
That’s really important, because if you don’t have the experience, it’s quite difficult to get started. It’s not impossible, as some organisations recognise that there are start-ups, especially among small businesses, but that’s when partnerships come into play. So it’s always important to gather information on the things you can do, even if it’s not the exact type of work but something similar.
Another thing that really challenges small businesses is compliance. Do you have the appropriate insurance, certifications, policies and legal requirements in place?
Before you start writing or pulling together any proposals, make sure you’ve got that bit sorted, because otherwise it’ll take you out of the game. For example, certain government frameworks require you to have basic Cyber Essentials certification. It’s not that complicated to get – there are companies that can help you with that, and other policies you can easily write up.
Another thing you should be thinking about is your capacity and capability. As I touched on before, do you have the people, resources, skills and systems to actually deliver?
Some people have wishful thinking – they look at something and think, ‘Oh, I can do that.’ That’s very different from, ‘I have the mechanisms in place to deliver this, report on what I’m delivering and meet the milestones.’
When it comes to public sector bidding, if you don’t meet the buyer’s milestones, you could get fined. So it’s really important that you have the ability to do that.
Finally, there’s quality and value. Can you demonstrate how your solution meets the buyer’s needs and delivers value for money? In the public sector, it’s all about value – are they going to get value for the money they’re paying you?
So don’t make the mistake of waiting to tender until you’ve got all of these things sorted out. Start now, because you don’t want to be disqualified.
You don’t need to be the biggest supplier; you just need to demonstrate that you’re the right supplier. So make sure you’ve got all your ducks in a row.
Now let’s talk about positioning your business to win. This is crucial, because bigger contracts aren’t always advertised in the same places.
Knowing how to position yourself to a particular buyer is your first step, because it will change – the way you position yourself for one customer isn’t the same as for another. That’s why, although we’d encourage using AI when you’re putting proposals together, you don’t want to submit something that’s very vanilla. You want to make sure it’s as bespoke as possible and that you’ve done all your research.
The number one thing to address first is understanding your buyer’s needs. It’s very important that you go above and beyond to research the organisation, its challenges, its priorities and what it wants to achieve.
You can do this in many ways – I touched on Tussell, which allows you to gain market intelligence. In the bidding world, we look at things like win themes, differentiators and competitor analysis. As a small business, you don’t have a large bid team to do all of this for you, but you can do it yourself because there’s so much information available online.
You can even go a step further and look on LinkedIn – stalk some of the key decision makers. Find out what events they’re going to, what their interests are, what their company pages talk about and what they actually care about.
So always make sure you have a really good understanding of what your buyer actually needs at that point in time. If they’re having a challenge, you can present the solution to overcome it.
Another thing I’d say is be selective. You can’t go for everything, especially as a small business – you just don’t have the resources, and you’re doing your day job on top of that.
So focus on contracts that really align with the experience you have, your capabilities and your objectives. Have a strategy: know where you want to be financially, the types of contracts you want, how many contracts you want to win in a year and how much you want to grow your revenue.
Another thing that really comes up when we drill into bid and proposal management and writing is to make sure you’re answering the question. Forget what you’ve been taught about sales – they don’t want to see or hear any sales fluff like ‘we are best in class’.
Just answer the questions rather than trying to sell your business. Follow the instructions to a T, address everything in the evaluation criteria on the public sector side and provide clear, relevant responses.
With proposals, there’s an opportunity for people to really waffle and say everything that makes them shine – I’ll talk about ‘show and tell’ in proposals and bids next. But just cut out the waffle, be straight to the point and always demonstrate what you can do with evidence.
Demonstrate value, not just price. There have been instances in my decade-long career where the most expensive bidder has won the contract.
So it’s not just about going in cheap or low because you think that will make you win – it won’t. It’s the value you’re going to deliver to that organisation, and you really need to bring that out in your proposal or bid.
The number one thing I always say, over and over again, is that evidence matters. You can’t just say that you deliver cleaning and you’re really good at it – what’s the data that backs it up? Do you have references, testimonials, figures and metrics?
You have to do everything you can to reduce the buyer’s risk, because to them, everyone’s a risk. They could award you a £500,000 contract, and you might never deliver, or you might have continuous problems delivering.
That reminds me – in your qualification process, think about the type of customer and whether it’s somebody you’d want to work with. I think that’s really important.
Let’s say it’s a £50,000 deal, and you think it can’t be delivered for that amount of money – it’s really tight – but you want the customer because it’s a big name, so you say, ‘Let’s just do it. We’ll make it work.’ Then you win the customer at that cheap price, and you’re not making any money on the deal.
The customer turns out to be a nightmare – they want to see you in the office every single week for this or that – and you’re stuck in a contract for one to four years without making any money. So it’s really important that you follow these processes: be selective, do your qualification, evidence what you’ve done, and demonstrate value – don’t just focus on price.
Winning contracts isn’t just about what you offer; it’s about demonstrating why your business is the best choice for the buyer. I always ask people how they’re going to stand out from everybody else.
Always apply the ‘so what?’ test. You say something – so what? Most of the time, other people are offering the same things you are, so you’ve always got to think about your differentiators.
This is what I meant earlier by ‘show and tell’. Most people will have something like the first part of this example – a weak response: ‘We provide excellent cleaning services and pride ourselves on customer satisfaction.’
They’ll throw brochures together with statements like that plastered all over the proposal or bid. That won’t score you a high mark in public sector bidding, and it won’t get your foot in the door in B2B selling.
What you really need to do is go the extra mile and say something like, ‘We achieved 98% customer satisfaction across 12 sites through bi-monthly quality audits and performance reviews.’ That’s what you call a strong response.
Going back to what I said before, gather as much evidence and as many metrics as possible, because that’s what you need to actually secure these opportunities. So I want you to start thinking bigger, and I want you to start today, because winning bigger contracts starts with small, strategic steps.
Here’s what you can do over the next seven days: create a five-step action plan. First, target some of the buyers you could start selling into by listing three corporate or public sector organisations you’d like to work with.
Then go and explore opportunities. Search Find a Tender, Contracts Finder and the relevant corporate procurement portals, and identify at least two opportunities.
Next, assess your readiness. Review your experience, finances, compliance, resources and ability to deliver, then identify one gap in your current business and take action to address it.
If you’ve never pulled case studies together, this is fundamental – you need case studies, and even your website should have them. It’s very important to collate all of that and start creating a repository of information.
If you’re just starting out, you don’t need a huge backlog of 50 clients you’ve worked with and examples for each, but you do need some. One thing I forgot to mention: when you’re creating your testimonials, evidence and references, don’t just deliver for a client and then forget about them.
Always stay friendly and in touch with the clients you’ve worked with, because they’re the people who will shout about you the most. They can open doors for you and be the people to call for references.
Even if you have to tweak some things in a case study or reference, you’ve built a good rapport, so you can call them and say, ‘Look, this person’s going to call you for a reference about the work we did three years ago. Please give us a good reference.’ So maintain really good, positive relationships with the people you’re currently working with, so you can use them for references and case studies.
Also make sure you’re updating your policies and keeping abreast of changes, because things change all the time in terms of legal and company policies. Keep your ear to the ground and consistently update your policies.
Then spend time improving your company profile. If you start analysing who’s coming to your website, you’ll see that when you’re in an active procurement with an organisation, they are actually looking at your website and your profile. So make sure your company profile is up to scratch and on par with who you say you are as an organisation.
Next, start building relationships. I mentioned building positive relationships with your existing clients, but relationships are part of bids, part of tendering and part of B2B sales.
This is a very important aspect, because you want connections with procurement teams, decision makers and potential partners and suppliers. So go to events, even if you’ve been to so many – you never know who you’re going to meet. Go on LinkedIn, stalk people, invite them for coffees and chase people.
If you’re going in cold and sending out messages, I’d always say to beat sales resistance – never just send a proposal document to somebody and then keep chasing them. It’s counterintuitive: you’ll keep getting ignored, and you’ve lost your power.
So always try to get a call, a discovery call or a meeting in, and talk to them before you send anything out. That’s on the private sector side; the public sector is a little different, but relationships are still equally important.
Relationship-building is one part of the work we call ‘capture’ – the period before we even start bidding, when we ask what relationships we have. So definitely think about how you can start building relationships today.
Try to get a coffee date in the diary. You could do things like lunch and learns, like this one, but invite your potential buyers.
I’ve done coffee mornings, breakfast mornings, lunches and evening meals where you invite them into the office and talk about a specific area. If you’re a tech company, for example, you could talk about AI – everybody wants to hear about AI.
Pick a topic like that, invite people into your offices or somewhere else, give a business presentation and have some drinks and pizza at the end. It doesn’t have to cost a fortune, and it’s a really good way of building relationships with these key people.
It doesn’t matter if there isn’t an opportunity live – don’t wait for one. Start building the relationships now so that when opportunities land, you can say, ‘Hey, how’s it going? I saw this opportunity – could you tell me a bit more about it? We want to put our hat in the ring.’
Trust me, in those informal settings, people will talk – even people from public sector bodies will start talking about the opportunity. Once an opportunity goes live, they can’t talk about it, because they’ll be very on the ball about following public sector regulations.
But any time before that opportunity lands, they’ll talk about it landing and what they foresee from it. So use those informal settings to get as much information as you can from potential buyers.
When it comes to bidding, it doesn’t matter what sector you’re in – whether it’s healthcare, care, security, cleaning or IT and tech services, there is a buyer out there in the public sector. The public sector is huge.
It’s not just the Home Office, the Cabinet Office and your local government boroughs. You’ve got so many arm’s-length bodies, like Defra and MHCLG, and so many smaller bodies that spend a lot with small businesses.
You’ve got the NHS, which is huge, because you’re not just bidding for the NHS – you’re bidding for multiple trusts within it and for individual hospitals. You’re also bidding for schools and universities, so the customer base is enormous.
So start thinking about which public sector organisations you’d like to target. Try to get at least those three down and find those two opportunities to get you started.
I think that’s it – we’ve finished bang on time to allow for some questions. Thank you for taking part, and I hope I didn’t bombard you with too much information.
I tried to keep it simple, because I know bidding can be overwhelming for people who are new to it, especially with language like ITT or RFP. But trust me, when you start getting into it, you’ll see it’s very similar to doing coursework or your dissertation at school.
Take the next step and connect with me on the Enterprise Nation platform. You can find out more about bids on my website, LearnBids, and I’ve also got my own consulting platform, kemisolanke.com. Add me on LinkedIn if you want to hear more from me – I do webinars and talk about this all day, every day.
I’m really passionate about informing small businesses about bids, because so many people don’t know or understand it, or get overwhelmed and think they can’t do it. And you’re leaving money on the table, especially with the changes from the Procurement Act that came into effect.
The government wants to buy more from small businesses like yours. So definitely make sure you’re putting your hat in the ring and going after some of these contracts.
Beth: Amazing, thanks, Kemi. There was so much useful information in there, and I completely appreciate that it’s such a big topic to cover in 30 minutes. Please do connect with Kemi – the links are in the chat.
We’ve got a few minutes for questions, if that’s OK. Lots of thank yous are coming in, Kemi, and someone says it was very informative.
You mentioned the huge potential of the NHS as a customer base, and someone has asked if you can give any examples of NHS portals. At the start of the session, you mentioned all these platforms and portals – does the NHS have a specific one?
Kemi: It really depends. Most of the time, to be honest, you’ll still get NHS opportunities coming through Contracts Finder and Find a Tender, depending on the value of the contract.
But some might only be released through a specific trust, especially if they’re really small. So it’s also about keeping your ear to the ground if you’re working in that space and following the appropriate people on LinkedIn, as there might be smaller ones released just by a specific hospital or trust.
The way the NHS works is a little different – it’s a bit more complex and specialist. It has different arms, like NHS England’s offices and NHS education bodies, and some of them have their own procurement portals you can find information on.
The more you start bidding for opportunities, the more you’ll get to know the various portals. But as I said, nationwide, it’s just huge.
Beth: Someone has just asked in the chat: what about Arts Council England?
Kemi: Arts Council England opportunities should come through Find a Tender. I’ve submitted bids to Arts Council England on behalf of organisations I’ve worked with, and they usually come through many different portals.
As I explained, start with Find a Tender and Contracts Finder. You can set up alerts so opportunities come into your inbox and check it daily, then start moving on to some of the paid platforms.
I’d then recommend you start thinking about frameworks. I didn’t really touch on frameworks, but they’re probably one of the best ways to start getting work from these bodies.
A framework is basically like a tender that lasts, say, four years. You’re not being awarded an actual contract – you’re being awarded the opportunity to contract with specific organisations.
For example, CCS (Crown Commercial Service) is one of the largest framework providers, and it has several variations under it, like RM 26.6 for digital services. Bodies like Arts Council England will use that framework, and you’d apply to them once you’re on it.
To get on the framework, you need to apply and pass some of the things I talked about earlier, like compliance and the legal aspects. You’ll have a lot of compliance to get through, and you’ll still have to answer questions about the services you’re trying to deliver. Then they’ll put out a specific tender for a specific opportunity, and you can apply for that tender to compete.
Another thing is called a DPS, or dynamic purchasing system. A DPS is similar to a framework, but it doesn’t have a set beginning and end date.
A framework might have a four-week tender period to get onto it, and it’s only for, say, 20, 50 or 200 suppliers – you’re selected, and then it’s done. A DPS is different: you can join at any time, it could last anywhere from four to eight years, and you can just apply to get onto it.
For example, there’s the CCS learning and development DPS. If you’re a learning and development provider, deliver education or courses, or have a small school, you can apply for that.
Once you’re on that DPS, buyers can find you – but you wouldn’t wait for them to. You’d do what I talked about earlier on the business development (BD) side and build relationships.
Let’s say you want to approach the DWP – the Jobcentre – to deliver job readiness courses for unemployed young people. Because you’re on that learning and development DPS, you’d send your proposals, try to get meetings, hold discovery calls and do all those BD activities to warm up the client. They’ll then say, ‘OK, that sounds good – we’ll procure your services through the learning and development DPS, since you’re on there.’
If you’re an IT organisation, there’s one called G-Cloud, which is basically your catalogue being put onto a marketplace for government bodies, so they can almost shop for you. They might then say, ‘We’ve got this tender coming out, and we’re only sending it to five suppliers. You’re one we’ve identified because your keywords match ours – could you submit a tender?’
Those are really good opportunities for getting in the door, especially things like G-Cloud, where they find you just because you’re on there. So frameworks and DPSs are also important for attracting buyers.
Beth: Amazing, thank you. I know we’re out of time, but we’ve had a few more questions come in, so I wonder if we could do just one more. Sorry to everyone if we haven’t had a chance to answer your question, but please do connect with Kemi afterwards.
Paul says, ‘I’ve noticed that contracts often need quite complex insurance policies that can be out of reach for a lot of micro businesses. Is that true?’
Kemi: No, not true at all. What you’ve got to understand is that some tenders are put out specifically to attract small businesses and some are just for large businesses.
Some can even exclude larger businesses. I had a tender, for example, that specified you had to have delivered contract values over £20 million, and I was working for a fairly large organisation that didn’t have a contract of that value at the time, so it couldn’t bid.
So some contracts have different requirements – it’s just a matter of looking at them. This year, I had a bid for Defra where they specifically said they didn’t want to work with any large system integrators; they were looking for something innovative and fresh and wanted to work with smaller organisations.
Those ones aren’t going to make things overly complex. Usually, the insurance required – for that learning and development framework I just discussed, for example – is your basic company insurance, like public liability insurance. A new one that’s been requested a lot lately is cyber security insurance, which you can add on when you’re arranging your company insurance.
So focus on the basics. Something that sometimes changes is the amount of cover you need in those categories, so look at that depending on what you’re bidding for.
Even large organisations sometimes have to change their insurance to meet the requirements of a particular opportunity, so never let that stop you. And if a tender is asking for something a bit strange with insurance, that contract isn’t tailored for small businesses, so you don’t have to worry about it.
Beth: That makes sense. Brilliant, thank you so much, Kemi. Lots of thank yous are coming through in the chat.
I know we’re over time, but I hope everyone found that useful. As I say, please do connect with Kemi afterwards, as I know a lot of you had questions we didn’t get round to answering today.
Just as a reminder, you’ll receive this recording later today. I know there’s a lot of information, so please do go away and have a look through it again.
Thank you for joining, and thank you, Kemi, so much for your time today. We’ll see you at the next one. Bye, everyone.
Kemi: Take care. Bye-bye.
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