Building an intentional career in tendering and bid management is rarely something people plan. Most submission professionals fall into it, then realise they’ve built a whole identity around deadlines, stakeholder management, and staying calm while everything shifts. In this episode of Chasing the Win, I’m joined by Veronica Simeoni, a strategic pursuits and submissions leader with close to three decades across water, transport, civil infrastructure and building.

We talk about what actually keeps people in this profession for the long haul and Veronica keeps coming back to curiosity. Not as a nice trait, but as a practical advantage in tendering, because the subject matter changes constantly and the best bid teams keep learning. If you work in infrastructure bids, you’ll recognise that feeling of seeing a project come out of the ground and knowing you helped win it.

We also get into what separates competent bid writing from exceptional submissions management. Veronica is blunt about the real skill being maturity with people, especially when you’re coordinating SMEs, managing review gates and adapting without drama when the goalposts move. We cover bid planning, capture management, Bronze Silver Gold reviews, and why tendering needs to be treated like a project with milestones and a critical path, not an emergency.

Finally, we talk about culture, leadership, and the future of bids. From setting expectations early on major pursuits to choosing the right bid manager, and even the basics of creating a functional bid environment that respects the team. We also unpack AI in tendering, including why AI tools are powerful for information retrieval and content libraries, but still need human judgement, empathy, and value proposition thinking to win work.

CHAPTER MARKERS

00:00 Introduction

04:03 Skills of Great Tenderers

06:40 Calm in the Chaos

08:01 MBA Research Findings

09:42 Making Tendering a Career

11:30 Treat Bids Like Projects

13:34 Collaboration and Leadership

15:51 Respect the Bid Team

18:02 AI in Bid Management

21:56 Advice for Newcomers

Connect with Veronica

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/veronica-simeoni-bb466560/

Connect with Deb at Tender Plus

Web: https://www.tenderplusconsulting.com.au/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/tender-plus/