The start of a new year often brings renewed intent: sharper focus, better prioritisation and stronger returns on effort. Yet for many bid teams, day-to-day reality changes very little. Inboxes fill quickly, tender alerts keep coming, and the number of relevant opportunities continues to grow.

But the question that matters most remains unchanged: Which of these opportunities are worth pursuing?

In 2026, this question has become a strategic one. Competitive advantage does not only come from receiving more relevant bids, but from making better choices and being confident enough to say no. In this blog, we’ll explore how to assess business opportunities more critically and sharpen your go / no-go decisions, so you can focus your efforts where they are most likely to pay off. 

 

From Intuition to Insight: Data-driven Assessment

When deciding which bid to write, bid managers often rely on their experience and intuition. Your gut feeling helps teams to move quickly and draw on what they already know about buyers, markets, and competition. But in a market shaped by volume and complexity, intuition alone is no longer a reliable strategy.

Stronger go / no-go decisions come from combining experience with data. Insight into past wins and losses, buyer behaviour and competitive pressure help teams assess opportunities more objectively and consistently. When this information is readily available, decisions are no longer driven by urgency or habit, but by a clearer understanding of where the real chances lie.

 

5 Areas to Consider In Your Go / No-go Decision

A strong go / no-go decision balances experience with evidence and looks at an opportunity from several perspectives before time and resources are committed. The following five areas help structure that assessment and support clearer bid decision-making.

 

1. Strategic Alignment: Does This Tender Reinforce Our Long-Term Direction?

Every bid reflects a deliberate choice about where your organisation competes. Pursuing tenders outside your strategic focus may deliver short-term revenue, but it often leads to long-term cost through fragmented pipelines and diluted expertise.

When assessing strategic fit, it helps to consider whether a tender aligns with your growth ambitions, priority sectors and target buyers. Looking at where similar opportunities come from, which buyers dominate your pipeline, and where you tend to win over time can add useful perspective when deciding whether an opportunity strengthens your long-term goals.

 

2. Buyer Insight: Do We Understand How This Decision Will Really Be Made?

Evaluation criteria provide a useful framework, but real decisions are shaped by people. Most tenders involve multiple stakeholders with different priorities and levels of influence. Looking at patterns in award, timelines and repeated buyer behaviour across multiple tenders and awards replaces assumptions with insight. 

This context allows you to assess whether your organisation is well positioned in the eyes of the buyer, or whether the opportunity requires a different approach altogether. It can reveal whether a buyer consistently prioritises price over quality, or rewards certain solutions. Knowing this upfront helps determine whether the effort of writing a competitive bid is justified, or whether your resources are better spent elsewhere.

 

3. Win Probability: Do You Have A Credible Path to Winning?

Being able to deliver the work is not the same as being well-positioned to win it. Many bids move forward because teams feel confident in their solution, without fully considering the competitive landscape.

When assessing win probability, it is worth stepping back and asking how competitive the market is, who is likely to bid and who has won similar tenders before. When translating buyer insights with market data, you’ll get a realistic view of your competitive position. Does success depend mainly on pricing or stretching beyond proven strengths? Then that’s an important signal to factor into the decision.

 

4. Pursuit Capability: Do We Have the Resources to Pursue?

Pursuing a bid requires focus, coordination and the right people at the right time. Before committing, you’ll benefit from considering whether you have the capacity to pursue the opportunity properly. Overlapping deadlines, limited expertise availability or stretched bid teams can all affect the quality of a response. If an opportunity cannot be given the focus it requires, that alone is worth questioning whether you should move forward with your bid.  

 

5. Feasibility And Commercial Viability: Would Winning This Be A Success? 

Finally, it helps to look beyond submission and consider what happens if you win. A tender may look manageable on paper, but delivery experience often tells a different story.

Reflecting on how similar contracts have performed in the past - in terms of margins, effort, and delivery risk - can help assess whether the opportunity is sustainable. Risks that are visible during bidding rarely disappear later, and factoring them in early can prevent difficult outcomes after award.

 

How Market Intelligence Helps You Make Confident Decisions

Market Intelligence gives bid teams the context they need to assess opportunities with confidence. By bringing together insight into buyers, competitors and market activity, teams will see how individual opportunities fit into the bigger picture. This added perspective supports stronger go / no-go decisions, challenges assumptions, and makes it easier to focus on the opportunities that truly deserve time and attention.

With Market Intelligence, bid teams can:

• Analyse buyers and markets by filtering procurement data by buyer, sector, region and time period. This will help you identify where activity is concentrated and where demand is growing
• Research competitors and award patterns by seeing which suppliers win which types of contracts, with which values and how often. This will provide a clearer view of competitive positioning.
• Track expiring contracts by identifying when current agreements are coming to an end, enabling teams to prepare early and shape go / no-go decisions before tenders are published.