Andrew Wiseman reports on the latest World Cup action and considers how the result can play out in similar ways during open procurement.
Scotland lost 3-0 to Brazil last night, which, if we are being honest, is not the most shocking sentence ever written about international football.
That is not meant as a dig at Scotland. Far from it. There is something genuinely brilliant about watching a team, a support base and a country throw everything into a game when the odds are stacked against them. The Tartan Army were magnificent. Loud, proud, hopeful, defiant, and still singing long after the game had moved away from them.
But sometimes Brazil are just Brazil. The history is bigger. The reputation is bigger. The shirt feels heavier. The names carry a different kind of weight. Even before a ball is kicked, there is a sense that you are not just playing eleven footballers. You are playing the idea of Brazil.
And because I seem to have developed a worrying habit of turning World Cup matches into market research metaphors, it got me thinking about public sector tenders.
Not the glamorous bit of research. Not the insight, the fieldwork, the analysis or the storytelling, but the bit where you pour days into a proposal, build what feels like a strong approach, assemble a great team, sharpen the method, refine the value, submit the document, and then wait.
Then the email arrives. Unfortunately, on this occasion…
We’ve all been there.
Sometimes you can look back and see exactly why you lost. The method wasn’t quite right. The budget was too high. The response didn’t answer the brief clearly enough. The scoring criteria told you what mattered, and you didn’t quite land it. Painful, but useful. You learn from it.
Other times, it is much harder to take. You had a good approach. You had the right team. You had relevant experience. You understood the challenge. You gave the client something thoughtful, practical and deliverable. You may even have felt, privately, that you had done enough to win.
Then the work goes to someone bigger. Someone with more resource. A longer history in the sector. More frameworks. More case studies. More names on the bench. Someone who looks safer on paper. Someone the client already knows. Someone who once had the research equivalent of Pele.
The strange psychology of procurement
That is the strange psychology of procurement. Public sector tendering is designed to be fair, structured and transparent. And in many ways, it is. The criteria are there. The scoring system is there. The process is there. But when 40, 50 or more submissions land at once, it can start to feel like the World Cup. You are not just trying to be good. You are trying to get noticed in a crowded field where plenty of other teams look organised, experienced and capable too.
But human confidence still plays a role. Buyers have to manage risk. They have to justify decisions internally. They have to feel comfortable that the chosen supplier can deliver, cope with complexity, manage stakeholders, handle scrutiny and not create problems later. In that context, familiarity can become powerful. Scale can become reassuring. Past performance can feel like future certainty.
That does not mean the smaller or less obvious bidder was poor. It might mean they were up against Brazil. This is where tender losses can mess with your head.
Because when you lose a pitch you didn’t deserve to win, you can usually move on quite quickly. The gap is obvious. The lesson is clear. The feedback stings, but it makes sense.
When you lose one you genuinely believed in, it lingers. You replay the answer. You question the wording. You wonder if you should have been bolder, safer, cheaper, more detailed, less detailed, more technical, more human, more like them, less like you.
Some of that reflection is healthy. Some of it is just procurement-induced madness.
Learn the right lessons. And keep believing.
The important thing is not to draw the wrong conclusion. A loss does not always mean your approach was wrong. It does not always mean your team wasn’t strong enough. It does not always mean you should rip up your style and become a pale imitation of the organisation that beat you.
Sometimes the lesson is more specific than that. Maybe you needed to make your experience feel more directly transferable. Maybe you needed to reduce the perceived risk earlier in the response. Maybe the case studies needed to work harder. Maybe the team section needed to do more than list credentials. Maybe the mobilisation plan needed to give the client confidence that you could hit the ground running.
In other words, you don’t have to become Brazil. But you do have to understand why Brazil felt safer.
That is especially true for challenger agencies, specialist teams and organisations trying to break into new areas of public sector work. Spirit matters. Distinctiveness matters. A strong point of view matters. But so does making it easy for the buyer to believe in you.
You have to show the method, but also the control. You have to show the thinking, but also the delivery discipline. You have to show the team, but also the depth around them. You have to show why your approach is better, not just why it is different.
And when you lose, you have to keep the right kind of belief.
Be more like Scotland
That is where Scotland are a useful reminder. Not because losing 3-0 is a moral victory. It isn’t. Not because passion magically levels the playing field. It doesn’t. But because there is something powerful in staying together when the result goes against you. In backing each other. In understanding the gap without being defined by it.
Tendering can be brutal. It can be time-consuming, emotional and occasionally bewildering. You can do a lot right and still not win. You can give a strong performance and still get beaten by reputation, scale or familiarity.
But that cannot be the reason to stop showing up. The job is to learn without spiralling. To improve without losing your voice. To understand what the buyer needed to feel more confident about, then build that into the next response.
Because sometimes you lose because you weren’t good enough. Sometimes you lose because the other team were better. And sometimes, annoyingly, you lose because Brazil are just Brazil.