When You Win, and When You Do Not
What to do the moment a buyer awards a contract to you, and how to use Bid Loss Insights to learn from every bid that did not go your way.
What you'll learn
- Take the right steps immediately after a buyer awards a contract to you
- View the Award notice and message the buyer to confirm next steps
- Rate a buyer after delivering on a contract
- Use Bid Loss Insights to understand why a bid was not selected and improve
Every bid has one of two outcomes: you win, or you do not. Neither outcome is the end of the story. A win comes with responsibilities, a buyer to coordinate with, and an opportunity to build a reputation that brings more work. A loss is a data point, often more useful than a win when you know how to read it.
Why this matters
How you handle outcomes determines whether a single bid becomes a one-time contract or the start of a lasting buyer relationship. Responding promptly when you win, delivering well, and rating the buyer builds the track record that your Trust Score reflects. Using Bid Loss Insights after a loss gives you specific, actionable information that generic rejection emails never do.
When you win
The moment a buyer awards your bid, your request moves to the Won tab on both the Opportunities page and the Bids page. You also receive a notification.
View the Award
Click View Award on the won card. The Award notice contains the formal confirmation from the buyer: the contract value they confirmed, the line items they accepted, and any notes they attached to the award. Read it carefully because it reflects exactly what the buyer expects you to deliver.
If there is a discrepancy between what you priced and what the Award notice says, address it with the buyer immediately in Chat before any delivery begins.
Message the buyer to confirm next steps
The Chat button on a won card opens a direct message with the buyer's company. Use it to:
- Confirm that you have received the Award and accepted it.
- Agree on delivery logistics, site access, or handover procedures.
- Clarify anything in the Award notice that needs confirmation before you start work.
- Share a point of contact on your side if the buyer is coordinating with someone specific.
All messages go through the platform. You see the buyer's company name; they see yours. Neither party's email address is shared in Chat.
The buyer may also initiate Chat with you after awarding. Check your notifications and the Chat panel on the won card to make sure you have not missed an incoming message.
Deliver and rate the buyer
After you deliver on the contract, you can rate the buyer on the platform. Click the rating prompt that appears on the won card in the Won tab on your Bids page.
The rating covers two stages:
- Process: how well the buyer ran the sourcing process, clarity of the brief, responsiveness, and fair evaluation.
- Performance: how the buyer performed after the award, payment terms, communication, and professionalism during delivery.
Both stages become available at the right time in the engagement cycle. Completing both gives the buyer a complete rating profile that helps other suppliers know what to expect.
Buyers who know they will be rated tend to engage more fairly and pay on time. Rating every buyer you work with, both the good and the difficult ones, makes the network more trustworthy for everyone.
What the buyer sees when they award your bid
After issuing the Award, the buyer sees your bid move to Awarded status on their Requests page. They can see the Award notice they sent you, and they receive a notification when you open Chat. They can also rate your company at the end of the engagement, their rating contributes to your Trust Score.
When you are not selected
If the buyer chose a different supplier, the bid appears as Not Selected on the Lost tab of your Bids page.
This outcome does not affect your Trust Score. Buyers make decisions based on price, fit, completeness, and timing. Losing a bid is normal and expected, even for experienced suppliers.
Bid Loss Insights
Open the Bid Loss Insights panel
Open any lost bid on the Lost tab and click Bid Loss Insights. The analysis runs on the full context of your bid and the outcome of the request. Each use draws on AI credits from your balance.
Previously generated insights are saved and reload automatically when you return to a lost bid, so you are not charged again to re-read an analysis you already ran.
Read the three analysis sections
The Bid Loss Insights panel returns three sections:
- Why you likely lost, the probable reasons based on your bid relative to the winning outcome. This might be price, completeness, category fit, questionnaire answers, or timing.
- How you compared, an honest look at where your bid ranked and on which dimensions it was strong or weak relative to the field.
- Tips for next time, specific, actionable things you can change on your next bid for similar requests.
These findings are based on the request outcome and your bid data. They are structured to be direct rather than diplomatic because vague feedback does not help you win more work.
Apply the learnings to your next bid
The most useful thing you can do with Bid Loss Insights is find the pattern. A single loss might have a single cause. Two or three losses in the same category with the same feedback usually point to something systemic, pricing structure, a missing certification, or a habitual gap in questionnaire answers, that you can fix once and apply to every future bid.
After running insights on a lost bid, open the request on the Opportunities page to see who won. Their company profile in Discover may give you additional context about how buyers evaluate suppliers in your category.
How winning and losing both build your profile
Every bid you submit and every contract you complete adds to your track record on the platform. Wins contribute to your Trust Score directly. Losses do not reduce it. What matters is your response rate, how promptly you engage with buyers, whether you deliver on the contracts you win, and the ratings you earn from buyers. The Trust Score reflects all of those over time.
What good looks like
- Message the buyer within 24 hours of an award. A fast response signals professionalism and sets the tone for the delivery relationship.
- Read the Award notice before delivering anything. Ensure the contract value and scope match what you agreed in the bid. Raise any discrepancy immediately.
- Rate every buyer you work with. Ratings go both ways, the more you rate, the more useful the network becomes for you and for other suppliers.
- Run Bid Loss Insights on every lost bid, not just the ones that surprised you. Even expected losses often contain one specific finding that changes how you bid next time.
- Treat a loss as data, not failure. The suppliers who improve fastest are the ones who read their loss insights and change one thing at a time.
Next steps
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