About Me

Originally from London, Ontario, I am a proud graduate of Carleton University in Ottawa, where I studied political science and international relations. After a few years of living and travelling abroad, I settled to stay in the National Capital Region.

My start in public procurement was unorthodox. I started as a consultant in a private company, offering public procurement advice to governments across Canada and around the world. That meant that not only did I become an expert in public procurement, but I also had to write bids to provide procurement advisory services through most of my career.

Following my consulting career, I was a Category Specialist for an organization in the Federal Government of Canada (as a bidder, I would have been the "Contracting Authority" to you).

Over the last 10+ years, as both a consultant and government employee, I have reviewed and evaluated hundreds of proposals, and had countless conversations with Bidders about their proposals. I have seen sub-optimal proposals score well because they understood how to optimize their bid to get points, and I have seen excellent ideas get put aside because the authors did not understand what they needed to do in the request for proposal process.

These results are not positive for the companies that take time and effort to prepare their bids, and they are not effective for governments who then lose out on potentially excellent, creative solutions to their problems.

Now, I use my expertise to help businesses like yours Hit the Mark with your next proposal.

Jon Mak, President

Services

Standards and Guarantees

Every evaluation is done by people, interpreted by people, and everyone interprets things differently. I may feel like something deserves a particular score, or will meet a mandatory, but the evaluation committee will make up their own mind! So as much as I would like to guarantee a win for you every time, it is not possible.

Remember that you know your business best. When we start out, I will start by getting to know what your business is, and what you want to offer, gathering everything you have about your business we need to include. I take your information, and work my magic to turn it in to the best bid I know how.

Working with Making Better Bids, we guarantee to be:

Efficient -- We will never take longer than necessary to get the work done.
Effective -- We will provide material that will have the greatest impact based on what we know.
Transparent -- Whether its analysis of documents, our pricing, or any service we provide, we are always straightforward. You will never wonder where we stand, and if you do, ask and we will give you an honest answer!

Ethics

Coming from the Procurement Profession, I have a strong ethical standard. This means:

I will only work on one bid for any given RFP. You can be guaranteed that I will never work on a bid for you, and your competitor. First come first serve!
If I was involved in developing an RFP, or if I have insider / government knowledge of how an RFP was developed, I will not provide any bid development services due to conflict of interest (real or perceived).
I will always work to get you the best possible result, no matter what.