Tendify · Voice of the Buyer

SECTION ONEObjections, ranked by how many different buyers raised them

Counted by distinct company, not by mention. One buyer repeating himself counts once.

“We already find our own tenders” 13+ BUYERS

The dominant objection by a distance. Almost every company already runs a keyword monitor, a national portal alert, or something in-house.

“I have a similar service running and it finds similar tenders as you do. I will pass for now.”
Sebastian Grigander, Kreditz (SE)

“We are working on it, and we do have it set up, and for four years we are using it, so the keywords and all the stuff like this, just auto search, and then you get the complete list every day of the tenders… So we don't really need to change it.”
Wojciech Strzałkowski, Seedia (PL) — on the call, 26 Aug

“I highly doubt that. Very few relevant public tenders aren't sent to us directly from the customer in a year.”
Mattias Lindblom, Head of Account Management, Mediaflow (SE)

“We already have inhouse what you offer. We have our AI automations from scrapping tenders to evaluation and writing offers.”
Burcovschi David

What works against it: concede the home market and sell the ones they cannot read. Language does the work, not coverage. It converted Xdav to a trial.

And the corollary: six buyers said unprompted that domestic matches are worthless to them. Two of them — Artifik and Xdav — only engaged once the matches went cross-border.

“Those aren't our tenders” 6+ BUYERS

Buyers judge match precision in one glance, and they do not give a second one.

“Those tenders are actually very far from what we do and work on usually and our expertise is in totally different areas.”
Dr inż. Nikodem Czechowski, CTO, BulletProve (PL)

“None of those are close to what we work on, i.e. sustainability action plans and GHG emissions modeling / forecasting.”
Joonas Pekkanen, Kausal (FI)

“The things I've got here is a general supply of liquid nitrogen, that's not us… Drying cabinets, that's not what we do either.”
Fredrik Wernstedt, CEO, Direkttest (SE) — reading his own match list live on the call

The mechanism behind it: a company's procurement category describes what the buyer purchased, not what the supplier sells. The award title says what they sell. Seeding a monitor from the category sends it to the wrong market with total confidence.

“It's too expensive” 2 FOR · 1 AGAINST

“Honestly, 149 is very expensive for considering what we look at… right now we pay, I think it's 400 or 390 per year on the platform… being really honest with you, I don't see a match due to pricing mainly.”
Rodrigo Nunes de Souza, Innoarea (ES)

Nevontis named a local provider at roughly a third of the price. But one buyer did the arithmetic himself, unprompted, and reached the opposite conclusion:

“If there were six or seven extra tenders a month that we didn't see that are possible, that's six or seven leads. And that would be more than you'd pay, more than 150 euros for that.”
Niall Fennell, Ronspot (IE)

This is an anchor problem, not a value problem. Buyers who count tenders found compare EUR149 against a EUR30–50 national keyword tool and it looks expensive. Buyers who count leads gained reach for the calculator and find it cheap. The pricing conversation is a framing conversation.

“I don't trust AI to make the call” 2 BUYERS, ONE EMPHATIC

“If you participate and if there goes something wrong, the company might just disastrously disappear in the process. And by that we don't really consider ourselves capable of trusting the AI process right now.”
Wojciech Strzałkowski, Seedia (PL)

“Someone has to read it and he's making the decision, not the AI… I did it a couple of times, it's working like 50-50, not going to lie.”
Same call

“This value is nothing for me because of the thing that it may suggest… I need to double and triple check it at the end, and sometimes, unfortunately, it is wrong.”
Same call

To a person personally liable for the bid, an AI that suggests adds verification work rather than removing it. This buyer had already tested AI and measured it as a coin flip. Answering him needs a measured accuracy figure, not an adjective.

“Reviewing tenders is my job” 4 COMPANIES

“I don't need to pay someone to review tenders and tell me what to bid for. I am best placed to do this. I also am very busy and not currently looking for new work.”
Kate Wilkinson, Managing Consultant, about|face Consulting (IE)

“Your proposal is to participate in a chain of information transformation into added value. But this is the work of sales department. I would prefer to avoid this.”
Antanas Mitašiūnas

Consultancies and one-person advisory shops produce the most hostile replies in the whole corpus. Their expertise is what the product displaces. This is a targeting question, not a messaging one.

“There are no tenders in our category” 3+ BUYERS

“Our normal problem is that there are no tenders… usually it's built on trust and connections, and then we sort of work with the researchers for years and years… that one tender that you found was only because they sort of knew what supplier they wanted, and it was then listed because the size of the project was so large that they had to put out the tender.”
Fredrik Wernstedt, CEO, Direkttest (SE)

“We work in very much a competitive niche. Tenders only come once in a while that are suitable. But I am always happy to be convinced otherwise.”
Ingo Aicher, Jones AV (UK)

A single public award can be a formality wrapped around a supplier already chosen. More than one win, spread across more than one buyer, is the signal that a company genuinely competes.

Data residency disqualifies them abroad 1 BUYER, 3 COUNTRIES

“I've met with public entities in Canada and they told me, Philippe, your tool looks amazing, but if you don't have data hosted in Canada, we cannot work together. I've met a similar company in Denmark. I had the same with Luxembourg.”
Philippe Corbisier, Leexi (BE)

He gated his own upgrade to full European coverage on evidence: show me the share of bids where in-country hosting is not required. That evidence would unlock a tier upgrade, and it probably generalises to every SaaS company in the book.

Capacity, not interest 9 REPLIES

“We are already filling documentation for ZZZS tenders with partners.”
Vladimir Rančić, Xdav (SI)

“This is interesting but I am a one man show and only do this part time, so some tenders are not ideal as they require more time than I can dedicate.”
9 Lives H&S

Not rejections. The bottleneck is bid-writing hours, not tender discovery. Whatever cuts the cost of responding reaches these buyers. More listings do not.

The two-sided conflict 1 BUYER, STRATEGIC

“It's important to be clear on what side you're on, because you should be suspected to do dirty business, right? You're providing bidders with more information than other bidders.”
Håvard Tamburplass, Artifik (NO), who sells to the contracting-authority side

Raised politely and not dropped when waved away. Worth a settled answer before the question arrives from someone less friendly.

SECTION TWOWhat they ask for

One request dominates everything else, and it is the same request in every language.

The tenders, before the call

Eight of twenty positive replies in the August window and roughly fourteen of twenty-four in July. It is still arriving weekly.

“Share the 3 headlines please and we can arrange a chat if theyre relevant.”
Christopher Brown, KPMG Ireland

“Share please, let's see if you found something which I haven't.”
Benedikt Breiling, EnterpriseDB

“Please give me an example so I can check if the tender fits us.”
Jāzeps Linde, Tapbox (LV)

“Can you send the results without the meeting, so we can see what you have to offer first?”
Simon Felix, Ateleris (CH)

“Sure, if you send me one that you think is relevant for us, I'll have the call and likely subscribe if it is relevant.”
Olav Akrawi, Arx Compliance (NO)

“I'm interested, but before scheduling a meeting, could you please send me the details of the three tenders you mentioned, including their names (or reference numbers), deadlines, and why you [think they fit].”
Artur Osman, AtletSport

The buyer's test never changes: did you find something I did not? Everything else in the sale is downstream of passing it.

Cross-border only. The home market is not the product.

“If I could request that the 3 matched open tenders are not from Ireland, that would be great.”
Niall Fennell, Ronspot (IE)

“Relevant data for other European markets to support our expansion strategy.”
Håvard Tamburplass, Artifik (NO)

“We are interested in reviewing public tenders from nearby countries that are within a few hours' drive.”
Vladimir Rančić, Xdav (SI) — naming Austria, Italy, Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia

Neighbours by driving distance, not by market size. Xdav named a map of where a project manager can get to and back.

Not to miss the rare one

“For me, better is that I really don't miss something. I have always the fear that I miss one or the other tender.”
Volker Zimmermann, Neocosmo (DE)

He is buying insurance, not efficiency. He said this in response to a pitch about saving time and collaborating, and named the mismatch himself on the call. For a buyer in a category with few, large, infrequent tenders, “never miss one” is worth far more than “save an hour”.

The tender read for them, not just found

“I'd want to read the tender to understand whether we could pursue it.”
Stefan van Loon, Climetric (NL) — booked 29 minutes later

Finding is the cheap half. The expensive half is the afternoon spent discovering you do not qualify.

Proof about the market, before they commit

Philippe (Leexi) asked for a custom cut of the research report as a condition of upgrading.
Pierre-Antoine (Leexi) asked for the percentage of winners who are local to each country.
Vladimir (Xdav) asked for client win rates, domestic versus international.
Olav (Arx) asked to see a closed tender's full documentation.

Four buyers asked for evidence about the market rather than features. None of the four has an answer waiting for them.

A video instead of a call. Integrations instead of a new pipeline.

“Please record me a video of system work. No space at the moment to schedule a call in coming 3 weeks.”
Piotr Hołubowicz, CEO, Seedia (PL)

Niall wants HubSpot deal-stage sync. Volker declined the pipeline half outright because his team already lives in Zoho. The monitoring half sells on its own; the workflow half competes with a CRM they have already bought.

SECTION THREEWhat lands

“First of all, very nice cold email strategy. Well done.”
Philippe Corbisier, Leexi (BE) — opening the call

“It does look quite powerful, because what it would take to try go and search through all those databases would be huge.”
Niall Fennell, Ronspot (IE)

“Which tender did we win?”
Christian Strøyberg, CEO, Industriprint (DK) — buyers often do not know their own award history

A named, open tender landing fast. Every thread where the first reply carried real named tenders booked the same day.
Their own award, named back to them. It proves the data is real before any claim is made.
An honest nil. One buyer told there was nothing for him volunteered the richest market intelligence in the entire corpus in the same reply.
The scale of the search, once they picture doing it by hand.
Language coverage. Raised unprompted by the Slovenian buyer as his single blocker.
The award-notice idea for companies that supply the winner rather than bid themselves.

SECTION FOURWhat repels them

“Everybody hates Tender platforms.”
Niall Fennell, Ronspot (IE)

Said cheerfully, by a buyer who then took a trial. The category starts underwater.

A question where they expected the goods. One buyer who asked to see matches and got a qualifying question instead killed the thread in under three hours.
Closed or expired notices. One buyer checked all three he was sent and found every one had already closed. He is now the most decorated sceptic in the book.
A description without a notice number. Buyers cannot verify prose. They can verify a publication number and a deadline.
Domestic matches. Six buyers, unprompted, across three countries.
A promise that ends at a signup wall. Interest evaporates at the exact moment it peaks.
AI framed as making the decision rather than preparing it.

SECTION FIVEHow these companies actually operate

The most useful material in the research, and the least visible from outside.

Nobody owns tender search

“No one is responsible. Right now, from time to time, we have Philippe and some of the others from the enterprise team that check if there's some open things. We don't check regularly and since we don't have every website of each country for the tenders, we usually don't check them.”
Pierre-Antoine Thomas-Caulier, AE, Leexi (BE)

Where nobody owns it, there is no incumbent to displace and no switching cost. Where somebody does own it, they are personally liable, have four years of muscle memory, and are the hardest sale in the book. Two completely different sales, and the qualifying question is simply “who checks?”

They already have something, and often built it themselves

“Yes, we use Claude AI. We have created our own agent for writing Tenders… It saves so much time because it contains our content.”
Volker Zimmermann, Neocosmo (DE)

Incumbents named across the corpus: national keyword monitors, a paid German crawler, a Spanish regional platform, a Lithuanian feed, in-house AI agents, plus inbound and framework channels that bypass tendering entirely.

Channels no feed can see

“In Latvia we also have a local procurement system where we're listed as an official partner for self-service solutions, so government companies can procure our solution directly through it, and that won't show up on any third-party platforms.”
Jāzeps Linde, Tapbox (LV)

Leexi is referenced through UGAP and other French central purchasing bodies and describes itself as “relying mostly on inbound so far, which is a very luxurious place to sit.”

Two motions, not one

“When the general contractor is on, we can pursue the sales by contacting them, offering their products and they have to pay us first, like prepayment for us.”
Wojciech Strzałkowski, Seedia (PL)

The strongest product idea in the research, and it surfaced live on that call: for a company that supplies the winner rather than bidding as prime, an award notice tells them who just won a contract they can sell into. Award data stops being research and becomes a lead source.

The real constraint is often capital, not discovery

“When you do the tender, you have to have your own budget to start the production… because in most of the cases, you are paid after you complete the tender.”
Wojciech Strzałkowski, Seedia (PL)

Cross-border is blocked by presence, not by discovery

“The healthcare industry in each country is extremely locked down locally, and without a local presence it's almost impossible to break into.”
Jāzeps Linde, Tapbox (LV)

“If you're entering a market, you're entering it to be there, right? You have to have a long-term perspective and you have to put in a lot of resources to win that market.”
Håvard Tamburplass, Artifik (NO)

Team size does not track award value

One company holds a EUR669,713 award with two people and bids three or four times a year in one country. Another describes itself as “a small company” while employing German, Italian, Spanish and French speakers, so language was explicitly not its blocker. Coverage was.

How they buy

Buyer	Stated path
Philippe, Leexi (BE)	Free trial, then monthly “so we don't take too much risk”, then annual after three to five months for the discount
Niall, Ronspot (IE)	14-day trial, asked for it twice, self-serve evaluation
Vladimir, Xdav (SI)	Free monitors first, decide on results, timing on his calendar
Piotr, Seedia (PL)	“If that catches Polish tenders well then we could switch from current solution”

Every one of them names the same gate: show me the matches over one to two weeks, then I decide. Nobody buys on the demo. They buy on the feed.

The best replies arrive by internal forward

Four of the strongest conversations in the period started when the original recipient passed the email to somebody else. One arrived through a generic group alias and reached a VP of Sales. The person who opens the email is frequently not the person who answers it.

SECTION SIXPrice and value, in buyers' own numbers

Buyer	Their reference point
Innoarea (ES)	Incumbent platform at EUR390–400 per year
Nevontis (AT)	Local provider at “one third of the price”
Ronspot (IE)	Six or seven missed tenders a month is “more than you'd pay, more than 150 euros”
Seedia (PL)	Target contract size EUR1M–1.5M
MobilityLabel (NL)	Four public wins between EUR375k and EUR675k

The same price reads two ways, and the gap between them is the commercial argument. Against a EUR33/month keyword alert, EUR149 is 4.5x. Against one extra qualified opportunity per quarter on a EUR400k contract, it rounds to zero. Nobody who framed it the second way objected to the price.

SECTION SEVENOpen questions the research cannot answer

A real buyer asked each of these and none has been answered. Every one is worth more than another feature.

What is the client win rate, domestic versus international? Asked directly by Xdav, and Leexi gated an upgrade on something similar. A single honest number would answer the most common objection in Section One.
What share of European public bids do not require in-country data hosting? Philippe at Leexi named this as his condition for buying full European coverage.
What percentage of winners in each country are local? Asked by Pierre-Antoine at Leexi. This is the cross-border argument, quantified.
How accurate is the document analysis, measured? The AI-trust objection cannot be answered with adjectives. The buyer who raised it had already measured his own attempts at 50-50.
Which customers can be named in writing, and in which industries? A reference from a buyer's own sector is the fastest way past the incumbent objection.

Method. Eight recorded demo calls transcribed in full, plus every inbound reply in the outreach inbox between 16 June and 1 September 2026: 1,725 messages, filtered to 157 genuine human replies and classified. Quotes are copied character-for-character from transcripts and reply bodies and verified against source. Counts are by distinct company, never by mention.

Prepared by Maxionlabs for Tendify · 1 September 2026