What is the three-axis test?
It is a go/no-go that asks three questions of every inbound tender. Does this advance the firm you said you want to be. Can you deliver it within the capacity you actually have. Is the contractual and financial downside one you can carry. The answers are scores with working, not adjectives.
selrob uses this model because bid rooms already argue in these three languages. Strategy is the MD’s sentence. Capacity is the delivery lead’s diary. Risk is the insurance certificate and the liability clause. Putting them on one page stops the loudest language from winning.
Why three, not a twenty-row checklist?
Twenty-row checklists die in week one. They are filled in after the team has already started writing, which means they are a record of a decision, not a cause of one. Three axes can be scored before anyone opens the response template.
The detail still exists. It lives under each axis, as the 12 questions. Four questions per axis is enough to stop a fake yes. More than that and people start skipping rows.
Strategy: does this advance the firm you said you want to be?
Strategy is not “we could do this.” Strategy is the sectors, clients, and kinds of work the firm has already named as core, and the kinds it has named as a distraction. If that list does not exist, stop here. You cannot qualify against a posture you have not written down.
Winning should make the next three pursuits easier, or at least not harder. A one-off that pulls specialists off the work you are trying to be known for is a no, however warm the invitation. So is bidding to stay visible. Visibility is not a strategy. It is a habit.
Ask whether the buyer is one you want to be known by in three years. A difficult client on a large contract is still a difficult client. The score should reflect the relationship you will actually have, not the logo on the cover.
Capacity: can you deliver it without starving the work you already have?
Name the delivery lead. If they are not free in the window this needs, the bid is already asking someone else’s clients to wait. “We will hire” is not capacity. Capacity is people on the roster today, plus named partners who have already said yes.
Mandatories sit here, not under risk. If you do not hold the certification, the locality, or the panel seat today, you cannot deliver a conforming bid. Hoping the buyer will waive their own rule is not a plan.
Then count the response itself. A compliant submission in twelve days, written without pulling billable people off live jobs, is a different firm from one that can only do it by emptying the timesheet. The second firm is bidding with tomorrow’s revenue.
Risk: is the downside one you can carry?
Read the liability, indemnity, insurance, payment, and step-in clauses before anyone prices the work. Unlimited consequential loss, uncapped indemnity, and payment terms that make you the client’s bank are not “legal bits.” They are the job.
The right question is not “is there risk.” There is always risk. The question is whether a loss on this contract is a bad month or a bad year, and whether your insurance actually responds to the clauses in this pack. If legal has not read the three clauses that matter, the axis is not a yes. It is a review.
How do the axes interact?
They do not average. A 90 on strategy and a 20 on risk is a no-bid. A 90 on capacity for work that pulls you off the sector you are trying to own is a no-bid. Review exists for a single named uncertainty (a subcontractor, a diary clash, a clause) with a date after which it becomes no.
The scorecard enforces that. So does the fit panel: three rows, a verdict, no blended number pretending to be a decision.