Where Orders Actually Come From: Why Price Isn't the First Thing That Decides

Imagine a Friday evening. You spent two hours calculating what the work would cost, another hour rewriting your message to sound professional, and hit “send” at 11:40 PM. Monday brings a reply. Short. Not a single word about your price - no “too expensive,” no “too cheap,” no “we chose someone else because they quoted less.” It says your proposal is not being considered.

And this is the most unpleasant feeling in all of entrepreneurship: you lost a competition you never actually entered. No comparison, no conversation, no chance to explain anything. You were simply not let through the door where that comparison was taking place.

When this happens two or three times, most people draw the same conclusion - you need to search more actively. One more listings site, one more group, one more search query along the lines of “aufträge finden kostenlos.” The logic makes sense: not enough orders, so look harder. But the problem is almost never that you’re not looking enough. The problem is that you’re preparing for a conversation about price, while they’re checking you for something else.

The word “order” hides two completely different mechanics, and confusing them is the most costly mistake. On the surface everything looks similar: someone needs work done, and there’s you, who can do it. Inside - different rules of the game.

The first world is a private client. A cafe owner, an apartment building manager, a manager at a small firm. Everything there runs on people: someone recommended you, you came, looked around, agreed on terms. The client here has almost no mandatory rules - they can choose anyone, for any reason, can change their mind, can hire someone more expensive because that person is more pleasant to deal with. This isn’t unfairness - it’s simply a different nature of the deal.

The second world is a public procedure - procurement using government or municipal money. Here the client is not free. In Germany, the basic principles of such procedures are written into the law against restrictions on competition - GWB. Article 97 (§ 97 GWB) states directly: public contracts are awarded under competitive conditions and through transparent procedures, and participants must be treated equally, unless otherwise permitted by EU law or federal law.

Read that again slowly, because everything else follows from it. “Treated equally” means not only that you can’t be screened out because someone doesn’t like you. It also means the reverse: no exception can be made for you. They can’t accept your document later than everyone else’s. They can’t “look the other way” when you didn’t submit something, even if your work is genuinely good. Equal treatment works both ways, and that’s exactly the part entrepreneurs most often experience as bureaucratic nitpicking.

From this comes the first practical decision to make before you even open the first listings portal: decide which world you’re currently searching in. If private - invest in being known and trusted. If public - invest in having no grounds for rejection. These are two different jobs, and doing both at once without distinguishing between them is the fastest way to waste several months.

In the German procedure there’s a concept called Eignung - eligibility. This isn’t a general assessment of your firm - not “are you a good craftsperson or not.” It’s the answer to a very narrow question: is this particular business capable of properly carrying out this particular contract.

Article 122 GWB states: public contracts go to professional and capable - that is, eligible - businesses that have not been excluded under §§ 123 or 124. And then the most important part: eligibility criteria are set by the contracting authority for the specific contract.

This is where a newcomer’s intuition breaks down. You think there’s some single exam you take once and that’s it: get certified as a “proper company” - and from then on you’re let in everywhere. In reality the criteria are new every time, because the contracting authority writes them for their specific need. For cleaning an office building - Gebäudereinigung - eligibility means one thing. For installing ventilation in a school - something completely different. The same company can be eligible in the first case and ineligible in the second, and there’s nothing contradictory about that.

Why You Read the Criteria Before Opening the Calculator

The practical conclusion is simple and a little unromantic: read the criteria before calculating the price. Not “I’ll estimate costs first and then check the conditions,” but the other way around. Because if the listing says you need documented experience with a specific type of facility and you don’t have it, your price has zero significance. No one will even get to reading it.

Take a hypothetical example. Iryna has a crew of four people and has been cleaning apartment building entryways for three years. She sees a listing for cleaning a municipal kindergarten and happily starts calculating square meters. She prices herself lower than everyone else - she’s small, her overhead is lower. The application gets rejected. Not because a low price looks suspicious, but because the contracting authority’s criteria asked for documented experience with facilities where children are present, and a description of the procedure for working with disinfectants. Iryna didn’t submit that - she never even read that far, because she’d rushed to the calculator.

A second hypothetical example - Taras, HVAC installation. He does have experience, and specifically on public-sector facilities. But the criteria required proof of staff qualifications, and one of his key installers is set up as a separate subcontractor with their own documents. Taras decided this was a formality and submitted whatever was on hand. The formality turned out to be an eligibility criterion.

The difference between Iryna and Taras is important and neatly captures two typical mistakes. Iryna didn’t read - she assumed the main thing in a listing was the scope of work. Taras read, but decided that what was written wasn’t serious, that it was standard boilerplate no one actually checks. The second mistake is easier to fix - all it takes is believing once that in this world, what’s written means exactly what’s written.

There’s another category of reasons why a business doesn’t make it into a procedure, and it can’t be solved by being more careful with paperwork. No matter how many folders you compile, these reasons stay right where they are.

Article 123 GWB calls these zwingende Ausschlussgründe - mandatory grounds for exclusion. The law states directly: the contracting authority excludes a business from participation at any stage of the procedure if it becomes aware of a final conviction or an imposed fine for one of the offenses listed in that article.

Pay attention to two phrases. “At any stage” - meaning not only at the entry point; this can happen even after you’ve already moved further along. And “excludes,” not “may exclude” - the contracting authority has no room for goodwill here, even if they like you and your proposal is the best one.

This article rarely applies directly to a first-time entrepreneur. But it explains well why the entire system looks so formal on the surface. A contracting authority managing public money is required to check not just how you work, but whether you can be admitted in the first place. That’s why they ask for documentation rather than taking your word for it. Not because they personally distrust you - they simply aren’t allowed to take anyone’s word for it.

And here - the nicer part of the law. The same § 97, paragraph 4, says that the interests of mid-sized businesses, Mittelstand, must be taken into account first and foremost when placing public contracts. This isn’t a guarantee, it’s not a quota, and no one promises you any result. But it means the system is not, in principle, designed to filter out small businesses as a class. It’s designed so small businesses can get in - provided they’re prepared.

The most common real cause of failure isn’t ignorance of the law - it’s a last-minute scramble. A listing appeared on Wednesday, the deadline is Friday, and you’re chasing paperwork instead of thinking about the actual work.

That’s why the main work gets done when there’s no listing in front of you at all. This sounds dull, because on those days nothing is on fire and other things seem more important. But it’s exactly those quiet days that will determine whether you make it in time or not.

Set up a single folder - physical or in the cloud, doesn’t matter - and keep a basic company profile there: registration documents, status confirmations, insurance papers, personnel and equipment data, a brief description of completed work with contacts of clients willing to confirm it. This isn’t “a tender package” - it’s just your portfolio as a legal entity. Go through it once a quarter to see what’s expired.

How to Work Through a Specific Listing

Next comes the criteria list. When you read a listing, write out every requirement the contracting authority named as an eligibility condition in a column, and next to each one put one of three things: “have it,” “have it but needs updating,” or “don’t have it.” If there’s something critical in the “don’t have it” column - don’t apply and don’t spend your evening on calculations. Instead, write that item down as a task for the coming months. This way rejections become a list of things to build, not a feeling of defeat.

Third - a person and a deadline. Every submission needs one name who is responsible for it, and a date by which everything is ready. Not “by the deadline,” but before the deadline - because in this world, being late is not something you negotiate.

Fourth - a log. A simple table: where you applied, when, how it ended, and what the stated reason was. After a while it will tell you more than any advice: you’ll see that eight out of ten rejections happened for the same reason. Looking at patterns like this across channels - not by gut feel, but from recorded data - is exactly what analytics does: it shows which order channels actually get you to the review stage, and which ones just eat up your evenings.

And fifth, the most boring and most useful thing. Most of what goes into every application repeats from one submission to the next: the same company information, the same descriptions, the same attachments in a slightly different order. When this gets assembled by hand from scratch every time, a mistake is just a matter of time. When recurring documents are pulled from a single source, you spend your attention on what’s actually unique about this particular contract. This is exactly where automating document preparation makes sense - not to look modern, but so that on Friday evening you’re not searching for where the current version of a certificate is saved.

Change the way you look at listings. You’re not hunting for an opportunity - you’re preparing for a check that happens before any conversation about money. The contracting authority first establishes whether you can be admitted and whether you’re eligible for this specific work, and only then compares numbers. Everything you do before submitting affects the first part. Everything you do with the calculator affects only the second.

This is, incidentally, good news. You can only lower your price so far - you won’t go below cost, and if you do, you’ll pay for it with your own earnings. But readiness compounds: every document compiled, every confirmed project, every gap closed from the list stays with you and works for every future submission.

The first step today is one step, and it requires neither money nor a lawyer. Take the last listing that interested you and calculate nothing. Just write out in a column all the requirements for participants listed there, and honestly mark each one “have it” or “don’t have it.” That column will be your real plan for the coming months - far more accurate than any search for new listings sites.

This article explains the general logic, not your specific procedure: every procurement’s conditions are read individually, and for legal questions about a specific listing, consult a specialist.