Why Social Value and ESG is the highest-return investment in your business development

Every Contractor Has the Same Problem

You know how to do the work. You’ve proven it for years. Your teams are good, your projects get delivered, and your clients come back. The problem is –  so does everyone else’s.

It’s easy to demonstrate technical capability, and prices are broadly similar across shortlisted bidders, the question that decides who wins is no longer who can do the job. It’s who can offer something beyond the job.

Most contractors, when they want to grow, reach for the same levers. Hire another salesperson. Redesign the website. Run some LinkedIn ads. Sponsor a trade event. These are not bad ideas. But they are expensive, slow to pay off, and critically, they do nothing to change the scoring when your quote is sitting in a competitive tender, or on a customer’s desk.

The organisations that are leading in Social Value win because it creates stronger businesses, stronger partnerships, and stronger communities.

There is a business development tool that directly influences whether you win contracts, whether private clients choose you over a competitor, and whether principal contractors want you on their team. It costs a fraction of what most companies spend on marketing. And the remarkable thing is that all of the raw material already exists inside your business.

It’s Social Value. And for an contractor, it is the single highest-return investment you can make in your commercial growth.

The Rules Have Changed. Most Contractors Haven’t Noticed.

The Procurement Act 2023 is the biggest change to UK public procurement in more than thirty years. It replaced the old Most Economically Advantageous Tender – MEAT – with Most Advantageous Tender – MAT. That single word change matters enormously. It means buyers are now explicitly permitted to assess  Social Value alongside price and quality when awarding contracts. Not as a footnote. As a deciding factor.

Under the Act, authorities must have regard to maximising public benefit. Contracts over £5 million require clear, reportable Social Value KPIs. Non-delivery can result in penalties or exclusion from future contracts. The language moved from “consider” to “must have regard to” – a stronger legal test that shapes procurement decisions at every stage.

For practical purposes, this means Social Value now typically carries a weighting of at least 10% in public tenders. Some authorities go to 20% or higher. On a shortlist where three or four contractors are within a few percentage points of each other on price and technical quality, 10% is not a tiebreaker. It’s the result.

And it’s not just the public sector. Private clients with their own ESG reporting obligations, and that’s an increasing number, want their supply chain to reflect those commitments. Principal contractors bidding for major projects need Social Value from their subcontractors to strengthen their own bids.

The landscape has shifted. The businesses that have noticed are winning more work. The ones that haven’t are wondering why they keep coming second.

The Cost of Doing Nothing

Before making the case for what to spend, it’s worth understanding what doing nothing actually costs.

Every public sector tender you enter where your Social Value response is weak or generic is a tender where you’re giving away points. Not because you can’t do the work, but because you haven’t packaged what you already do in a way that scores. If you’re losing tenders by two or three percentage points, the Social Value section is very likely where those points went.

Every private sector conversation where you can’t articulate your ESG credentials is a conversation where you look the same as everyone else. Clients are increasingly asked to report on their own supply chain’s social and environmental impact, a contractor who can’t help them with that is a contractor they’ll replace.

And every time a principal contractor is putting together a bid team for a large project, they are looking at which subcontractors will strengthen their Social Value scorecard. If you’re not in that conversation, you’re not even being considered – regardless of how good your work is.

There is now a clear commercial risk to not engaging with Social Value. Without a clear offer and evidence of delivery, businesses will find it harder to win public contracts, build partnerships, and retain talented staff.

The cost of doing nothing is not zero. It’s the contracts you don’t win, the relationships that don’t deepen, and the shortlists you don’t make.

Where Else Could You Spend This Money?

Every pound you spend on Social Value strategy is a pound you could spend on something else. A new website. A salesperson. Digital advertising. A rebrand. These are the options most companies reach for when they want to grow. So let’s compare them properly.

Growth Option	Typical Cost	Time to Return	Certainty	What It Actually Does
Hire a Salesperson	£40–60k/yr	6–12 months	Medium	Generates leads. Does not change your scoring in tenders.
Website Redesign	£5–30k	3–12 months	Low	Improves visibility. No direct impact on bid outcomes.
Digital Advertising	£1–5k/mo	Ongoing	Low–Med	Generates awareness. Stops the moment you stop paying.
Trade Events	£2–10k/event	Unpredictable	Low	Brand exposure. Difficult to attribute revenue.
Social Value Strategy	£3–10k	Immediate	High	Directly improves tender scores, client retention, and supply chain positioning.

 

A salesperson can open doors, but they cannot change the weighting of a tender. A website can look impressive, but it doesn’t contribute a single point to a Social Value score. Advertising creates awareness, but it evaporates the moment you stop paying for it.

A Social Value strategy does something none of those alternatives can do: it directly and measurably improves your chances of winning specific contracts. And unlike advertising, it compounds. Every case study you build, every outcome you evidence, every partnership you formalise becomes a permanent asset in your business development toolkit.

In 2024, Underpin generated 6x ROI for a construction client in six months. That is not a projection. That is what happens when you take work a company is already doing, structure it properly, and point it at the right opportunities.

Three Revenue Channels from One Investment

What makes Social Value exceptional as a business development investment is that it opens three distinct commercial channels simultaneously. No other single investment does this.

Channel 1: Public Sector Tendering

You are already doing charitable work, investing in people, and engaging with communities. The problem is that none of it is structured, measured, or aligned to what public sector buyers are actually scoring against.

The fix is straightforward. Audit what exists. Map it against the TOMs framework: Themes, Outcomes, Measures – and the Social Value Model. Package the strongest examples into a library of pre-prepared case studies that can be deployed and tailored for specific tenders. When a bid lands with a 10% Social Value weighting, you don’t start from scratch. You select from a bank of proven, evidenced outcomes. In addition, you can have further projects ready to go – a group of charities you’ve worked with before, and can work with again to deliver demonstrable value.

This is not about inventing new charitable projects. It’s about taking what you already do and making it count commercially. The work exists. The measurement and packaging does not. That’s the gap, and it’s a cheap one to close.

Channel 2: Private Client Differentiation

Private clients are increasingly expected to report on the social and environmental impact of their supply chain. When they choose between two contractors who are similar in price and capability, the one that can demonstrate genuine, evidenced social impact wins. Not because of sentimentality. Because it de-risks the client’s own ESG position and strengthens their reporting.

A professionally produced Social Value and ESG credentials pack, sitting alongside your technical proposals, changes the nature of the conversation. It shifts you from being a supplier to being a partner. It gives the client something they can point to when their own board or investors ask about supply chain responsibility. That is a retention tool as much as it is a sales tool.

Channel 3: The Supply Chain Play

This is the opportunity most contractors are completely missing, and it may be the most valuable of the three.

Principal contractors on large projects need Social Value to win their own contracts. Under the Procurement Act, they are evaluated on what their entire supply chain contributes, not just what they deliver directly. Many principal contractors are strong on technical delivery but weak on evidencing Social Value through their subcontractor base.

This creates a remarkable opportunity. When a principal contractor appoints you, they should also be gaining access to your Social Value outcomes, your charity partnerships, community investment, apprenticeships, and local hiring. Effectively, you loan your Social Value to their bid. You make them more competitive by association.

Build a one-page proposition for principal contractors. Quantify what your appointment adds to their Social Value scorecard using TOMs proxy values. Go to them proactively with a message most subcontractors are not delivering: “When you appoint us, here’s what you gain beyond the service.”

That one conversation, backed by real data and a clear offer, can move you from being one option on a list to being the option a principal contractor actively seeks out. That is a fundamentally different commercial position, and it costs almost nothing to create.

The Simple Maths

Consider a scenario. You tender for three public contracts a year where Social Value carries a 10% weighting. Each contract is worth £200,000. Without a structured Social Value offer, you score averagely in that section – say 5 out of 10. With a properly packaged strategy, you score 8 or 9.

That improvement could be the difference between winning one of those three contracts and winning two. One additional £200,000 contract, won because you scored three extra points on Social Value, against an investment of a few thousand pounds in strategy and packaging.

Now add the private client work that sticks because your ESG credentials make you harder to replace. Add the principal contractor relationships that open because you offer something their other subcontractors don’t. The return is not linear. It compounds.

Compare that to spending £50,000 a year on a salesperson who might, after six months of bedding in, relationship building, and pipeline development, generate a similar amount of new business. Or £20,000 on a website that looks good but changes nothing about how you score in a tender. The Social Value investment is faster, cheaper, and more directly tied to contract outcomes than any of them.

What Needs to Happen

The good news is that you are not starting from zero. The charity work and community activity already exist. What is needed is a coherent strategy to turn that activity into commercial advantage.

A Social Value Audit maps everything you already do, charitable partnerships, workforce development, community engagement, environmental practices, and identifies what’s strong, what’s missing, and what can be quickly improved.

Case Study Development packages the best existing work into a library of evidenced, measurable outcomes aligned to TOMs and the Social Value Model. These become your bid-ready assets, deployable the moment a tender lands.

A Social Value Strategy connects your activity to all three commercial channels: public tendering, private client differentiation, and supply chain partnerships. One strategy. Three revenue streams.

An ESG Credentials Pack sits alongside your technical proposals in every private sector conversation. Professional, evidenced, and designed to make you harder to replace.

A Principal Contractor Proposition – the one-page “Social Value loan” offer, quantified using TOMs proxy values. This is the document that turns you from a subcontractor into a strategic asset.

Team Training equips your people to lead with Social Value in sales conversations, tenders, and client relationships. Not as an afterthought. As the reason they should choose you.

The Bottom Line

There are a lot of ways to spend money on business development. Most of them are slow, uncertain, and disconnected from the specific mechanisms that determine whether you win or lose a contract.

Social Value is different. It is directly tied to tender scoring. It is directly tied to client retention. It is directly tied to supply chain selection. It uses work you are already doing and turns it into a measurable commercial advantage. The investment is modest. The return is disproportionate. And the risk of not doing it is no longer hypothetical, it is the contracts you’re already losing without knowing why.

You have the raw material. The charity work, the community engagement, the investment in people, it’s there. What’s missing is the strategy to make it count.

Social Value, done well, is not a cost. It is the cheapest, fastest, most reliable route to winning more work.

Underpin Consultants

Change and Growth Consultants

www.underpinconsultants.com