Writing winning bids and proposals

Writing a professional response to a bid or tender can be an overwhelming task.

With so much of your effort focussed on managing the client relationship, developing your solution, and building a viable commercial model, the job of professionally articulating your value proposition is often left until the very last minute.

We understand that your business development managers, subject matter experts, and even core members of your bid team might not have the skills or training to convey your written message in such a way to score maximum points with evaluators.

Writing professional responses to bids and tenders is a critical component of winning business and crucial to sustainable business growth.

Our bid writing courses will prepare and inspire your team to produce winning bids more effectively and efficiently. We will develop your writing skills, show you how to increase individual answer scores, give you the tools to create content from scratch, and ultimately improve your win rate.

Your bid team needs a proven approach for consistently writing high-scoring answers that are easy to read and evaluate, giving them a winning formula for writing their next bid. Our training provides step-by-step guidance to help your team:

  • Understand the importance of bid writing in the Bid Lifecycle
  • Understand the importance of pre-RFP answer planning so you can quickly populate first drafts on receipt of the RFP
  • Deconstruct complex questions and produce correctly structured, compliant answers
  • Deliver compelling, easy-to-evaluate content, that answers questions fully and maximises your scores
  • Take the stress and burden out of bidding by adopting efficient best practices.

Every bespoke course we deliver uses case study material extracted from your own recent bids and proposals. Our courses are fully interactive and focus on bridging identified skills and knowledge gaps.

2-Day Course (Classroom or Online)

To accelerate the adoption of bid writing skills into the DNA of your team, we offer in-depth pre-session analysis, reviewing previous bids and creating bespoke content and exercises to deliver additional value. Our 2-day course typically covers the following modules:

The Sales Cycle

Where does bid writing fit in your overall sales cycle? What is a bid is versus a proposal versus a report? We provide an overview of the bid lifecycle, discuss the importance of bid writing, and outline the key bid team roles and responsibilities.

Pre-Bid Activities

What are the first steps you should take once an opportunity is identified? We show you how to conduct effective market research and make informed bid / no-bid decisions.

Win Strategy and Kick Off

Kicking the bid off effectively and ensuring everyone is aligned is key to success. You must develop a robust bid plan, schedule key activities, and proactively manage all stakeholders. We outline the DNA of a successful bid, work through strategy development and show you what good looks like. We give you the tools to assess the competitive environment and develop your proposition in readiness for a draft executive summary.

Solution

Are your subject matter experts skilled at producing proposal content that articulates complex detail in a way this it is easy to assimilate and score? We show you facilitation techniques that encourage innovation and lateral thinking whilst developing your USPs, and positive discriminators that form the basis of your written submission.

Storyboarding

Do you have a consistent process for developing proposal content? We will show you how to develop and articulate the benefits and features of your solution, whilst generating confidence with case studies and evidence. We show you why storyboarding is critical to good writing, how to create storyboards, and how to break down questions and scoring criteria to ensure you answer the question fully.

Writing

Do your written proposals resonate with evaluators? We get into the detail of writing compelling bid responses, touching on how to write clearly, persuasively, and always with a client focus. We discuss how to draft and proofread content effectively.

Executive Summaries

What should and shouldn’t be included in your executive summary? How long should it be? Who is the target audience? We navigate the arts and sciences of writing executive summaries and discuss why they should be totally focussed on your client, not you.

Review and Submission

It’s almost impossible to review your own written work. We outline approaches for effectively reviewing your bid submission. We look at review frequency, gateways, peer reviews and final quality checks. We share editing tips and production management techniques to ensure you submit your bids on time.

Lessons Learned

Win or lose, we discuss the importance of lessons learned and the continual feedback loop. Where did you excel and where can you improve next time?

Who would benefit from attending?

Sales Leads should attend to develop their understanding of this critical phase in the business development lifecycle. It will:

  • Enable higher conversion rates through insight and positioning
  • Demonstrate the value of high quality input into strategy and win themes
  • Show how to build an informed commercial strategy
  • Help the team to storyboard compelling content and maximise document impact through robust, client-centric reviews

Service Delivery Leads who will be responsible for developing the solution and running the service once the business is secured should attend to further develop:

  • Their approach to building winning service delivery models that deliver value and innovation for the client
  • Their skills in leading the deconstructing of requirements and questions to generate compelling content
  • How to lead the client engagement with impact and capture the client’s attention as the lynchpin of the delivery team

Bid Writers should attend to improve their approach to:

  • Storyboarding and writing compelling responses

  • Interviewing content out of key stakeholders
  • Writing winning executive summaries
  • Engaging senior colleagues in value proposition development

Bid Leaders who are regularly nominated to lead proposals should attend to understand:

  • Their responsibilities and required behaviours
  • How they should select a winning bid team
  • How to develop a strategy, win themes and solution
  • Their role in ownership of the commercials and risks
  • How to review the submission to drive quality and to provide impact

Bid Managers should attend to build on their techniques and approach to:

  • Mobilising bid teams to succeed
  • Engaging senior colleagues in value proposition development
  • Project management, bid process and governance of tenders
  • Maximising outputs from meetings and facilitating high impact reviews

Contributors or subject matter experts (SMEs) should attend to:

  • Understand the full tendering environment and how to play a winning part in it
  • Acquire skills in challenging and verifying strategy
  • Understand their lead role in bid solution development
  • Hone skills in storyboarding and writing compelling responses for APMP membership and exam fees to be paid to the APMP via their examination partners.

Book your training online, or to discuss your bespoke training needs please call +44 (0)208 1583952 or email training@bidsolutions.com