Writing Winning Answers

A programme to develop writing skills for proposal contributors

The Challenge

In your organisation, do those who are involved in creating proposal content understand how to communicate their messages to busy evaluators and decision-makers? Do they use an efficient process for writing?

For most proposal contributors, writing to customers is not a full-time job. They will benefit from being able to use tools and techniques designed to help them write effectively, the first time, every time.

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The Solution

Writing Winning Answers is a skills development programme that has been designed to help proposal contributors to develop writing skills through a combination of teaching and doing. Participating in this programme will help proposal contributors to improve their written communication skills.

This hands-on training is delivered virtually using a mixture of lectures, group discussions, and practical exercises. To allow participants to develop their writing skills, over a two- or three-week period participants:

1. Attend a ½-day virtual training session

2. Individually, prepare a content plan (storyboard) for a response to a question selected from a Request for Proposal document

3. Receive individual feedback on the prepared content plan

4. Attend a second ½-day virtual training session

5. Individually, prepare a word-limited response based upon the content plan

6. Individually, review and suggest improvements for a response prepared by another participant in the programme

7. Individually, revise the prepared response to incorporate any suggested improvements

8. Receive individual feedback on the final draft of the prepared response

9. Attend a final ½-day virtual training session

10. Become certified by Shipley on successful completion of the programme

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Participants will learn a five-step writing process:

• PLAN: Break assignments into manageable tasks to avoid writer’s block and reduce stress

• ORGANISE: Pull all the thinking and information together into a proven framework

• WRITE: Construct a draft quickly - to communicate persuasively, concisely and professionally

• EXAMINE: Peer review the document to check for effectiveness

• REVISE: Put the final polish on proposals, and other customer-focused documents

Participants will learn how to structure their messages to align with the perspective of the reader.

The Benefits

Organisations that implement the principles and develop the skills taught in this workshop have used their customer-focused documents to gain competitive advantage - increasing their win rates and their organisation’s profitability.

The Audience

Professionals, who need to approach writing tasks with confidence and improve their effectiveness in producing all forms of written communication. This workshop is therefore suitable for a range of roles within an organisation, including:

• Proposal contributors

• Commercial/Legal staff

• Marketing staff

• Sales professionals

• Sales support staff