Writing Proposals that Win Business

One-day course

It's a fact that writing proposals and responding to tenders is an essential part of closing deals. No matter how good your product or service, if you can't communicate your offering effectively on paper your chances of success are slim.

In fact, a bad proposal will kill a sale and make it hard to do future business with that customer. This one-day programme develops the skills required to plan, structure and write proposals that win business.

The Benefits of Attending

This course will enable participants to:

• Evaluate whether the business is winnable
• Recognise what the client is looking for
• Develop a customer centric approach
• Getting your point across
• Manage the proposal writing process
• Determine the appropriate style and structure
• Write clearly and persuasively
• Develop their own flexible proposal template
• Follow up effectively

Course Content

• Proposals and the Sales Process
  • Solution Selling
  • Answering your buyers needs
  • Sales proposals defined
     
• Understanding Your Customer
  • The information you need
  • Writing to meet the customers objectives
  • Using objective criteria to demonstrate benefit
     
• Determining your Proposals Contents
  • What’s the objective
  • Selling business benefits vs technical features
  • Avoiding the ‘one size fits all’ mentality
  • Introduction to structuring your proposal
     
• Structuring your Proposal
  • Background Information
    • Industry Background
    • Customer background
    • Current Situation
    • Improvement Opportunity
    • Objectives
  • The Solution
    • Product/Service Description
    • Benefits
  • Implementation
    • Business Methodology
    • The Team/People
    • Delivery Schedule
  • Seller Profile
    • Company Overview
    • Customer References
    • Certification/Quality
• Commercial Issues
  • Assumptions
  • Fees/Prices
  • Major Terms
     
• Other Crucial Components
  • The effective covering letter
  • Executive Summary
  • Title pages
  • Including Appendices
  • Graphs and tables
     
• How Good is your Proposal
  • Getting objective feedback
  • Using colleagues
     
• Summary
  • Issues to focus on
  • What the customer expects
  • Packaging your proposal

Who the course is for:

This course is for sales people, account managers and technical staff who are involved in the preparation/writing of proposals and responses to tenders.