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  • Do you have a personal brand for tender writing?
    • All freelance tender writers, no matter how closely affiliated they are with a company, know that it’s important to forge and maintain a personal brand for their industry. Having an established brand helps you to generate tender writing business in a number of ways, including making your work synonymous with a name which is trusted and

  • Flexible tender writing practices
    • When we work as freelancers in tender writing, it can often be difficult to step from one methodology to another. Each person whom we align ourselves with will have a different way of approaching each bid, meaning it’s sometimes difficult to remember exactly what each customer is looking for when they sign you up to

  • Are tender writing opportunities deliberately obstructive?
    • As a tender writer, have you ever had the feeling that the company you are developing a bid to is being deliberately obstructive? By this, I mean the sense that a firm are putting needless and unnecessary obstacles in the way in order to deliberately occlude your company from managing to develop a bid compliantly.

  • Upping your competitiveness in tender writing
    • Have you ever thought of the words which we use when we talk about the world of bids and tenders? ‘Qualifying’. ‘Winning’. ‘Success’. ‘Preferred suppliers’. All of these words demonstrate a simple tenet about our profession – it’s all about competitiveness. This sense of competition is the adrenalin-fuelled boost that keeps us working long in

  • Staying focused on tender writing
    • If you sometimes lack focus when you are faced with a large tender writing task, follow these simple tips to regain your sense of purpose and keep you on track for winning… Have a firm routine Understanding yourself and the way you work most productively can be invaluable when you are taking on large projects which could sidetrack

Scheduling – how to optimise the tender writing process

evaluation 300x225 Scheduling – how to optimise the tender writing processIf you’ve been working on tender writing for any period of time, you‘ll know that having a tight and proven schedule behind you is one of the best investments of your time which you can make, when you have a few quiet moments. Getting a great schedule written which is flexible enough to accommodate rapid changes is a great way of helping you to visualize the breadth of the task which you have ahead of you, and share your learning with the rest of the bid team to make sure you all work seamlessly, together.

No matter how big or small the proposal is which you have to write, a good schedule will help you keep track of the progress you are making, and make sure that nothing important to the bid slides because it’s been overlooked. Every single proposal can benefit from the same approach to scheduling, and only small modifications are necessary once you have the firm structure in place.

Your schedule can be made more detailed when you tackle larger proposals, making the elements to be included more complex or in-depth to cover all eventualities. However, here’s a quick guide to setting up your scheduling process and getting your foundation document in place for future bids…

  • Work backwards from the date of submission up until the start date, so you can factor everything in, in time. Make sure you leave enough leeway for getting the document printed or burned to disk as well as couriered or posted to the recipient
  • If you have project management experience, you can apply this to the proposal scheduling process, bringing in your knowledge to the document just as you would any other project
  • Aim to get as many tasks undertaken in parallel as possible, so more than one team member can work on aspects of the proposal simultaneously
  • If some tasks seem overwhelming, break them down on the schedule to make them more approachable and manageable
  • Don’t forget to include time for reviewing the document at each stage of the copy creation process, to save time and energy when you are reaching the deadline for submission of the document
  • Steer clear of evenings and weekends in your scheduling – remember that people sometimes have other commitments no matter how dedicated they are to the creation of a compliant bid
  • Include administration aspects of the bid process as well as research and writing – developing the style sheet and formatting the document as well as creating copy.

By pulling all elements of the bid schedule together, you can be confident that no part of the bid will be overlooked as you go through the copy creation process.

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