Writing Successful Proposals

Courses on Business Communications: General and Technical
  • Course:Writing Successful Proposals
  • Course ID:PROPWRITE Duration:2 days Where: Your Office (7+ Persons)
  • Available as a private, customized course for your group at your offices or ours and in some cases as a WebLive(TM) class.

  • Download Course Description (PDF)

Course Outline

  • Introduction
    • Types of bids
    • Overview:  Technical, management, and cost proposals
    • RFP production process
    • Proposal process
    • Proposal evaluation process
    • Writing a proposal plan
  • RFP Analysis
    • RFP structure
    • Problems with RFPs:  What to look for
    • Formulating questions for a bidders’ briefing
  • Writing in STOP
    • STOP history
    • Benefits
    • Addressing the customer’s problem
    • Identifying and organizing themes
    • Theme sentence
    • Theme text
    • Theme graphic
    • Writing the executive summary
    • Writing the technical proposal
    • Writing the management proposal
    • Writing the cost proposal
  • Proposal Evaluation
    • Scoring a proposal before it ships
    • Tracing proposal items to the RFP
    • Editing
    • Dealing with time and space constraints
  • Course Wrap-up
    • Course recap
    • Highlights from students’ perspective

 

Course Overview

Course in a Nutshell

Writing successful proposals is an exercise in purposeful, structured writing that requires the proposal writing team to have more than just good writing skills. The proposal writers must be able to uncover the customer requirements scattered throughout the Request For Proposal (RFP) document and be willing to take a step back to objectively critique the proposal before it goes out to the customer.

This course centers on the so-called Sequential Thematic Organization of Publications (STOP), a marvelously effective proposal writing technique that’s been around for decades. The course also covers RFP analysis and the evaluation process.

 

Customize It!

  • Are you a producer of RFPs? We can create a version of the course that addresses the RFP creation process in detail.
  • Similarly, if you are concerned with proposal evaluation, we can gear the course more toward the evaluation process

 

Learn How To

  • Produce a proposal plan
  • Look for holes and inconsistencies in RFPs
  • Leverage information learned at a bidders’ briefing
  • Produce a proposal structure using STOP
  • Conduct an evaluation to score the proposal against requirements before you release it
  • Look at your proposal from the customer’s standpoint

 

Audience / Prerequisites

Aimed At

Proposal managers, proposal writers, proposal editors, originators of RFPs, and those who evaluate proposals.

 

Prerequisites

None