Winning bids – more than good copywriting

You need to respond to an invitation to tender (ITT). You’ve got some relevant content from previous bids but no internal resource available to pull it all together. And you didn’t win the last couple of contracts in this area. Time to get external copywriting help?

Maybe. However, if you are not telling the right story, it doesn’t matter how good the writing is. Good copywriting is necessary but most definitely not sufficient. The starting point and the priority must be to ensure that your bid response is saying the right things. Only then should a copywriter be involved.

So what are the “right things”? Well, in a nutshell, the cogent rationale why you are the single best provider to fulfil the service specification. Not just bland statements about areas of specialism or focus on quality, but hard evidence of expertise and outcomes and a clear exposition of what is required to deliver a first class service – extracted from your organisation’s first-hand experience.

Sounds easy? Actually it’s deceptively difficult. Organisations worldwide struggle to articulate precisely what it is that they bring to the table. What makes them different and what makes them good at what they do.

Capturing these points of differentiation is key to writing a winning bid. However, as an organisation, the process can be as uncomfortable and as frustrating as crafting your own CV. Operational teams are typically too time stretched and too involved in the day-to-day of service delivery to stand back and take a bird’s-eye view of what makes their service different.

An external partner can be extremely helpful here. Someone who can ask the right questions, listen objectively, challenge where necessary and help to crystallise a better understanding of the organisation’s strengths in relation to the relevant service. But that person is more than a copywriter.