1. Exercise 1: How is a proposal different from a technical report

2. The bid lifecycle

3. An effective proposal writing process

4. Exercise 2: Why do proposals fail?

1. Why do we need to answer the question?

2. What is your proposal strategy?

3. Four steps to create an answer outline

4. Setting up your answer structure

4a. Re-visiting the dinosaur

5. Exercise 3: Creating an answer outline

6. Would answer outlining have made a difference?

7. Why always outline an answer?

8. Dealing with lots of questions

9. Tricky questions

10. Exercise 4: Answer outline

11. Drafting suggestions and use of tables

12. Mega-tricky questions

12a. Using the answer outline template

13. Solution mapping

14. Get your answer outline reviewed

1. Why do proposals succeed?

2. How do we process information on a page?

3. Structure of a news story

4. Drafting your answers – change your approach

5. Drafting your answers – using the drafting cheat sheet

6. Constructing your section summary

7. Providing evidence – gaining those extra points

8. Providing evidence – different types of competitive tenders

9. Providing evidence – evidence & scoring

10. Providing evidence – the types of evidence you could provide

11. Using graphics

12. Exercise 5: Writing captions

13. Drafting and editing

14. Writing time management

15. Crafting customer-focused answers

16. Exercise 6: Editing ‒ writing a customer-focused answer

17. Using online tools

18. Understanding features and benefits

19. Editing fine tuning

20. Making your answer easy-to-evaluate

1. Some questions that need answering

2. Writing timings and length

3. What do you write about? ‒ executive summary components

4. Examples of executive summaries

5. Creating your executive summary – using the template

6. Oral sales presentations

1. What makes a compelling sales proposal

2. Structure for a compelling sales proposal

3. Your informed sales person

4. Crafting the story

5. Presenting your solution

6. Implementation

7. Presenting the costs

8. It’s all about you

9. Smart use of appendices

10. Final tweaks ‒ get it reviewed and proofread

11. Final thoughts – take it to another level

1. Raising your game

2. Pink team

3. Red team