What our participants say…
about the trainingMost useful part of the training was reducing the team’s fears of preparing a response, by breaking down the process into bite-sized, manageable chunks.
John R., Commercial Manager
Thank you! I just want to have a quick rave about the training yesterday delivered by Rick.
It was interesting, engaging and informative, and provided a real insight into how to deliver a successful bid.
More importantly, I felt inspired to get more involved and feel much better equipped as a subject matter expert to deliver the right content for the bid process. I don’t think I was alone on this. Very impressed!
Emma D., Head of Sustainability
Breaking down the questions to create answer outlines, and having techniques for getting ideas and building the content was very helpful.
David S.,Business Development
The course was excellent. Although I have attended several courses in the same domain, this course introduced some new concepts to me.
Nabil S., Presales Engineering Manager
The course was excellent and very relevant to the work I am doing. It definitely hit that brief in terms of formalising some of the experience that I’ve already got.
I will be using a lot of the skills I have learnt in my future executive summary writing efforts.
Marc W., Commercial Manager
Very good course. It has definitely given me some new ideas on what I need to do to improve the generic documentation we already have in place. The drafting and editing sections were very useful.
Chris S., Documentation Manager
I think what I have learned is really important for my current position. Now I have a much better overview on how to provide strong answers on how we deliver value to our prospective clients, and the features that provide it
Alex V., Business Developer
We’ve worked with other, bigger organisations who have whole teams who do this. And actually, I think we now can do it way better than them, having had this training.
Alys D., Senior Technical Advisor
The outlining of questions was extremely useful. It’s something I thought I knew how to do already, but I was wrong, and this course has really helped me learn this skill which will lead to much better, and winning answers.
Simon R., Director of Public Safety
It’s been a really good course. I’ve got a lot out of it. It’s been quite refreshing to have someone who’s a professional in the bid writing field to give me a steer.
I’ve learned a lot of things as well, slightly different approaches to things, and to just think differently. Rick has a high level of expertise, and he has added quite a bit more to what we’ve already got. It’s been great!
Paul H., Head of Commercial
The training has really opened our eyes to how effective the right bid writing process can be when used consistently by the whole team.
Elena M., Head of Business
This was a great course for my team. It gave them new approaches and a real insight into bidding. It was all really useful, and very relevant.
For many of the team, it was a real boost to their confidence and a way to approach bid writing differently.
Caroline B., Head of Bid Management
What our participants say…
about the trainerRick is an expert in this subject and has very effective presentation skills. Writing executive summaries is well covered in all areas, with many examples. The handouts and templates are very good and will be very useful.
Evelyn A., Pre-Sales Project Manager
Really well presented. And, clearly, Rick is very experienced in the subject. Lots of great insights.
Allan W., Services ManagerÂ
Excellent! Rick was clear and consice with his course delivery. Most useful part of the training? Everything! Really helped me to understand and breakdown the process. It was all helpful.
Richard S., Business DevelopmentÂ
I liked the whole process. The course content is very good, and provided lots of tools to help implement the process. What we learned was hugely helpful for working on any type of proposal.
Rick Allen is an excellent trainer, and I would happily recommend this course to others.
Darren H., Head of Commissioning Teams
We have turned into a bidding organisation that makes lots of sales! The processes Rick has helped us to put in place have improved our responses, helping to make us a more profitable company.
John B., Managing Director
An excellent training of real value. Very thought-provoking towards other sales areas. The most useful part of the training was: layout, SWOT, and outlining. Rick is a TOP bloke!
Tom H., After-Sales Engineer
Rick is clearly an expert in this field and was very knowledgeable, and professional. He explains things in a way we can understand and relate to.
Kallay P., Bid Manager
Excellent training, which was very informative. Rick is very, very skilled in this process. He has helped us to achieve a really fantastic win rate.
Tom B., Managing Director
This course was well- constructed and well-presented. It includes all the fundamentals I needed to learn, and to build on, with writing executive summaries. Rick is clearly an expert in his field and this came across in the training.
James H., Account Manager
How a rare opportunity led to this specialist bid training
It's all about gaining the highest score
Rick Allen
Bid Consultant Trainer
Award-winning
Rick shifted from an award-winning sales career in 2002 to becoming a bid manager, and bid writer. He was on the board of the APMP for two years from 2003, and was among the first in the UK to achieve APMP Foundation certification in 2004.
Winning new business was central to his 20-year background in sales, account management and business development with major global computer corporations, including Digital Equipment (DEC) who was global number 2 to IBM for many years, and Honeywell Information Systems.
Throughout his sales career, he achieved over £40M in complex solutions sales and two top global sales awards (Decathlon) with DEC. A notable achievement in 1994 was his £5.2m sale to BT, for their first mobile, laptop-based, sales force automation solution, for their National Sales Force of 1,500.
Rick designed the solution and drove the bespoke sales force software development and the network integration to BT’s billing mainframes and other systems. He developed and wrote the proposal, winning a competitive tender that was responded to by 300 companies.
A world first
From 1998, he spent four years at Logica, where he conceived, designed and managed the development of the world’s first mobile, wireless data, billing mediation platform, with £2m investment from Motorola. He formed a strategic partnership with Motorola to sell the jointly-owned product on a global basis, achieving sales to the value of £3.5m in the first year.
He then headed up business development in Logica’s Wireless Internet International Business Unit, driving £35m of sales in year one, and £37m in year two.
Rare opportunity
It’s quite rare for any bid manager to have the chance to sit down for 6 weeks and go through every page of a major bid before submission. But that’s exactly what happened with a £500m+ competitive bid for which Rick was bid manager in 2011, for a secure radio network for three Canadian provinces.
Due to a last-minute delay in the set-up of PPP financing, the final submission was extended by six weeks. Rick was in Lynchburg, Virginia producing the final submission. He now had an extra six weeks, which he spent on editing the final version of the bid.
Result: Highest ever score awarded
During this process, he applied a multitude of bid writing techniques, honed over his many years of winning bids. Working systematically through the thousands of pages on this massive tender document, he edited each and every answer to maximise its chances of gaining the highest possible score.
The bid won with a score of 96.2%, the highest ever awarded for a Canadian government tender. In the feedback from the evaluators, they made a point of saying how much they actually enjoyed reading the tender submission.
Following this great win, Rick was asked if he could create a bid writing training course to teach these same critical techniques and processes, that he used to achieve this high-scoring bid, to a big team of technical subject matter experts (SME).
Rick obliged. And, from that initial course in 2012, the training has evolved into the Bid Writing Gold Pro and Bid Writing Gold courses today.