The path to successful bid writing

The day to day

As it is a multifaceted role, the key qualities of a bid writer needs can be illuminated by exploring the various responsibilities.

Understanding your subject matter

Central to bid writing is understanding the sectors you are working in. The first stage of a bid is often dedicated to reading the tender documents in full, combing them for any specific compliance or contract delivery requirements. This preliminary work will aid your preparedness and confidence when engaging with clients, as you will have a more rounded understanding of the opportunity and background. When not working on a bid, you could be contributing to sector or solution papers; reviewing and challenging previous submissions to identify learning; building the EiB Way Toolkit; or supporting internal added value projects. As you gain experience on more bids and across more sectors, the knowledge will become instinctive – as in, you wish there were a ‘bid sector and solution’ round in-Christmas-trivia instinctive.

Storyboarding

Core to any job is learning how to engage professionally with new people and for bid writers at EiB, working closely with clients requires stakeholder management skills. Building interpersonal skills and confidence in these interactions will come naturally with exposure, but a tip for being assertive is acknowledging your role in easing, rather than increasing, workload for the client. Storyboarding is like essay planning, as it is the formal process of taking the client through the questions and collating content that will map out the answer. This also identifies and resolves gaps in the client’s business offering. People management – more aptly digression management – is an essential skill of these information-gathering sessions, and it helps to build a rapport with the client to ease the process and increase receptivity. It’s often a case of learning how best to help subject matter experts help you, and how to adapt your approach to suit different personalities, communication styles, and the all-important workload pressures.

Writing, perfecting and more writing

A bid writer needs excellent literacy to write compelling bids and transform even the most unintelligible of bullet points into articulate prose. A keen attention to detail will serve you well to refine and polish submissions to the highest possible standard. You will apply your superb proofreading skills to both your own work and that of others – and you’ll soon find, everywhere else outside of your working life, from books to menu cards.

Managing workloads

Hard deadlines are part and parcel of bid writing, and the role will quickly develop (or test) your organisational skills and ability to manage your time across different projects. The nature of the job means the hours can be unpredictable and occasionally demand last-minute work, which makes managing and prioritising your tasks an essential skill. To do lists, tracker logs and dedicated inbox folders are all your allies.

Progressing

Entering bid writing following university can be a steep learning curve as you learn to navigate a new, often unknown industry and perhaps also the world of work for the first time. Still, those years of essay planning will stand you in good stead.

Making use of the support and expertise of those around you is important to progressing as a writer and managing stress. Colleagues will be happy to provide guidance and solutions, offering a proofread or to go through your work with you. Proactively asking for feedback will help you land on your feet and benefit from seeing how others approach things. EiB offers shadowing opportunities to its graduates, offering insight into the techniques of more senior members of the team.

Working life

Bid writing offers flexibility between home and office working to suit the varied nature of our work. Days of drafting may require greater focus and fewer distractions, whereas sometimes a collaborative day in the office with your team to bounce ideas around is the most productive. We encourage co-location to tackle key stages of the bid when face-to-face discussions optimise outputs, but we are flexible to client preferences and always seek the way of working that best suits the bid.

Flexible working is an important aspect of work-life balance and managing personal priorities alongside professional. Particularly in the early stages of a new role, in-person working plays a key role in team integration and making connections – an equally important part of learning a new job. Sitting down with a colleague face to face to resolve any questions or difficulties can be invaluable, both as a graduate and beyond. Office working is especially helpful for getting a quick response to all your bid-jargon-related queries, preventing ‘death by acronym’.

Bid writing offers several opportunities for professional growth. In time, you might progress to be a senior bid writer or use your organisational skills to becoming a bid manager.

Bid submission… aaand exhale

Completing and submitting a bid you and your team have worked hard on is a rewarding feeling. Doubtless, finding out you have been successful is the only better feeling, knowing your labours of writing, refining and perfecting will make a difference. We impact significant national infrastructure across the UK, notably supporting the HS2 Curzon Street contract here in Birmingham. Having our office so close to projects we have been involved with and seeing the construction work from our commutes makes this impact all the more tangible. Each new bid will expand your industry knowledge and experience, and the variety of the work is one of the highlights of the role. Your fast-growing oeuvre of responses might not qualify for WHSmith’s Top 100 non-fiction, but seeing the changes you have helped to make in the real world is reward enough.