Bid and Marketing Content Writer

**A combined role for an experienced and skilled writer**

Working remotely (with travel to Manchester once a month), your main priority will be to respond to bid opportunities. However, the flow of bid opportunities often has peaks and troughs because of the highly specialised nature of our work, so when there are no live bids, you will use the time to build our bid library and to support marketing with content creation. As an experienced writer you will be skilled at adapting styles for different purposes to meet a variety audience needs, helping us to both win bids and improve our marketing output.

**Who are Best Practice Group (BPG)?**

We help large client organisations in both the private and public sectors deliver maximum value from complex projects and strategic supplier relationships. As an independent, niche consultancy firm, BPG provide completely objective advice and support to clients engaged in complex projects/strategic supplier relationships (outsourcing, PFI, PPP, large IT integration projects and so forth). We help in three primary areas (1) getting into new projects/relationships [procurement], (2) fixing existing projects and supplier relationships that aren’t working well, and (3) helping clients and suppliers get out of projects that have either come to their natural end or that have to be terminated prematurely.

**Bid **_**Writing**_ **Skills**
- **Good bid writing skills**. An obvious skill for the role, but the emphasis is on _bid_writing skills. Successful bids require the right balance between being engaging, factually accurate, speaking the client’s language and reflecting their main concerns while also being technically compliant. There is no room for ‘marketing fluff’ as bid responses can become contract schedules. You will often have to communicate complex topics, but many clients who read and score our bids are not technical experts, so it is important to be able to write in plain English, in an easy-to-understand yet engaging style.
- **Ability to write a good story. **You will need good story telling skills. You will need to explain what we do in a style that entices the reader and makes our bid stand out from the rest. You will be able to clearly articulate what BPG will deliver and how we will help the client achieve their goals, so that stakeholders absorb the concept that “this supplier (us) can help me achieve our corporate objectives and enable me to look good in the process”.
- **A stickler for details and compliance. **When responding to tenders, it is really critical to “answer the question” without getting distracted. Demonstrating this type of compliance in the tender response will ensure that any mandatory or desirable criteria is met and reiterated throughout the response - increasing your chances of winning.
- **Good proof-reading skills**. It is easy to get ‘word blind’ when you’ve been working on the same document for days, so you’ll need strong proof-reading skills so that typos, spelling mistakes and grammatical errors are picked up and corrected.
- **Good investigative/research skills. **A good bid writer will seek to fully understand both the client’s issues and needs, but also BPG’s USPs particular to each bid and the competitors likely to bid for the same opportunity.

**Bid **_**Management**_ **Skills**
- **Accountability. **Retaining ownership for the successful submission of all bids on time. This involves seeking bid clarifications within the prescribed time frames, co-ordinating the timely input from all contributors, and ensuring the bid is reviewed for accuracy/approval by senior management.
- **Ability to multi-task, constantly. **Albeit not often the case, when it does arise, the ability to work on multiple bids and tasks with competing deadlines is essential to the role. Being organised is key: your comprehensive planning and time management skills, the ability to delegate in a timely manner and communicate effectively with multiple stakeholders will be central to your success.
- **Stakeholder management. **Ideally, you have experience in collaborating with our small internal team, along with external advisors, which will be essential for securing input and contributions to the bid process.
- **Level headed. **You are able to work calmly under pressure and within tight time frames while maintaining attention to detail and accuracy. You don’t let the pressured circumstances of an impending submission deadline spill over into lack of composure or courtesy, especially when dealing with other bid contributors.
- **Tolerance, combined with tenacity and empathy. **Responding to tenders is typically stressful. Many external associates who you need to participate to input into the tender don’t always react well to stress. You need to be empathetic, but whilst it’s good to be tolerant, you need to also be tenacious enough to ensure you get the right information from the right stakeholders at the right time and to th