The difference between winning and losing a high-stakes bid can come down to training. The right skills with the right people, telling your story in a compelling way. When that training is delivered by highly-experienced external bid experts, you can greatly enhance your bid writers’ professional development, and your own prospects of success. Even bringing in an external trainer for a 1-day Masterclass each year gives proof that you are investing in your people and their development … which of course will have a direct payback in improved bid results and staff retention.

It’s vital not to overlook the importance of this. The world of procurement and bidding is constantly changing. Certain areas have received greater emphasis in recent years, such as social value in bids. What about how AI should – or shouldn’t – be used to assist the bidding process? Your team needs external training to keep up with these sorts of developments within the world of procurement.

Here are nine specific ways in which external bid training from Aspire Bidding will help your in-house bid team make the jump from good to great.

Access to Buyer and Evaluator Insights

Many bid writers – even experienced ones – only have direct experience on their own side of the procurement process. Generally, they lack direct insight into the buyer’s perspective. What exactly are the evaluators looking for in a bid? What really makes the difference between a convincing bid and an unconvincing one?

One of the greatest benefits that external training from Aspire Bidding will bring is buyer and evaluator insights. The training is led by APMP Global Thought Leader, Andrew Morrison. He was formerly an evaluator, meaning that he has years of first-hand experience on the other side of the procurement process. He can explain how evaluators really approach a bid submission. The insights that your in-house bid team will get from Andrew will prove invaluable.

A Tailored Approach

Every company is different. Your in-house bid team may be facing some uncommon challenges. Or it may be that the demographics of your writers mean that one particular area of professional development deserves special attention. For example, younger bid writers would benefit from the experience of professionals who have worked for many years in the industry. A group of more experienced writers may need help with understanding how AI can be used in bidding, and when it should be avoided. Or the demographic may be quite mixed, but they are not scoring as highly as they could in certain areas. All these issues highlight why a standardised training course would likely not provide the help that your company really needs.

The external training offered by Aspire Bidding provides your company with a tailored approach. It usually begins with a 1-hour call with the team leader, allowing Aspire Bidding to understand your specific needs. It may also involve some surveying of participants beforehand to make sure that the training is targeted to them as unique individuals. This targeted approach will allow your bid team to get the greatest possible value out of the training.

Accelerated Skill Transfer and Benchmarking

Naturally, you want your in-house bid writers to continue progressing professionally. However, that same progression and natural learning curve will be seen within all your competitors’ bid-writing teams as well. How can you get ahead of the competition?

An external training programme can compress your bid writers’ learning curves, providing them with accelerated skill transfer. In addition, their professional development can be targeted towards the most useful objectives.

During the external training given by Aspire Bidding, their skills will be benchmarked against industry best practices and standards. This can result in faster upskilling of internal teams, which is especially valuable during periods of peak demand or transitions.

Gap Analysis and Gap Closure Expertise

Your in-house bid team may perform very well in numerous areas of the bidding process. However, the reality is that every bid team has its own unique strengths and weaknesses. Your bid team could have some weaknesses that they aren’t even aware of, and these might be costing you valuable opportunities.

Aspire Bidding’s external training can include a formal Bid Gap Analysis. This analysis identifies the specific missing elements in your bid performance. Whether it’s strategy, win themes, value propositions, or anything else, Aspire Bidding’s training provides a structured, tailored path to close those gaps.

Objective, Independent Review and Quality Control

When the bid writers are working hard on their submissions, they know what they are trying to say. However, their intended meaning may not be obvious to others. Additionally, there may be a particular part of the submission that they are passionate about, but which doesn’t resonate well with other people. These issues highlight the importance of getting an impartial, outside perspective.

The benefit provided by an external training programme is that it emphasises this outside perspective. Aspire Bidding’s masterclasses foster rigorous review practices. Your in-house bid team will learn how to implement them effectively within the structure of your company. This will reduce last-minute errors and tighten bid narratives, strengthening the overall quality of your bids.

Enhanced Proposal Storytelling and Win Themes

Many bid writers are able to write persuasively and present information about their solution clearly. However, it is not enough for each section to be well written. For the bid to truly resonate with the buyer, there needs to be a compelling value proposition that runs through the entire submission. This is often called a “golden thread”.

External programmes can provide the training in this area that your in-house writers might be lacking. In Aspire Bidding’s masterclasses, your bid writers will learn specific techniques that show how to enhance the ‘storytelling’ and win themes that need to be present throughout the entire bid. These techniques contribute to the clear, persuasive messaging needed for a winning bid.

Risk Management, Compliance, and Audit Readiness

Strong win themes are an essential part of a winning bid. Yet, at the same time, it is important not to be excessively ambitious. Unrealistic promises could undermine your credibility at the evaluation stage and severely harm your reputation if you win the tender but fail to follow through on what you promised. Sometimes, the solution itself might be functional, but it is not completely compliant with the tender specifications. Or, there may be issues involved in documentation that would come up in an audit.

These risks are minimised by bringing in an external team of bid professionals to provide training. The sort of training provided by Aspire Bidding helps bid teams to balance ambitious win themes with compliant, defensible proposals. It also aids with documentation and audit readiness. Compliance is a common risk area that we help clients to navigate through training and independent reviews.

Change Management and Peak-Demand Readiness

Perhaps your in-house bid team is already able to write excellent, compelling, winning bids. However, what happens when there is a transition period in your company, or a period of peak demand, or a capability gap caused by unforeseen circumstances? These issues can seriously hinder your ability to meet deadlines while still producing high-quality submissions.

External training supports scalable bid capability. It helps the company to build resilience in preparation for these issues, explaining the best way to handle them when they arise. Additionally, Aspire Bidding can supply interim bid professionals to work alongside your in-house bid team during particularly difficult, critical periods.

Networking, Knowledge Sharing, and Continuous Improvement

A benefit that is easy to overlook is how these external training programmes facilitate networking. They provide access to a broader bid community, where bid writers can keep in touch, share knowledge, and continually improve. Having seen the value of the external training, your writers may decide to seek out additional learning through APMP-certified programmes of their own volition. The external experts, for their part, will make a point of encouraging this, fostering best-practice sharing and continuing professional development.

As a result of investing in Aspire Bidding’s tailored masterclasses, you will create a sustainable learning loop that goes beyond simply a one-off training session. This will have lasting benefits for your in-house bid team.

Getting the Most from External Training with Aspire Bidding

From this overview of external training, it’s clear that it brings many benefits. What can you actually do to get the most out of it? A good first step would be to establish some concrete metrics for you to use to measure your in-house bid team’s performance. These could include win rate, bid quality scores, cycle time, etc.

Next, arrange a 30-minute Teams call to discuss a tailored training plan with masterclasses led by Andrew Morrison, APMP’s Global Thought Leader.

After this training programme, run a follow-up internal workshop to apply what was learnt to a current bid. Aspire Bidding’s services (such as independent reviews or interim bid professionals) can then complement and reinforce the results of the training.