Be client-focused in both your content and in your writing.
Be client-focused from the beginning.
If and whenever possible, use your choice of opening words to let the client know that your answer and information is going to be framed in the context of his interest, his needs, his contract, his priorities, and his concerns. (Or hers.)
Avoid the temptation to slip into sales-speak.
Don’t be tempted to go into marketing copywriter mode. It’s not required. Worse, you’ll come across as an amateur, if copywriting isn’t your day job.
For the most part, write as you would speak. It’s the most readable way to write. If your writing is natural, informal and unstilted, that is in fact what you are doing: You’re speaking to the client. You’re just doing it through the written word.
Don’t out-clever yourself.
By the same token, don’t fall into the mistaken mindset of thinking you need to be a creative writer to write bids. In fact, trying to be creative or “salesy” is what brings a submission down.
It’s about getting the basic content correct and complete, and then simply making sure it progresses logically and reads sensibly.
Do NOT do the “cut-and-paste” from the policies and procedures manual.
At the other end of the spectrum is the bid featuring large tracts that read like (and many times, are) a straight cut-and-paste from a policies or operational manual.
Give the evaluators more credit than to fall for this practice.
Read your finished piece out loud . . . to Someone Else
Read your material aloud to a disinterested party. You’ll avail yourself of the invaluable phenomenon of hearing your writing through that person’s ears.
So much the better that they have no knowledge of the topic; you’ll quickly ascertain whether or not your piece makes sense to the common reader or other non-technical audience.
On this as a closing note, it’s worth pointing out that respondents are so always so much more transparent (to clients and their evaluation teams) then they think they are.
So why not plan to put the required upfront (a) research, (b) thinking and (c) strategy formulation effort in as a standard modus operandi when answering EOIs, RFPs and RFTs . . . rather than doing as most bidders do, and ultimately spending just as much time trying to “doctor up” something substandard to “make it work” in the final, unnecessarily pressured hours before the submission deadline?
