How to Get Winning Prose from Non-Professional Proposal Writers

If you’re like most Proposal Manager professionals, you’re overworked,
overstressed and spending unnecessary time rewriting proposal sections that should
have been completed correctly by someone else

Cut your stress and increase your productivity by helping your
technical staff "Write It Right" the first time

When I told a proposal consultant friend of mine I would be offering this course, he jokingly told me I should title it, “Squeezing blood from a stone.â€Â  After all, that’s how many proposal managers feel when they run a pursuit without the assistance of professional writers and with only engineers and other technical staff contributing to the effort.

While these technical people are usually very knowledgeable, they often have a full-time “day job,†even when they are working on a proposal.  In addition, they lack the desire, confidence, and tools to be good writers.   As the proposal deadline comes closer and closer, a proposal managers’ recourse is usually to apply such methods as:

• Interviewing the subject matter experts and writing or rewriting everything themselves

• Threats to get draconian about the deadlines, telling people they are not allowed to get married or die during the proposal

• Using tough drill sergeant approach to structure and process

• Employing peer pressure (“I don’t punish the soldier, I punish the platoonâ€)

• Using storyboards that get filled out up to the pink team time and then get discarded when people begin to “just writeâ€

• Just-in-time training in boring grammar and proposal do’s and don’ts

But, the truth is, all these methods fail when it comes to the motivation, creativity, and inspiration that are part and parcel of writing. These tactics don’t let you capture the full brain power of your team in a proposal in order to win.

My first few years writing and managing proposals, I was in the same boat as you may be right now: I put in heavy hours not only because of the tight proposal deadlines, but because I had tried all these methods and they didn’t yield any results. I had to either interview my entire proposal team and write everything myself, or completely rewrite what they gave me to get those proposals to a winning quality.

I was constantly exhausted. I knew where every couch was in the corporate headquarters building (there were only four), and when those couches were taken by the likes of me, I caught a couple of hours of sleep on an inflatable mattress. Eventually I brought in a Lazy Boy couch that to this day sits in the Raytheon proposal development center.

I also remember working nearly every single week-end in the office building.  I was a “stress-ridden, no-life-outside-of-work, typical†proposal manager. I was frustrated.

Finally, I had a revelation.  The solution was to take the time to train my writers how to write well.  After all, it takes far less effort and stress to write a top-notch first draft than it takes to rewrite a disorganized mess.

But there was a problem.  All the professional proposal resources I had in my arsenal consisted of training the team on proposal language and grammar.  All these tips and techniques dealt with editing, not developing something from scratch.  I was back to square one.

But I didn’t give up.  I was determined to find an easier, less-stressful, and more successful way to write proposals.

I thought about everything I’d learned in my career.  I’d been a journalist for the Financial Times of London and become proficient in seven languages, so I understood writing and language. But even this knowledge wasn’t enough to develop a comprehensive method.

To finally develop a successful approach, I had to venture outside the proposal community into business and fiction writing, direct response marketing, information marketing, and the psychology of achievement and success - attending countless courses and reading dozens of books to pick up and integrate all the tools and helpful techniques to create a complete system.

Since I am a CURRENTLY practicing, hands-on capture and proposal manager, over the past several years, I have tested and perfected my methodology on more than 40 proposals for top U.S. Government contractors. I also published two articles on the subject, taught live and online courses, and presented at the Association of Proposal Management Professionals (APMP) Roundtable that had record attendance and stellar feedback.  More than a hundred attended my presentation at the APMP International Conference in 2009, and 80 people attend the Florida chapter webinar.

The last time that I applied my system in August 2009, we were able to write a 225-page proposal, complete with text and graphics, in only 10 days using a team of non-professional writers who confessed to hate writing. The system worked, and I am happy to say that the client has already received the contract award.

Now, starting on October 29, I am offering an expanded, detailed webinar on my full system for getting non-professional writers to deliver winning proposal prose.

A webinar is a live online training delivered to your computer, with exercises, and other information.

In the webinar, you will discover how to teach your writers to:

• Write better and more efficiently
• Double your writing speed by using the correct writing process and eliminating unnecessary rewriting
• Defeat writers’ block to save money, decrease stress, and increase productivity
• Use the full brain-power of your team by facilitating left-brained engineering staff to access their inner creativity and develop brilliant and original solutions
• Increase the quality of your proposals since you will have more time to polish them
• Increase your win rate by using simple and commonly available tools and techniques, to make your proposals an easy read for evaluators

I will tell you everything you need to know to make proposal writing easy and even – dare I say it – enjoyable

In addition you’ll receive:

• Brainstorming techniques proven to work effectively with everyone on your team, from your most left-brained, logical engineer to your most creative, right-brained personnel
• Guidance on developing story and metaphor that create a mental picture in the evaluator's head (and as you know, a picture is worth a thousand words, and a mental picture is worth a thousand pictures)
• Four dozen proven methods for beating writer’s block
• Handout of 80 power verbs you can use to turbo-charge your writing and make your proposal stand out
• How to structure proposal section drafts along the 7 W's to make a compelling argument
• Proposal Style Guide Template that is short and writer-friendly, so that they actually use it during the proposal
• OST’s own four-part Editing Checklist to ensure your proposal is perfectly polished
• Guidance on Proposal Language that wins
• And More!

Of course, you will get a certificate for attending this course.

Here is what the students say about my webinars:

This is a six-part webinar series taking place over the course of seven weeks
(we will break for Thanksgiving)

All webinars are on Thursdays, 4:00 PM - 5:00 PM Eastern Time (Washington, DC).

It is GMT-5 for our international customers - to check what time it is in your time zone, click here.

Webinar Schedule:

• October 29 - Module 1
• November 5 - Module 2
• November 12 - Module 3
• November 19 - Module 4
• December 3 - Module 5
• December 10 - Module 6

Format: Live online webinar (you need a phone to listen and ask questions, and a computer with Internet connection to see the slides)

Classes will be recorded, so if you miss a session, you will be able to download the audio recording of the live class and listen to it at your leisure on your computer, in your car, or on an iPod - anywhere you are.

I am confident that if you apply my proven tools and techniques that you will see positive results immediately ... So I am offering my No Risk Guarantee!

This webinar won’t be offered for a while after this opportunity, and probably not at this highly affordable price point, so make sure you take advantage of it. This course will greatly benefit you if you want to translate the extraordinary capability of your team into winning proposals.

I’m looking forward to helping you win more easily and making your - and your proposal teams’ - lives more enjoyable!

To your success,

Olessia Smotrova-Taylor,

Capture and Proposal Manager
President and CEO of OST Global Solutions, Inc.

"Because there is no second place in proposals!"TM

www.ostglobalsolutions.com

P.S. There is no equivalent of this webinar in the market, and it pays for itself with the first proposal you win and the peace of mind you get that's priceless.

P.P.S. If you think of someone else who could benefit from this course, please, forward this invitation to them!