Tenders Masterclass: Beating the Competition in Professional Services

An intensive one day event giving bid managers and others involved in tenders a unique opportunity to hone their skills and analyse best practice from across the professions.

Held in conjunction with the Professional Services Marketing Group

Tendering is well established as the principal means of awarding new work in the professions - but making the most of the opportunities continues to be a challenge for most firms.

The Tenders Masterclass will enable participants to enhance their own skills, learn how other sectors approach the process, keep up to date with procurement trends and identify ways in which their firm’s win rate can be improved.

Having attending the course, participants will have gained new perspectives on:

- managing the bid function – getting the whole firm to apply good practices; measuring return on investment

- procurement trends in the public and private sectors; dealing with procurement departments

- identifying the context of the proposal – using research and getting the most from scoping meetings

- drafting and improving tender documents

- how to make presentations memorable – managing rehearsals and coaching presentation teams

- best practice across a range of sectors

Formerly a two day course, the Tenders Masterclass has been condensed into a one day event without losing any of the content. Course material will include contributions from experts across a range of relevant sub disciplines.

The course is highly participative and number of attenders will be restricted.

Speakers:

John de Forte – Course leader
The masterclass will be run by John de Forte, MD of Proposal Training Ltd and one of the leading bid practitioners in the professional services arena. Author of Proposals, Pitches and Beauty Parades, he has worked for over 20 years with legal, accounting, property and construction, actuarial, consulting and other business services organisations in improving all aspects of proposals. His experience ranges from advising smaller firms on developing proposal processes to helping international consortia to win multi-£bn flagship government contracts.

An excellent course – I have been able to put what I’ve learned immediately into practice.
Melanie Bruck, Clyde & Co

For further information about course content, contact John de Forte. For administrative enquiries or to make a booking, contact Gail Jaffa on 0845 619 9886 or at admin@psmg.co.uk.

The programme – 28th April at CCT Barbican,  EC1A 4JA

9.00 Introduction – course objectives

9.05 Critical success factors in winning proposals
- the dynamics of persuasion
- procurement trends

10.00 Managing the proposal function
- embedding good practice
- debriefing policy and practice
- measuring return on investment
- reviewing the function
- training

11.00 Coffee

11.15 The live bid: fact-finding and intelligence
- using research
- getting the most out of site visits

11.45 Developing the bid response
- issues and solutions
- creating differentiators

12.15 Exercises and feedback

13.00 Lunch

14.00 Drafting the document
- structure and content
- design and lay-out
- responding to questionnaires
- editing and improving the document

14.45 Exercises and feedback

15.30 Coffee

15.45 The presentation
- preparing the presentation
- managing rehearsals

16.30 Exercises and feedback

17.15 Summary and conclusions

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