APMP Best Practices: A Strategic Investment at Quorum.

Learning and continuous improvement is considered an essential investment in Quorum and not just for technical staff. Our sales team keep up-to-date with best practice in bid and proposal management by being certified members of the Association of Proposal Management Professionals (APMP).

We also assess the maturity of our bid and proposal management function against the five pillars in the British Standards Institution’s PAS 360:2023 Bid and proposal management – Code of practice. Using best practices, appropriately sized for our business and each opportunity, allows us to be efficient and effective in bidding but it also brings our team together, creating positive energy and confidence, and reducing stress! We are now extending this knowledge to our SMEs with an internal training course that summarises the best practice most relevant to them:

Standards: Apply professional APMP best practice to ensure customer-focused, consistent, concise, relevant, and professional proposals.

Win Strategy: Develop a win strategy by analysing customer pain points, competitors, and identifying a unique opportunity strategy.

Value Proposition: Improve value proposition by linking customer benefits to the features of your offer and using theme statements.

Writing Style: Use plain English, short sentences, active voice, and customer-focused language to make proposals easy to read.

Bid Planning: Plan the bid process by allocating time for kick-off meetings, final document review, production, and contingency.

Achieving Excellence Through Best Practices

The results of our investment are clear. Benchmarking consistently ranks us among the top performers, and our employees who contribute to tender responses feel empowered and valued:

"I found the session incredibly useful. It helped me to look at how to approach bids from another angle and I came away with a fresh perspective that actually made me revisit a bid I was working on, and I felt I was able to make significant improvements based on what I had learned."

– Sharon McCormack , Head of Project Management

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"The session helped me understand the overall bid process within Quorum. It gave me a new appreciation of the amount of work that is required to put a successful bid in place and how my role as an SME can assist within the process.”

– Andrew Kemp , Senior Consultant Manager

"I learnt a lot from the internal session that Angela delivered to us about APMP.?Angela was very informative and engaged with myself and my colleagues the whole session. Bad habits creep in over time and we tend to forget certain areas that can make a real difference in our submissions.

These refreshers were very welcoming and thought provoking, it has helped me a lot with how I try to engage in work both professionally as well as in my personal day to day life. We all have a common goal and want Quorum to grow and be even more successful. Participating in this APMP session, I believe, will contribute positively to this aim, and I would encourage as many people as possible within the business to try it out for themselves.”

– Kevin Edrich , Business Development Manager

Have you considered implementing best practices in your bid management function?

#ProudToBeAPMP #OneQuorum

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