Prove You're the Best

Are you the ‘leading provider of X nationally’?

Guess what?

No one cares.

What matters to apprenticeship and training clients – organisations like Barclays, Department for Transport and Manchester University NHS Trust? Do they care that you’re the leading provider of, say, Lead Adult Care Worker apprenticeships? Do they care that you’re the first provider of Mortuary Technician nationally? That you’re the largest provider of employment support in the Midlands?

There are three problems with these statements. Most importantly, they typically don’t respond to an issue the client has raised. Unless the client has specified national coverage, does it matter that you’re the largest provider nationally? Perhaps that’s a bad thing – maybe you’re less able to offer tailored, localised services.

Secondly, they are usually impossible to evidence in a bid. Without referring to national datasets (which are unfortunately not comprehensive in apprenticeships in recent years), it’s very difficult to show what proportion of the market you control, and no real way to prove you were the first.

Finally, the statements are implications of a benefit, not the benefit itself. The reader of the bid still needs to mentally take that leap – that choosing the largest provider of something is good for the buyer. If you’re the sixth 20-page bid the evaluator is reading, will they have the mental capacity to bridge that gap?

What is a better approach?

Jon Williams and BJ Lownie’s book Proposals Essentials talks about the three Cs of proposal strategy, which can be summarised as

1. ??????Your customer: what they want, what they don’t want, and how they can sell the chosen approach to their executives and stakeholders
2. ??????Your capability: how well you can meet what the customer has stated they want, and what you don’t do as well or need to mitigate
3. ??????Your competition: the organisations bidding against you, and their strengths and weaknesses.

Identifying these areas for each bid, even briefly, shows us what claims are compelling for the buyer – that we will deliver what they want, that we will avoid things they don’t want, that we will do a better job than other organisations, and that the solution can be bought into at executive levels.

Once we know what claims the buyer will find compelling, which we can deliver on, we need to prove those claims.

The Association of Proposal Management Professionals writes about proving using logic. They recommend a mix of relevant concrete and anecdotal evidence: for education bids, these might be Ofsted reports, quality marks like matrix standard, achievement and retention rates (especially when compared to publicly available data such as that on Find Apprenticeship Training), grading (e.g., compared to your main EPAO’s average grading), better outcomes for learners from disadvantaged backgrounds, and any evidence of return on investment you have from clients.

Anecdotal evidence includes testimonials from relevant clients (employers and learners) or contract managers, in-depth case studies demonstrating the successful journey your intervention had, or awards or recognitions. Anecdotal evidence brings to life the changes your work can provide, and builds investment in the evaluators of the bid.

An apprenticeship example

For example, one of my clients, JGA, works with a Civil Service department. This department had stated that increasing the diversity of its apprenticeship intake was a priority. Through a comprehensive attraction, preparation and recruitment campaign, JGA substantially increased the diversity of apprentices across most metrics: ethnicity, disability, socioeconomic and academic backgrounds.

Now when we bid for new work where a buyer has stated diversity is a priority, we can convincingly claim that we have a strong track record of increasing diversity in large organisations. We state the increase in diverse apprentices across each metric due to our campaign, benchmarked against the Civil Service’s original apprentice demographics. We include testimonials from our contacts in the Civil Service about working with us, alongside quotes from learners and line managers about their experience. Where possible, we attach a full case study detailing the approach we took and the full benefits the department received. This provides a compelling and convincing response to questions about diversity.

If you’re interested in developing more compelling, convincing content for your bids, I’m available to support training providers and other organisations.