If you want your business to grow, building your customer base is essential. Although online marketing tactics will help you to attract prospects, there will come a time where you need to directly sell your business to a client through either a face to face meeting or a bid.

When you make a formal bid, you will be putting why your business should win the contract into writing. Although the client will be assessing what your business can do for them, their main perception of you is going to come from your writing. If spelling and grammar mistakes are made carelessly throughout and your language skills are not up to scratch, they’ll likely stop reading after the first few paragraphs. On the flip side, if your writing is impeccable, you’re going to stand out from your competitors.

So, which writing faults are you making that could be causing you to miss out on clients, and how do you overcome the issue?

Common Signs of a Poor Writer

Bid writing requires you to be on the top of your game. Although the odd grammar mistake may be overlooked if the piece is eloquent on the whole, you won’t get away with anything that is far away from perfection. Here are a few key writing mistakes that you need to avoid if you want to heighten your chances of winning clients:

• Repetitiveness – The client isn’t just going to quickly scan over your bid, they’re going to be taking in every small detail. So, if you use the same word/phrase in multiple sentences or paragraphs, they’re going to pick up on it. If you get stuck for alternate words to use, look in a thesaurus!
• Using Slang/Informal Language – Even if you’re friendly with the client, you should never use an informal tone when writing your bid. This is business. Anything other than formal language will just look unprofessional.
• Spelling and Grammar – Accurate spelling and grammar is one of the most fundamental skills that any writer needs to perfect. Using Word’s built in spell-check is a given, but there are some mistakes that this may not pick up. After you’ve finished writing your bid, read back over it. Once you’ve read back over it, leave it a couple of hours and read it again with a clear mind. You should also ask someone trustworthy to proofread it, as they may pick up on something you’ve missed.
• Bulk Paragraphs and Long Sentences – The client is likely going to be reading over a dozen different bids, so they’re going to be looking for something that is easy for them to read. Sentences that aren’t broken up with the right punctuation will simply come across as too complex and unnecessary. Similarly, consistently long paragraphs will be off putting and you could lose the bid as a result.
• General Language Mistakes – Changing tenses, abbreviating, mixing up the singular and plural form of a word, lack of citation.

All of the above mistakes are detrimental and should be avoided at all times. Being more vigilant and careful with your writing is the first step to improvement, but that’s not all you can do.

How to Improve Your Bid Writing Skills

• Practice Writing: The Internet is full of writing prompts to assist with your technique. Like any other skill, writing only gets better with practice. Writing is an ability that translates well no matter where you place the emphasis. Even if you practice writing other forms of technical or non-technical text, you will find that this will improve your overall technique and will become more comfortable with writing efficiently.
• Bid Writing Training – If you think you need more advanced help with your writing, or even think that you’re writing is faultless but you’re still losing bids, looking into bid writing services for your organisation could be exactly what you need. A bid writing service will not only help you to write a competitive bid, but it will also allow you to better understand the importance of the process, which may inspire you’re writing.

Even though technology has taken over and people fear that “text talk” will be the norm, formal writing is still more important than ever and will always be a highly-credited skill. If you want to succeed in business, the foundation lies in how well you come across to clients.

Your writing will improve if you fully engage in the aforementioned exercises. It’s simply a matter of understanding where the problems lie and how best to address them. Once you’ve overcome what’s been holding you back, you can put your pristine writing skills to the test in your next bid.

You might also enjoy: Tips and Tools for Writers