Wouldn’t You Look Sexy Holding a Great Guide To Business Proposals?

As you know, in an effort to build a more interconnected Quote Roller community and to be a super cool start-up that gives away stuff, we have been doing a Comment and Win Giveaway! This is where we bribe you for being clever and astute on the record and you could win one of the many sweet references in the business proposal market.

So today, we are gonna show you how sexy some winners have looked reading our highly informative guides in order to inspire you to keep commenting!

Congrats to Lachlan Tetlow-Stuart

That book looks good on you! Lachlan won after telling us some of the design features he’d like to see in newer editions of Quote Roller. He works for Pine Fresh Media in Melbourne and is currently living in Germany.

Lachlan is enjoying reading about Matt Handal’s Proposal Development Secrets. Matt spoke to Quote Roller recently about how best to coordinate the proposal-writing process.

And to our second winner is… Todd Larson!

Todd, hailing from Watertown, Massachusetts, where he writes about architecture, was the first to point out the secretly hidden mistakes in our blog “How to choose the right words for a business proposal.” See? Grammar wins prizes and influences people!

He won Emma Jaques’ Bid Management. If you don’t know who Emma is, you gotta check out our interview with her, which includes who should be in charge of that bid process and what you can learn from the London Olympics.

Just don’t miss your win!

April has four weeks in and you only have two winners, you ask? Well, to be honest, two out of four of our winners didn’t respond to their notification (check your Spam folders, folks! just to be safe, add @quoteroller.com to your safe list. Especially you, Wendy Herndon and SEO man Damien!) If we don’t hear from them next week, I guess we’ll have to choose new winners. That means your chances are higher!

Just to recap, here are the sweet reads you could be winning!

Bids, Proposals and Tenders: Succeeding with Effective Writing

This book is a must-have guide for anyone producing bids and proposals ranging from short covering letters through to tenders for major corporate or government procurement. Numerous mini case studies and quotes from specialists are included. Sales, marketing, project and technical staff will all benefit from reading the book and keeping a copy on their shelves for reference. It is also useful for business students at all levels. Contents include: the art of proposal writing; the proposal lifecycle; presentation and format; editing and reviewing; getting information from experts; corporate and client culture; writing proposals within the OJEC/OJEU procurement system.

Bid Management: A No-Nonsense Guide to Writing Successful Bids Proposals and Funding Applications

While it is becoming increasingly common for contracts to be awarded through formal procurement processes, smaller businesses could be missing out. But with the right skills and confidence, there’s no reason not to take advantage of this potentially lucrative route to market.

Bid Management is a no-nonsense, practical guide that will teach the reader how to think like a professional bid manager. It covers the basics of how to find opportunities, understanding the rules of the game and how to get to know customers. It also gives essential advice on:

how to compete with other bidders
presenting a deliverable and profitable bid
project managing a bid
working out a winning pricing strategy
using the final presentation to clinch the deal

With an insightful interview with the Director behind the London 2012 Olympic bid, Bid Management uncovers the myths of bidding and teaches you all the skills you need to win new clients and retain existing ones through formal tender processes.

Handbook For Writing Proposals, Second Edition

Proven techniques and invaluable advice for writing winning business proposals — revised and updated!

What makes a winning business proposal? It highlights your skills and services, meets your client’s needs, and clearly sets you apart from the competition.

Since 1995, Handbook for Writing Proposals has helped thousands of professionals develop winning proposals. This exceptional handbook guides you through the unique nine-step proposal-writing process from the initial RFP to the client presentation. In this revised and updated version, the authors show you how to:

Choose the RFPs that give you the best chance of success
Showcase your company’s skills and services
Set realistic time/cost schedules and budgets
Avoid the mistakes that sink most proposals
Build client relationships that bring you repeat business
Tailor your writing for an international business audience

Whether you own your own business, need to train your corporate staff, or simply want to improve your skills, Handbook for Writing Proposals, second edition will show you how to profit from every proposal you write.

Proposal Development Secrets: Win More, Work Smarter, and Get Home on Time

Finally, a book about proposal development that won’t put you to sleep! A must read for anyone in the business of selling or marketing professional services. If you are looking for real insights into the proposal business, if you want to work smarter and not harder, and if you care deeply about the outcome of the proposals you produce, this is the book for you.

Proposal Development Secrets is full of ground-level advice from the proposal trenches and valuable insights that might just make proposal development a little less taxing and a lot more rewarding. It focuses on the cold hard realities of the proposal business and provides you with some strategies to help you get home to the people and things that you love.

In Proposal Development Secrets, Matt Handal, author of Marketing To The Mind, shares his unique insights with you.

Topics include:

The proposal evaluation practices clients don’t want you to know
How to craft compelling proposals your clients will read
The right and wrong way to ask questions about an RFP
Technology that will make writing proposals easier and faster
The formulas for writing and choosing the most relevant experience
How to get your proposal accepted after you missed the deadline
And much, much more

RFPs Suck! How to Master the RFP System Once and for All to Win Big Business

It used to be that you could ignore RFPs. Only a small portion of the market used them in their buying process and you could work around those companies. Today, governance rules dictated by boards and administered by finance have made RFPs and RFQs a dominating component of the large-deal world. Not only can you no longer ignore them, but you need to know that companies use RFPs-and increasingly purchasing and procurement-for many reasons that have little to do with the opportunity offered in the official document. The result?

We all have no choice but to go through the expensive and time-consuming process. And though you might like to believe the system is fair, if your company is pitching a disproportionately larger client, you’re at a disadvantage from the moment you begin the process. WHY? Because the RFP system is not built for you. It’s built for big companies and government institutions that benefit from RFPs. But no matter how hard you try to avoid them, there will inevitably come a day when that irresistible RFP lands on your desk. It’s almost like it was written for you. This book is your best guide on what to know, to question and to do when faced with that RFP. It will also help you develop the confidence and understanding to know when to quit the process before it even starts or when to stay in it and win big.