SALES
BID WRITING
One of the most popular services we offer is a bid writing service to help your business respond to requests for proposal (RFP) or submit funding applications.
Using a structured approach to bid writing that has been developed over 20 years and responsible for winning more than £700m in new business, Souter Point has an excellent track record when it comes to writing successful bids in sectors as diverse as music and the performing arts to global visa application centre outsourcing programmes.
BID MANAGEMENT
Bid management is a specialist type of project management, usually conducted under extreme time pressure with many unknowns. From our experience of managing hundreds of bids and funding applications, we help bring structure and insight into your bidding process to ensure you submit a winning bid on time and with the minimum risk.
GO-TO-MARKET STRATEGIES
How you market and sell your products and services is changing, with new business models such as platforms and XaaS offerings. How you have done business in the past is not necessarily the best way you should do business now and in the future.
Souter Point offers go-to-market strategy services that identify how to create the greatest value from your product and service offerings, including analysing the globalisation potential of what you do.
GROWTH CASE STUDIES
HOTELBEDS GROUP: EMERGENCY BID REPAIR
"This major bid isn't working out and we really need your help!"
This was the call Souter Point took from the MD of a specialist visa application outsourcer, part of the Hotelbeds Group. A major prospective client had re-issued a global outsourced services bid Souter Point had been involved with when it was originally tendered, but the re-bid wasn't going to plan. An unclear narrative, significant content duplication and no tangible win themes made it a rather exasperating 650-page read. With only two weeks until bid submission, we were engaged to re-align the document and positioning Hotelbeds Group for success.
After agreeing win themes, the core value propositions and a new bid structure, Souter Point set to work re-orientating the bid into a streamlined sales document that cut right to the core of the offering. The final response document was less than half the size of the original, and was significantly clearer in terms of what value it offered to the client that differentiated the Hotelbed Group bid from the competition.
The result? Hotelbeds Group won a contract to provide services in the Americas covering 21 countries, claiming a new client in the process and replacing a much larger incumbent who had been operating in that part of the world for almost a decade.
GENERATOR: INVESTMENT CASE APPLICATION
The COVID-19 pandemic had decimated the UK live music industry, and third-sector organisations like Generator North East were being hit particularly hard. Even though the company had managed to pivot to online delivery, major revenue streams such as annual showcase festivals had to be cancelled for two years running. Which meant reliance on government funding was greater than ever.
With a major Art Council National Performing Arts Organisation (NPO) investment case extension due in a matter of weeks, Generator was facing a crisis. A new CEO had just been appointed and discovered there was still a significant amount of work to do on the NPO investment case and very little time to do it. The Generator team had developed an array of amazing ideas, but were struggling to tie them together in a way that showed how they helped the Arts Council achieved its strategic objectives.
Souter Point was asked to come in and take a look at the investment case and the ideas that were on the table, and structure a narrative that demonstrated precisely how each initiative helped the Arts Council achieve one of more of its strategic objectives. By mapping each idea to specific Arts Council strategic objectives, investment principals and other goals, Generator was able to craft a compelling investment case extension proposal that resulted in the award of £125k in funding.
Due to the success of the collaboration between Generator and Souter Point, we were asked to provide support on a further funding application to the North of Tyne Combined Authority (NTCA), totaling more than £650k over three years. NTCA loved the Generator proposal and how it helped them achieve their strategic outputs, with the funding awarded for Generator to create two new higher education courses for people in the music and performing arts sector, with a particular focus on targeting underrepresented groups.