Liverpool John Moores University boosts sales-writing skills with bespoke training programme

Winning business with persuasive public-sector proposals means abandoning an academic writing style in favour of reader-centred, high-impact writing.

The challenge

The health and social sciences faculty at Liverpool John Moores University was keen for its staff to bring in more income through public-sector contracts in training, research and development. The ten teams engaged in this commercial work were highly skilled in writing academic reports, but didn’t know how to write effective tenders and bids. Business Development Manager Chris Edwards asked Emphasis to help address this skills gap.

The solution

Emphasis designed a bid-focused business-writing programme that showed faculty members how to write attention-grabbing executive summaries, structure a persuasive argument and tailor bids to the reader. It also showed them how to identify and use win themes. Readability was another key focus, encouraging staff to move away from using a passive, academic voice and towards using a more active voice to engage the reader.

The results

‘It was an excellent training session because, although people came from different academic backgrounds, everyone got something out of it,’ Chris says. ‘I have found Emphasis to be superb. The trainer was also absolutely brilliant. It was all handled fantastically.’

Staff are now rising to the challenge of consistently using the high-impact writing skills they’ve learnt, ensuring that business documents are concise and customer-focused. ‘We have been more successful in our business goals since the training and have won a number of recent bids,’ says Chris. There has also been a marked difference in the quality of the tenders since the training. ‘We have put in better bids as a result. For every bid we’ve submitted, we have had excellent feedback.’