Storyboarding: A Comprehensive Guide for Bid Success

Bid Structures, Mapping and Tender Response Storyboarding

As a bid writing consultancy, structuring winning tender responses is very much 'bread and butter' for us. By mapping out the key elements of a bid, storyboarding enables teams to effectively communicate their value proposition, showcase their solutions, and ultimately increase their chances of success in the bid process. Your bid storyboard forms a central part of your bid plan and strategy.

This comprehensive guide provides practical and step-by-step guidance on how to increase your bid win rate through better storyboarding. We run through the basics of storyboarding, how to use storyboarding bid templates and examples, and how to develop the essential skill.

Understanding the Basics of Storyboarding for Bids and Proposals

Storyboarding is a crucial planning technique that helps bid teams visualise and organise the key elements of their proposal before writing begins. By bringing together subject matter experts and contributors, storyboarding ensures that everyone is aligned on the interpretation of the questions, customer requirements, and evaluation criteria. In turn, this makes the bid writing and review process far more efficient.

Defining Storyboarding

Storyboarding helps businesses organise and structure their RFP, proposal or tender answers. They therefore present ideas and win themes more clearly, ensuring that the proposal tells a compelling story that aligns with the buyer's needs and goals.

Importance in the Bidding Process

Storyboarding acts as a roadmap for the bid, guiding the team step-by-step through the buyer's requirements and keeping everyone on track. It ensures that all essential elements are covered in a logical sequence, flowing from the buyer's current challenges to how the proposed solution will improve things. Storyboarding also applies clever marketing and storytelling techniques to enhance the proposal's persuasiveness.

Key Components of an Effective Storyboard

An effective storyboard should include:

1. A thorough analysis of the tender documents to pinpoint core problems, desired outcomes, and specific themes or priorities emphasised by the buyer.
2. Clarification questions to fill in any gaps in understanding the requirements.
3. A focus on the user journey, centred on the narrative around how the solution will impact the end-user.
4. Visualisation of customer journeys, product development stages, or marketing campaigns.

By storyboarding the proposed solution with the buyer's perspective in mind, bid teams can clearly differentiate their offering and highlight its suitability.

How to Storyboard a Tender Question: Step by Step

You are working on a tender and there is a complex question, tight word counts and lots to cover - where do you start?

By following this storyboarding process drafting your tender responses will become a lot easier and more tailored to the specific question. We of course need to answer the question. When using this structure there are many writing styles to guide best practice such authoritative writing, lean writing and PEE.

Answering a Tender Question with an Effective Storyboard

Analyse the tender question:

• Read Carefully: Go through the tender question and documents thoroughly.
• Break It Down: What does the question need you to answer? Break this down. Let the sub questions be your subheadings to ensure you are fully answering it.
• Identify Key Points: Highlight important requirements and evaluation criteria, which relate to the question
• Relevant Win Themes: Consider what you really need to get across in your answer, which sets you apart but specifically for this question. It still needs to be relevant.

Answer the question! The storyboard will ensure you do this. The art of bid writing then comes in to ensure it is competitive.

Beyond this, you move into bid reviews and submission.

Analysing Client Requirements and Evaluation Criteria

Analysing client requirements and evaluation criteria is a critical step in developing a winning storyboard for your bid. Start by thoroughly reviewing the tender documents to gain a clear understanding of the client's needs, priorities, and scoring methodology.

Identifying Key Evaluation Criteria

Identify the key evaluation criteria that will be used to assess your bid. These criteria may include factors such as technical expertise, project management approach, innovation, and value for money. Understand the relative importance of each criterion by examining the weightings assigned to them in the evaluation process.

Aligning Storyboard with Client's Scoring Method

Ensure that your storyboard aligns with the client's scoring method. This may involve structuring your storyboard to address each evaluation criterion in a clear and concise manner, using headings and subheadings that mirror the client's requirements. By tailoring your storyboard to the client's scoring method, you demonstrate your understanding of their needs and increase your chances of achieving a high score.

More details on procurement and bid evaluation are included within our bid writing guide.

Storyboarding Example & Template

Here's an example of how to storyboard and structure the response to a common tender question with several sub-questions:

Tender Question

"Describe your company's approach to project management, including how you ensure projects are delivered on time and within budget. Define your process for managing risks and issues and you will communicate progress to us"

Storyboard Example Template

The structure below is also your headings and subheadings - highlighting as clearly as possible to the reader you are 100% answering each element of the question. Instant compliance and reassurance is what we are going for!

Project Management Approach (word count and page restriction dependent of course...)

• • Brief overview of the company's project management approach, including who will have overall responsibility for this contract
  • Highlight key points and win themes

Ensuring On-Time and Within-Budget Delivery

• Explain the project planning and scheduling process at a practical level for this contract. How it works, who specifically will be involved and why they are good. What are the main factors impact costs and delivery for this contract
• Discuss tools and techniques used for tracking progress and managing resources
• Provide examples of successful on-time and within-budget project delivery

• Outline the company's risk management process including how risks are identified, assessed, and mitigated
• Describe the issue resolution process and provide examples
• Any specific risks already identified for this tender, along with your mitigation methods. This is so important to make the response relevant to the buyer and their specific needs

Client Communication Throughout XXX Project

• Detail the company's approach to client communication
• Explain the frequency and methods of progress reporting
• Highlight the importance of transparency and collaboration with clients
• Any specifics or requirements from their tender documents or specification, which may include reporting requirements for example

Proven Project Management (Conclusion - word count and page restriction dependent of course...)

• Summarise the key points of the company's project management approach, including any win themes
• Emphasise the benefits to the client (e.g., reduced risk, increased transparency, successful project delivery)

Each section and the heading should reflect the buyers points in the question. The more specific and practical your response is the better. Using the clients specification to refine this is so important.

Developing a Winning Bid Strategy Through Storyboarding

The storyboarding process will help you assess and tailor your win themes and working winning strategy. By carefully planning and structuring your bid content (the answers to your tender questions), you can effectively communicate your value proposition and differentiate yourself from the competition.

For each tender question you work on you should have:

• An overview of what elements of the client requirement needs to be covered and is therefore relevant for the question - broken down by sub question (as detailed in the example above)
• Relevant win themes for the question you think are important to get across
• Evaluation and scoring criteria for that question. What you need to score top marks!

As a bid writing company, or a in-house proposal manager for example, you then have all the tools you need to draft an amazing response. You will want to speak to relevant members of your team who hold specific technical knowledge. These are often called subject matter experts.

Incorporating Win Themes and Unique Selling Points

Integrate your win themes and unique selling points throughout the storyboard. These are the key differentiators that set your solution apart from competitors. By weaving them into your narrative, you constantly reaffirm your strengths and the unique value you bring to the client.

Bid Writing

With all the tools, research and structures in place you really can write a high quality bid submission. Your writing style is important and will differ depending on the nature of the tender. For example, an authoritative writing style or lean writing to maximise the value in every word used.

Our bid writing examples will help you see this in practice.

Proposal Storyboard vs Tender Storyboard

A tender storyboard and a proposal storyboard are similar in that they both help plan out the key messages and structure of your bid response. However, there are some differences:

With a formal tender, which is often more structured, you may have additional information like evaluation criteria and specific questions to address in your storyboard. The tender documents provide a clear framework to build your storyboard around.

On the other hand, with a private sector proposal where you may be working from a verbal brief, you have more flexibility in how you structure your storyboard and response. However, this makes it even more important to create an organised storyboard to ensure your proposal is cohesive and persuasive, not just a marketing brochure.

Some quick tips for writing business proposals using effective storyboarding:

1. Start by identifying the key elements to include in your proposal, such as:
   • Executive Summary
   • Understanding of the client's needs
   • Proposed solution and key differentiators
   • Service delivery and project team
   • Relevant experience and case studies
   • Pricing and fees
2. For each section, consider what the client is looking for and what their perceived risks might be. This will help you develop win themes that position your solution as the best fit.
3. Create a single sheet of bullet points that summarise why you should win the contract based on your understanding of the client's requirements and your unique value proposition.
4. Use this sheet as a guide to develop your storyboard, ensuring that your win themes are clear and consistently reinforced throughout the proposal.
5. As you flesh out the storyboard, focus on how your solution benefits the client and how they will be better off choosing your services over competitors. Demonstrate your expertise and empathy for their challenges.
6. Consider using visual elements like flow charts, infographics, and tables to clearly convey key information and break up large blocks of text.

This approach to storyboarding ensures you'll create a well-structured and persuasive business proposal that is tailored to the client's specific needs and clearly demonstrates the value you bring to the table.

Bid Proposal Visual Storytelling

Visual storytelling is a powerful tool for enhancing bid proposals and capturing the attention of evaluators. By incorporating compelling graphics, images, and visuals, proposal teams can communicate key messages more effectively and make their submissions stand out from the competition.

Research shows that people process visual information 60,000 times faster than text! Well-designed graphics can quickly convey complex ideas, highlight important data, and create an emotional connection with the reader. This is particularly valuable in the bid world, where evaluators often have limited time to review multiple proposals. It can also be a way to very quickly put a buyer at ease, show professionalism and assurance.

When used strategically, visuals can reinforce win themes, showcase differentiators, and provide evidence of past performance. They can also break up dense text, make the proposal more navigable, and guide the reader through the narrative.

Visualisation enhances comprehension and engagement, making the response strategy more impactful. This involves creating diagrams, flowcharts, and infographics that simplify complex concepts.

To effectively visualise the strategy:

• Use colour coding: Differentiate between various elements of the proposal.
• Incorporate images: Use relevant visuals that support the narrative.
• Highlight key messages: Make essential points stand out clearly.

However, creating effective visuals requires more than just adding generic stock images or charts. Bid graphics should be tailored to the specific opportunity, aligned with the overall storyboard, and designed with the evaluator in mind. Where possible they should be real! If you are using photos - they should be your team, your sites and your office. It doesn't always need to be 'fancy' - but it needs to be real.

Benefits of Storyboarding

Storyboarding offers several key benefits when creating successful bids and proposals. First, it helps to organise thoughts and structure responses in a clear, logical flow. By planning out each section before drafting the actual text, writers can ensure they address all requirements and weave in compelling win themes.

Storyboarding is also critical for increasing proposal writing efficiency. As a business starts to win more contracts and increases the number of bids they go for, this becomes increasingly important. It allows bid teams to align on the approach, brainstorm ideas, and clarify assignments upfront. This saves time and reduces rework later in the process when the deadline is looming.

Perhaps most importantly, storyboarding enables proposal teams to bring the businesses specialist knowledge to life! By thoughtfully organising information, emphasising key messages, and leading evaluators to the desired conclusion, a well-written storyboard becomes the secret to winning bids. But don't tell anyone...

In essence, storyboarding provides a vital framework for producing high-impact proposals efficiently. While formats may vary from traditional outlines to visual mockups, the core purpose remains the same - planning a convincing, compliance response that sets your bid apart from the competition.