If – as pursuit leader or bid strategist – you haven’t checked off the following key preparatory measures before your bid writers put fingers to keyboard, you greatly risk falling into the standard default position i.e. section authors producing thinly-disguised "brochureware", and others producing what comes across as cut-and-pastes from a product or procedures manual.

So ensure you can answer fully in the affirmative before you set your section authors loose on their tasks:

• Have you produced a comprehensive, high-readability, overarching strategy document?

• Have you produced writer’s guides – based on the above – for each major section or Schedule?

• Before finalising the above, have you shown these to several of the writers to ensure they are user-friendly from their perspective?

•  Have you held a collective briefing session i.e. between the strategist, one or two other key participants in the strategy workshops, and the section authors i.e. to verbally explain the strategy and how it underpins or influences their sections?

• Have you returned to each section author, individually, following this initial collective briefing, to ensure they understand and can follow their respective writing guide? And that they have aligned the content of their writing guide with their section content plan?

• Does any section author feel he or she needs more supporting information that they need help to obtain?

These are the key steps to ensuring bid content that reflects, and adheres to, a central, cohesive, underpinning strategy.