From ad hoc to advantage: Building capability in your bid team
At The JGA Group, we train Sales Executive and Bid & Proposal Coordinator apprentices, helping organisations build stronger, more capable bid teams. In this article, tutor and skills coach Angela Denise shares her insights from working with apprentices and employers, explaining how apprenticeship training can transform bid team capability. Over time, this becomes a hidden business risk.
In many organisations, bid writing has evolved into a high-pressure, reactive function. Deadlines drive behaviour, knowledge sits with a few experienced individuals and new team members are expected to “pick it up as they go.”
While this approach can get submissions out of the door, it often leads to inconsistent quality, over-reliance on key people and a cycle of stress and firefighting.
Over time, this becomes a hidden business risk.
When bid capability is informal, processes vary from bid to bid. Compliance may be rushed, coordination between technical, commercial and operational contributors can feel fragmented, while senior staff often spend valuable time on tasks that could be handled by a well-trained coordinator.
The team delivers, but at a cost to resilience, morale and long-term performance.
The difference between a reactive bid team and a high-performing one is not just experience, it is structured capability.
Professional disciplines do not rely solely on learning by osmosis. They are supported by clear standards, shared ways of working and intentional development.
This is where the Level 3 Bid & Proposal Coordinator Apprenticeship, delivered by The JGA Group, provides a practical solution.
The apprenticeship offers a funded, work-based route to building core bid capability. It focuses on the skills that often sit at the heart of delivery challenges:
- Bid planning and coordination
- Document control
- Compliance management
- Stakeholder communication
- Professional workplace behaviours such as accountability and time management
Crucially, the learning is not abstract. Apprentices apply their knowledge directly to live bids, using real trackers, schedules and submissions as evidence of competence.
This approach turns development into performance improvement.
One employer described how their apprentice progressed from a junior team member into a confident bid writer who stepped up during a resource gap:
“Emily is now a fully-fledged Bid Writer filling a shortage we had while our Senior Bid Writer was out of the business. She has brought insight from her apprenticeship into the team and is bringing in ideas that make our bids more customer focused.”
As capability grows, apprentices do not just support bids — they start to lead aspects of delivery. The same manager shared:
“Emily is now organising and leading meetings with more experienced SMEs and extracting the information she needs to write the submission.”
That shift in confidence and professionalism has a direct impact on submission quality:
“We’ve seen improvements in clarity and structure. Responses are more concise and more relatable to the question asked by the buyer.”
The benefits extend beyond writing style. Structured development strengthens how the team operates under pressure:
“The apprenticeship has had a positive impact on our ability to meet deadlines and manage workload — 100%.”
This is the real transformation.
Senior bid professionals are freed to focus on strategy, messaging and client engagement rather than chasing inputs and managing version control. The whole team benefits from clearer structure and shared expectations of what “good” looks like.
Beyond immediate bid performance, the impact is cultural. Providing a recognised development pathway signals that bid and proposal work is a professional discipline, not simply an administrative support function.
This improves engagement, supports retention and helps organisations build a sustainable pipeline of capable work-winning professionals.
Moving from ad-hoc delivery to structured capability is not about adding bureaucracy. It is about reducing risk, improving consistency and creating the conditions where people can perform at their best.
In competitive markets, that shift can turn a stretched bid team into a genuine organisational advantage.
Because winning work consistently is not just about what you write, it is about the capability of the team behind every submission.
Nationwide surveys show that over half of UK employers report skills shortages, while investment in workplace training is at its lowest level in over a decade. Only 59% of employers provided training in 2024, despite persistent gaps in essential capabilities and increasing pressure on staff workloads.
This makes structured development routes like the Level 3 Bid & Proposal Coordinator Apprenticeship at The JGA Group not just helpful, but essential for organisations aiming to build resilient, future-ready bid teams.
About the author: Angela Denise is a Tutor and Skills Coach at The JGA Group, where she supports apprentices and employers across sales and bid coordination programmes, helping teams develop the professional skills needed to deliver high-quality bids and proposals.
