Blog 13 - Top Tip - Readability
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The blog this week is from Jeremy:
Here’s a top tip - Readability
Way into the detail of the geeky bidding stuff down the end of the funnel there - but critically important.
Everyone is time poor. Are people really reading all of your tender submission content? In the public sector maybe, in the private sector - probably not. We had an example recently where some consultants on the client side confessed after a glass of wine or two that they only had 40 minutes to read our 200 page bid and score it in amongst all of our competitors.
In these time poor times, it's super important that we engage the reader and that we're as efficient as possible in getting our message across. So how do we make our content come alive within the constraints we've got?
There are a few things at play here. We will deal with readability as a key factor here among others, like document design, signposting etc. My advice - have a bit of a play with readability scoring. In Microsoft word and Google Docs - if you Google it - you can scan over some text and it will give you a readability score. It’s quite interesting.
There's a few basics in how that is driven that are worth understanding
Paragraph power of five – we only want paragraphs that are about five lines deep and made up of about five sentences, with a bit of white space around them.
Make your text left aligned rather than justified - that has the straight edge on both sides. This is because humans use the jagged edge subconsciously - our eyes and our brains use that jagged edge to navigate where we are. Otherwise, you find yourself getting lost and having to backtrack. Getting lost in your content.
And then a really key one try to keep to a maximum of 15 words per sentence. Unless you're some sort of deep sea free diver – when you read some text out loud with sentences with more than 15 words in them, you will find it uncomfortable to read. You'll run out of breath and the same is true in your head. You will run out of rope when it comes to the capacity to remember and keep the thread on point in terms of where this text is going. Delete commas wherever possible, insert full stops. Have a mixed economy of sentence lengths, but try and keep them to 15 words maximum and then you'll find your content is a lot more readable.
And then the last top tip I think in amongst that is signposting. Your use of headings is absolutely critical. Obviously, you should be playing back to the client their questions as the headings and sub questions etc. But make sure those headings are consistent in terms of their size, format, colour, and font all the way through your document. They can then easily find what they are looking for and critically give you points for it. Your headings in effect should be the backbone of your document that you can navigate around the document with. You. should be able to flick through the document (or scroll these days I guess with the mouse) and know where you are at all times and be able to find yourself against the client's questions and likely scoring matrix.
So, paragraphs five lines deep made up of five sentences. 15 words per sentence max. Get rid of commas. Mixed economies of sentence lengths and use the headings as the backbone of the document. Job done.
I hope you find that useful.
Other Free Resources
We’re on a mission to help companies like yours win more work.
Here are some other free resources that should help you too. Feel also free to share them with friends and colleagues:
Free Bid Writing Basics Training Video - Our free exclusive bid writing basics training video will help you understand how to deliver your desired business growth and beat your business plan by winning more tenders. Watch the video here.
Our free work winning Podcast, the Red Review, can be found here.
You can also follow Jeremy on LinkedIn for hints, tips and insights here.
100% Typo Guarantee—Our blog posts are free-range. It was hand-crafted with love and sent out unfiltered. There was no review queue, no editorial process, no post-post revisions. Therefore, I can pretty much guarantee that there is some sort of typo or grammatical error or literary snafu. Got a business to run and a three year old to Dad. Sorry.