This course teaches proposal editing skills that will help you transform complex, inconsistent drafts into polished, customer-ready proposals. Unlike regular editing, proposal editing requires specialized techniques that normally take years to develop through trial and error — but this course accelerates that process.
You’ll learn how to:
Develop the professional attributes of a proposal editor.
Estimate your workload correctly despite tight deadlines and last-minute submissions.
Determine the most efficient workflow and integrate changes effectively.
Add value to the content by incorporating persuasive, customer-focused language.
Remove irrelevancies and “puffed-up” text to improve clarity and precision.
Create a unified proposal voice that eliminates inconsistencies.
Detect showstopper mistakes that could disqualify your proposal.
Translate dense “proposalese” and “technicalese” into clear, readable English.
Enforce consistent style, tone, and formatting throughout the document.
This course is available in a fully self-paced online format, allowing you to learn anytime and anywhere. To learn more click here.
The polished, professional appearance of your proposal is paramount to making a positive impression on evaluators.
You will learn how to work with subject matter experts (SMEs) and edit their content to meet proposal requirements. You’ll practice editing for clarity and meaning, sharpen your ability to spot factual errors and redundancies, and learn how to organize unfocused materials effectively.
You will also learn how to infuse a consistent voice throughout your proposal, regardless of the number of authors involved.
This course is not another English grammar class. Instead, it’s a hands-on, practical training filled with examples and exercises that help you master techniques for rapid and accurate editing using commonly available tools and professional editing applications.
This self-paced course provides the real-world skills required to increase the quality, professional appearance, and persuasiveness of your proposals. It combines detailed instruction, guided practice, and exercises designed to simulate the editing challenges faced by proposal professionals.
The experts who created our business development, capture, and proposal training courses are highly experienced, currently practicing proposal professionals whose years of successful experience in Government acquisition and training allow them to offer valuable insights. Through the course materials, they address real-world editing scenarios, share proven methods, and provide practical guidance based on current best practices. Check our instructors’ bios on our About Us page.
Course Curriculum
Learning Objectives
Upon course completion, the participants will have learned and be able to put into practice:
Understanding a proposal editor’s role and key attributes.
Understanding compliance.
Assessing material and estimating resources required to edit sections.
Optimizing editing time and workflow in a team of editors to save resources.
Using electronic editing tools and professional hard copy markings.
Avoiding typical editing traps and mastering editing techniques to ensure a perfectly clean copy.
Editing content for clarity, compliance, customer language, accuracy, and persuasiveness.
Editing for content while preserving author’s meaning.
Improving the substance of the proposal.
Reducing page count without sacrificing content.
Adhering to the requirements of the Plain English Act.
Automating proposal editing to increase efficiency.
Editing resumes and past performance for length and compelling, relevant language.
Catching showstopper mistakes.
Improving readability while satisfying technical evaluators.
Effective workflow tracking.
Module 1: What it Takes to Be a Stellar Proposal Editor
Introductions and learning objectives.
The proposal editor’s role in the proposal lifecycle.
Attributes of a great proposal editor.
Mastering diplomacy, providing constructive feedback, and fostering teamwork.
How an editor can have the greatest impact on proposal quality.
Module 2: Setting Up for Success
Introduction to styles: working with GPO, Chicago, and other style guides.
Checking what style is used for the proposal.
Creating a proposal-specific style guide for the proposal team.
Understanding compliance – how to quickly grasp the structure of the solicitation.
Exercise: Customizing style guide template for your proposal team.
Module 3: Estimating Your Effort and Time
Identifying different levels of editing.
Assessing the material for content, organization, and writing style.
Skills and effort that different levels of editing require from a proposal editor.
Estimating time and effort required to edit the assigned workload.
Optimizing editing time to save resources while achieving the most professional results.
Determining workflow when working in a team of editors.
Exercise: Estimate the time required to edit the assignment and plan your work.
Module 4: Editing Mechanics
Using MS Word’s Track Changes and Compare Documents tools effectively.
Developing a systematic approach to electronic editing.
Tracking and merging changes by multiple reviewers.
Editing electronic section copy: secrets to clean and clear editorial feedback.
Editing hard copy: professional editorial markings glossary.
Microsoft Word shortcuts for increased speed and efficiency.
Typical editing traps and how to avoid them.
Four additional editing techniques to ensure a perfectly clean editing copy.
Exercise: Practice and compare the application of two different techniques to demonstrate a difference in editing quality.
Module 5: Substantive Editing
Maximizing clarity and compliance with the outline and RFP.
Reintroducing RFP and customer’s language.
Identifying and eliminating irrelevant boilerplate.
How to avoid distorting author’s meaning.
Flagging inconsistencies, incomplete information, and ambiguity.
Adding benefits and proof language to improve persuasive qualities of the proposal.
Translating “technicalese” to English: correcting imprecise wording, technical arrogance and lecturing, redundancy, garbled language, confusing thoughts, unknown acronyms, and incomplete information.
Spotting and correcting factual inaccuracies that could kill your section’s rating.
Pinpointing areas that need work.
Revising or reorienting figures and tables.
Exercise: Edit section for content.
Module 6: Structural Editing
How to cut down the text length to fit within the assigned page limit without sacrificing content.
Editing for better section flow.
Restructuring for more persuasive and proportionate paragraph flow.
Revising introductory sentences.
Organizing unfocused material.
Revising for consistent voice even if multiple writers contributed to proposal development.
Properly introducing figures and tables.
Exercise: Edit section for length and structure.
Module 7: Copy Editing and Proofreading
Plain English Act’s impact on proposal writing and editing.
Four editing automation techniques to increase editing speed and leverage modern editing tools.
Using spelling and grammar tools effectively.
Making global changes and using Find and Replace effectively.
Techniques to improve proposal readability while satisfying technical evaluators.
Eliminating passive voice, or deciding if and when passive voice is appropriate.
Identifying vague, redundant, or overused words or expressions.
Grammar gaffes every proposal editor should heed.
Grammar and punctuation refresher for the most common proposal errors.
Making finer adjustments such as tone and rhythm.
Editing, titling, and captioning figures and tables for maximum impact.
Ensuring consistency in style for every occurrence.
Exercise: Copy-edit the section for sentences and words.
Module 8: Editing Resumes and Past Performance Sections
Rules for cutting proposal resumes to the right page count.
Editing past performance sections for compliance, relevancy, length, and consistency.
Workflow tracking tools to ensure you are always organized.
Working with authors to provide the missing information.
Exercise: Edit a set of resumes.
Module 9: Last Touches
Ten items to check in a proposal for consistency and professional appearance.
What to look for when editing for aesthetics to catch desktop publishing errors.
Techniques for finalizing the copy.
Comparing hard copy edits to the final document to ensure all changes are made correctly and no new errors are introduced.
Generating an acronyms table using tools.
Checking on numbering for figures and tables, and cross-references.
Cleaning up style sheets for fast and reliable formatting.
Generating or updating the table of contents.
Exercise: Identify the items requiring correction prior to proposal production.
Module 10: Recap and Summary
Meet Your Instructor
Olessia Smotrova, CF.APMP Fellow
Olessia has more than 25 years of experience in business development. She led winning bids for four out of the top five Government contractors, winning more than $26 billion over the course of her career in single award contracts. She is an AI developer and strategist, pioneering the use of generative AI in Government contracting. She has created and implemented AI tools for business development processes, proposal strategy formulation, and competitive analysis. She is an AI super-user and thought leader in the practical application of generative AI in synthesizing complex data, generating innovative solutions, and driving decision-making in high-stakes Government BD environments.
She is the author of the book How to Get Government Contracts: Have a Slice of $1 Trillion Pie and seven other books. She has taught a graduate course for the Stevens Institute of Technology, and she provided training to Treasury and NASA. She has served for 2 years as the President of the National Contracts Management Association (NCMA) Bethesda/Medical Chapter and for 2 years as the President of the Association of Proposal Management Professionals (APMP) National Capital Area Chapter.
Olessia is recognized as an APMP Fellow for her contributions to the field of capture and proposals – the highest honor in the business development profession. Her skills span every aspect of business development, sales, and marketing. Prior to supporting Fortune 500 companies and small businesses as a proposal consultant and growing OST, she worked as a business developer for Raytheon and Lockheed Martin and wrote for the Financial Times of London.
Student Reviews
Anthony Needam
12/10/2024
This was new to me. It was very I formative. We received our packets late. I was not aware of how interactive this would be.
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Nao Gamo
11/07/2024
I highly recommend the "MASTER AI TO ENHANCE BD, CAPTURE AND PROPOSAL PROCESSES" course! Not just a high-level overview of AI and its capabilities, the course is full of practical tips that you can apply immediately. All the courses I have taken with OST Global Solutions have been well worth it!!
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Francisca Celmer
11/07/2024
The "Master AI to Enhanced BD, Capture, and Proposal Processes" class given by OST Global Solutions was truly outstanding. The instructor was incredibly knowledgeable and engaging. She made the material easy to understand and directly applicable. I highly recommend this class.
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Francisca Hep
11/07/2024
The "Master AI to Enhanced BD, Capture, and Proposal Processes" class given by OST Global Solutions was truly outstanding. The instructor was incredibly knowledgeable and engaging. She made the material easy to understand and directly applicable. I highly recommend this class.
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Jay Yudof
11/06/2024
The BD and capture using AI course what is comprehensive and effectively taught.
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andre downey
11/06/2024
The class taught alot of useful information on ai & working it in to our proposal development process
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Lilliana Reyes
9/20/2024
Great course! Clear information and great pace.
The information was very helpful for someone getting started in the proposal world or someone just trying to learn how to easily transition from InDesign to Microsoft Word.
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Aislinn Berge
9/20/2024
Took the full day training on Desktop Publishing For Proposal Writing with Phillip Pettet. I learned so much! Phillip was fantastic at explaining things and gave lots of tips and tricks for using Word. Thank you!
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TC Phil
8/28/2024
I recently completed the year-long Business Development Apprenticeship with OST Global Solutions, Inc., and it exceeded my expectations! The program is comprehensive, covering BD, capture, proposal skills, and so much more. It’s clear that OST is the best in the business—they have addressed the real skill gap in this field.
Their curriculum, aligned with Department of Labor standards for Federal Government Business Development, is TOP-NOTCH and the first of its kind in the nation! The training was practical, directly applicable to our business, and provided the expertise needed to succeed in this competitive industry. I highly recommend this apprenticeship to anyone looking to advance their career in Business Development. I plan on taking many additional courses over the next few years as they continue to stay ahead of the curve. Thank you, OST!
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George Franz
6/13/2024
Great course from OST Global Solutions! Olessia's vast experience in this area shines through and the course is chocked full of tips, tactics, and information sources to consider to perform competitive analysis and determine price to win for opportunities.
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Tiffany & Jay Jackson
4/29/2024
I've taken multiple classes with Olessia of OST Global Solutions and the classes are always well-structured and informative. The lastest course on AI is phenomenal - highly recommend it if you're looking to enhance your BD, Capture, and Proposal processes via AI!
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LaKeisha Thomas
4/25/2024
Alexia was a very engaging instructor. The AI class was mind blowing! The capabilities using AI to assist with BD processes are endless. I'm looking forward to implementing all of these new tools.
