Enhance your team’s capabilities with comprehensive training programs in BD, Capture, and Proposals designed to win multi-million and multi-billion dollar Government contracts.

At our Bid & Proposal Academy, we codified OST’s best practices in our courses, and we teach the processes and techniques that we use to win the most complex bids.

We offer six BD, Capture, and Proposal training solutions to meet your needs.

Business Development & Proposal Public Training Courses

We offer 14 public courses multiple times per year. All courses are currently virtual and presented by live instructors. Our courses are based on key principles that differentiate us from others in the market:

1. Our class content is continuously updated based on the latest best practices and trends. We don’t teach stale proposal principles from the last decade. We build on what works now and adjust the training to match changing market realities such as AI transformation, procurement shifts, and the competitive landscape.
2. Our participants learn far more than just the process. We focus our courses on the how-to instructions of winning Government proposals, including AI and other tools.
3. Our class materials contain embedded multimedia and graphics-rich animated slides, complete with hands-on exercises and discussions. We use interactive adult learning techniques to maximize understanding and retention.
4. Our instructors are practicing proposal professionals who offer valuable insights to our students. Our instructors can answer tough questions as they come up during the course. They can also tailor the material to the student’s specific challenges and share their professional experiences.

• Writing Persuasive Government Proposals
• Winning Government Cost Proposals
• Foundations of Federal Business Development
• How to Develop a Compliant Proposal
• Proposal Graphics Conceptualization and Design
• Desktop Publishing for Proposal Professionals
• Proposal Editing Workshop

Each course counts as 3 CEUs toward your APMP accreditation and/or toward PDUs for your PMP certification. These courses may also count toward other certifications that you hold — check with the certifying body to confirm.

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Onsite or Virtual Corporate Training & Custom Options

Get corporate training tailored to the specific challenges facing your organization or business unit. Our modular courses can be combined in any way to meet your training goals. We can also design class exercises around your past proposals or a live pursuit to maximize your team’s engagement and retention.

Our course catalog with all class descriptions and modules is available for download.

We offer onsite or virtual training in a variety of formats, which include:

1. Concentrated one-day training focused on specific topics customized to your immediate needs.
2. Multiple-day training options on a variety of topics to address skill and knowledge gaps in your business development team. We typically deliver these over two to five days.
3. Distance learning for your staff joining from multiple locations. We can deliver an entire course at once or split it into a series of webcasts. We can provide day-long live training or split it into a series of trainings taught over breakfast or lunch to reduce your staff’s time away from daily activities.
4. Provide just-in-time training for your entire proposal team for your live strategic pursuits, in person or via a webcast.

Get a customized training quote that meets your organization’s needs and makes the most of your training budget.

Additional courses are available for onsite custom training:

• Solution Development: A course highly recommended for capture managers, proposal managers, solutions architects, and proposal writers. It combines elements of our Win Themes Development, Advanced Proposal Development, and Advanced Capture Management classes.
• Business Development (BD) for Project Personnel: A course that turns your entire workforce into a sales force. It enables your project personnel to recognize opportunities, communicate better with your BD and Capture Teams, and competently support your BD, Capture, and Proposal efforts.
• Color Team Review Training: How to Raise Proposal Quality Through Effective Color Team Reviews: A course recommended for your reviewers, this class offers step-by-step guidance on how to make the most of your Pink, Red, and other color review teams.
• How to Develop & Coach Winning Oral Proposals: This course gives your team all of the knowledge necessary to win in orals, including the challenging GSA FEDSIM Orals. It covers the key skill areas spanning from managing a blended written and orals proposal to slide deck development, orals content development, and orals coaching. It also covers different types of orals that include in-person orals, virtual orals with video and without video, teleconference orals, and recorded video orals, and dives into how to tailor the proposal process according to the RFP requirements.
• How to Develop a Basis of Estimate (BOE): This course is focused on developing BOEs to ghost competition and provide greater confidence to the customer in your cost proposals.

Contact us if you would like to schedule a time to talk about your training objectives.

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Government Business Development Apprenticeship

Our Government Business Development Apprenticeship program is a comprehensive training program that delivers coursework and certifies skills for Business Development Specialists through the U.S. Department of Labor.

The apprenticeship provides 250 hours of job-related instruction to obtain BD, Capture, and Proposal skills, combined with on-the-job training at the Apprentice’s employer, which results in winning Government contracts.

We designed the program to ensure that Apprentices deliver a real return on investment by learning exactly how to perform specific BD-related tasks. Apprentices complete each part of the program monthly, allowing them to immediately apply their knowledge and contribute more towards their organization’s BD efforts.

Employers leverage this Government-certified program to equip their workforce with essential Government BD, Capture, and Proposal skills. Our curriculum covers the entire Business Development lifecycle, including opportunity identification, pipeline management, capture, and proposal management, and proposal writing.

The program consists of 12 parts that Apprentices can access through our online Learning Management System (LMS), with virtual attendance available to live academic classes. Participants must pass skills tests at each segment of the program to progress further, so you can have confidence that your staff is learning.

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Government Business Development Apprenticeship for Veterans

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) will cover eligible veterans’ and eligible dependents’ training costs for OST’s Apprenticeship program in Government Business Development. Employers of veterans or their qualified survivors and dependents will grow their business by sending staff to our full-scale training program in BD, Capture, and Proposals. Our training enables veteran Apprentices to deliver a real return on investment as they apply their new business development knowledge learned from each month’s lessons to their jobs.

Veterans, members of the National Guard or Reserves, and qualified survivors or dependents can find out about eligibility to apply their VA education benefits to our Apprenticeship program through the GI Bill, Veteran Readiness and Employment Program, and other VA educational assistance.

Veterans may be eligible for funding for the program under any of the following programs:

• Chapter 30: Montgomery GI Bill
• Chapter 31: Veteran Readiness and Employment (VR&E)
• Chapter 33: Post 9/11 GI Bill
• Chapter 35: Survivors’ and Dependents’ Educational Assistance
• Chapter 1606: Montgomery GI Bill Selected Reserve Program

Contact us for more information and our experts can walk you through the registration process.

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SBIR/STTR Proposal Lab

Maryland’s TEDCO, OST, and the Small Business Development Center (Team TEDCO) have teamed together to select up to 25 companies annually to participate in the SBIR/STTR Proposal Lab. Every year, Team TEDCO will run a Proposal Lab tailored to assist Maryland small businesses in developing and submitting a proposal to the National Science Foundation (NSF) for a Phase I award of up to $275,000. The Proposal Lab runs from January through the end of June. The competitive application process closes mid December. If you qualify, you will receive an invitation to a virtual interview.

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Self-Study Courses

OST offers self-study trainings and products for people who learn better at their own pace or do not have time to participate in a public training. We are currently in the process of turning all of our public courses into self-study courses that can be purchased on demand.

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