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Fiona Surrey, owner of Fiona Surrey Marketing, explains how her participation in NEPO Business Club gave her the practical skills and knowledge to start bidding for work with the public sector.

Background

Established in October 2020, Fiona Surrey Marketing specialises in bringing brands and digital campaigns to life. The company is a one-woman business based in Wallsend, Newcastle upon Tyne that works in partnership with clients to build consumer-focused campaigns.

The challenge

Fiona Surrey Marketing has delivered successful social media campaigns for clients across the education and charity sectors, which prompted Fiona to consider bidding for competitive opportunities from the wider public sector. Having had no prior tendering experience, Fiona was keen to find out more about what public sector clients are looking for and how to build a compelling bid.

The approach

Fiona received details of the online NEPO Business Club programme via an email newsletter, and registered on to the free of charge Bid Writing Masterclass and Social Value TOMs training sessions. These interactive sessions outlined hands-on techniques and approaches to think like a professional bid writer, as well as insight into how social value is the secret to successful tendering.

The outcome

The events provided Fiona Surrey Marketing with not only the confidence and skills required to get bid ready, but also the ability to implement social value into the foundations and framework of the business.

Fiona was delighted with the outcome:

“The NEPO Business Club offers powerful advice that could be used by businesses of all shapes and sizes. I was initially worried that the programme would be out of my depth considering the size of my business, however this wasn’t the case at all.

Garry was absolutely brilliant, he walked us through real-life tender document examples and broke down complex terminology into simple non-jargon terms. My thought process has completely changed, and I no longer feel overwhelmed to submit a tender. Thank you NEPO Business Club!”

Find out more about NEPO Business Club at www.nepo.org/suppliers/participate

You can view the case study by downloading the PDF.