Pediatric Therapeutic Services, Inc | A Case Study

RFP queens go full role-reversal to reign supreme in PA public schools. 

21 years in the making, the team at PTS have an unfaltering commitment to the success and well-being of school-aged children. I’ve never met a more committed group of women. They are delivering therapeutic services in schools, recruiting and training therapists, and doing philanthropic global outreach with their proven tools and technology.

Despite a stellar reputation, staff cohesion, budget-happy operations, and forward thinking implementations, they just weren’t winning all of state and local contracts they had capacity for. There were too many opportunities being left on the table. 

Shoddy, low-budget alternatives were too shiny a’ penny for bottom-line decision-makers. They needed to tell a better story.

PTS knew a total proposal makeover was in order. Balancing 1 part marketing : 1 part RFP response, this dense and detailed document needed to be customizable, comprehensive, and completely readable. They needed something to sell the real value of PTS. (#spoileralert, PTS programs are so far-reaching, effective, and efficient you can actually help more students with less money over time.) They needed to win hearts and minds by telling their success stories and pulling back the curtain on what makes PTS tick... ...all the while checking all of the boxes as required by the RFP process itself.

Also, they knew they needed professional help. 

That help came in the form of Proposal Genius Carrie Ann Williams and her marketing firm, Andana. Her team had vast experience creating proposal templates from scratch that win the work. 

From their first meeting, Carrie Ann knew this project needed a Brand Boost, a copywriter who could uncover the best of PTS and spin it into marketing gold. 

 (Enter Rebecca. (That’s me!)

• I customized a new workshop to speak directly to PTS. In Positioning and Personas for Proposal and Procurement Prowess, we defined the brand and set forth our market position through the lens of Pediatric Services. This gave the team the opportunity to identify key words and phrases that shaped brand story, brand persona, and core values through natural language . Everyone walked away with a Quick Pitch, a way to talk about PTS in networking and outreach, without sounding like a marketing robot.
  
  
• Together, we finalized a Brand Overview, a 10-pager that set these Core Elements into the Brand Foundation, expanded on pivotal messaging, and documented the discussion. This living document became a gold mine of Branded Copy to be used again and again in advertising and social media, as well as on the website.

• Then came that Proposal Overhaul. We started over from scratch on this behemoth and worked elbow-to-elbow — PTS, Andana, and me — to develop a high functioning product that was easy to customize and even easier to read. By parsing the lion’s share of the content into stand-alone modules, admins at PTS scurrying to meet tight deadlines could easily pick and choose the sections needed into a larger document. Modular, yet all of the pieces function interconnectivity. Together, the reader was brought to the inevitable conclusion that PTS was not the cheapest, not the most expensive. Their one-of-a-kind programs and best practices integrate a holistic, interconnected safety net that positively impacts way more students than singular services. And that kind of effectiveness paid for itself over time. <see it>

Update: Months later, when PTS wanted to go after more <service-specific> contracts, we didn’t have to reinvent the wheel. I wrote another module to add to the growing library of assets. Inside the larger proposal, you have a custom response. As a stand alone, this marketing tool serves as an informational booklet about specific services.

• Trade shows, sponsored events, and networking opportunities call for a brochure, something you can leave behind that encourages people to get to know your company. We applied that very same Brand Boost to a whole new brochure — and a whole new content strategy.
  
  Instead of updating the same old / same old “We Company, this is us,” approach, we developed an informational brochure that spilled the beans on PTS’s special sauce. In How to Provide the Best Related Services in Your Schools Without Stressing the Budget (Even if You Have More Students) gave away the milk on the PTS Framework in the name of Best Practices. “This is how we do it,” said the subtext. “Follow these instructions and you, too, can have programs as effective as ours….. But, it’s probably cheaper/easier/better just to hire us to do it.” In this way, we flipped the script on traditional sales materials and established PTS as the leader of the pack and the brand to emulate. 

If you have love for all things teachers, K-12 schools, kids overcoming obstacles, and therapists embracing a fabulously rewarding career with PTS, follow them on Instagram. I dare you not to feel some kinda way about all of these success stories up in here.