Proposal Writer

About VisionPoint Marketing

VisionPoint Marketing is on a mission to become higher education's most trusted brand and enrollment marketing partner. As a full-service agency, we collaborate with colleges and universities nationwide to strengthen brands, accelerate marketing performance, and drive measurable enrollment growth. Our award-winning work is showcased on national conference stages, but our greatest pride is making life easier, and more successful, for our client partners. Headquartered in Raleigh, NC, we operate as a remote-first company with VisionPointers across every U.S. time zone, while offering hybrid and in-person options for those near our headquarters.

We're seeking an experienced Proposal Writer to join our Business Development team. This is a critical role at VisionPoint, helping to generate revenue and build our brand through nuanced, strategic proposal writing.

This is an exciting opportunity for someone with outstanding written and verbal communication skills, an analytical mind, and the strategic instinct to see the problem beneath a client's request and build a persuasive argument around it. The Proposal Writer will report to the Vice President of New Business Development.

What You’ll Do

Proposal Writing

• Read, diagnose, and interpret Requests for Proposals (RFPs) to understand what an institution actually needs, which is often related to but not identical to what the RFP literally asks for. Translate that diagnosis into a clear strategic argument that the rest of the proposal is built around.
• Write thoughtful, well-crafted proposals that align with VisionPoint's sales process and demonstrate a strong understanding of, and empathy for, prospective clients' marketing and enrollment goals.
• Write in VisionPoint's voice and sustain it across a full document: confident and conviction-led, specific and metric-backed, free of buzzwords and hedging. Holding a distinctive institutional voice over a long proposal is central to this role.
• As the principal proposal creator, work in conjunction with subject matter experts to assemble everything a strong response requires, including project scope, client objectives, deliverables, processes, and cost estimation.
• Create accurate cost estimates by predicting hours required based on historical data, team input, and VisionPoint's proprietary methodologies.
• Interview subject matter experts and craft our client success stories into case studies that evidence VisionPoint's thought leadership, sourcing real results and leaving a claim out when the proof isn't there rather than padding it.

Administration

• Meet deadlines by setting priorities and target dates for information gathering, writing, review, and approval; coordinate requirements with contributors; report proposal status; and coordinate and execute proposal submission.

• Update HubSpot, our CRM, with appropriate prospective-client communications and deal information.

• Act as project manager for your assigned proposals and pitch-prep creation, ensuring all are delivered on time.

• Support the internal onboarding of new clients and accounts for the deals you win.

• Support your fellow Business Development teammates as needed.

Who You Are

Experience & Attributes

Minimum bachelor's degree in Business, Marketing, English, or another applicable field of study, or equivalent experience.

• Demonstrated excellence in written and verbal communication, along with strong listening skills. Beyond the table stakes of impeccable grammar, you can write succinctly and distill complex ideas into simple, persuasive explanations. 
  • Our standards for writing are very high, and we expect candidates to excel here. Please include three writing samples with your application.
• Experience producing high-stakes written work under deadline, ideally proposals, strategic communications, or marketing content for a client-facing organization.
• Familiarity with sales processes and dynamics; 1+ years of sales exposure is valuable but not the primary bar.
• Experience in, or selling to, higher education is a strong bonus. 

You Must Also

• Be a fast learner.
• Actively listen, identify opportunities to bring VisionPoint's expertise to bear on a client's goals, and clearly communicate how those goals can be met.
• Work both collaboratively and independently.
• Be extremely detail-oriented.
• Show creativity and a willingness to solve problems that have no pat answer.
• Be internally motivated, driven, goal-oriented, and capable of managing your own workload against tight deadlines.
• Demonstrate genuine empathy for clients and teammates.
• Be optimistic and take the view that most problems can be solved.
• Actively contribute to the VisionPoint culture .

Bonus

• Experience with HubSpot
• Experience in an agency setting, preferably fast-paced
• Experience selling integrated marketing services
• Experience evaluating and thoughtfully responding to RFPs

A Quick Note

VisionPoint Marketing is committed to building a diverse and inclusive work environment and believes that skills are cultivated through a range of experiences. Even if your past work doesn’t meet all of the preferred qualifications, we still encourage you to apply if you are enthusiastic about this opportunity!

VisionPoint Culture

At VisionPoint, we believe that a strong culture is as much a valued benefit as health insurance, PTO, and 401k. That’s why it’s important to us that future team members connect with – and contribute to – our culture. Our communication, collaboration, satisfaction, and growth are largely dependent upon whether we all, as individuals, embrace and live out our values. We believe in the work we do, we support each other, we work hard and we like to have a bit of fun too. When it comes right down to it, happy and fulfilled team members produce better work, and better work is what drives us every day.

VisionPoint Marketing fully subscribes to the principles of Equal Employment Opportunity. It is our policy to provide employment, compensation, and other benefits related to employment based on qualifications, without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex, veteran status, genetic information, disability, or any other basis prohibited by federal, state, or local law.